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3 months ago
5
Want to feel ashamed? Of course you don’t but this post will make you feel that way anyway. Too many of us spend our time whining about the tech we use. One aspect of that is how hard it is to learn Emacs or any other serious editor. Read the technical forums. They’re full of whining: “I don’t have time to learn my tools.” “I’m not wasting my time learning Elisp” “Why can’t it just do what I expect it to do?” “OMG, the keybindings!” And on and on.
Then there’s this guy. He’s been blind since birth and guess what? He’s learned to use Emacs and is thankful for it. He uses Emacspeak for both his programming and writing. He says it fills him with joy.
I don’t know about you but I can’t imagine doing what he does. He can’t see. He can’t even remember seeing but he has still managed to learn Emacs and make it an important part of his life.
What’s that? You don’t like the default key bindings? You don’t like the default theme? It takes too long to load? Get over yourself. If a guy who can’t see—who’s never been able to see—can learn and master Emacs so can you.
What’s most striking to me is that he sees every day as an opportunity to learn something new about Emacs and improve his workflow. We could all learn something from him. We are, really, lucky to have so many great tools available to use, often for free. I’m happy his post pointed this out to me.
