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points by kleiba2 1 day ago | 0 comments
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you re: text manipulation. That's exactly why I find it so frustrating that it's basically frowned upon in my current job. I do use it still, but must do so pretty much secretly at work.

At home, it's a different story.

I believe, Emacs is considered unprofessional in a lot of places?!

[–] jimbokun 1 day ago
Emacs is considered unprofessional in unprofessional work places.

Dictating specific tools without a very strong technical justification is a strong signal that your management doesn’t trust you to make any important decisions.

[–] Jtsummers 1 day ago
> I believe, Emacs is considered unprofessional in a lot of places?!

Why would it be "unprofessional"? It's an editor. I've used it in every job since I left college 20+ years ago.

[–] kleiba2 1 day ago
You should have seen the expression on the faces when I mentioned "Emacs" during my job interview...
[–] Jtsummers 1 day ago
The only expression I have gotten was something like "Why not vim?" and my response was "Because emacs is better, and I can always use evil-mode if I want the vim bindings". Then it gets installed (by me or an admin) and I use it. I can't imagine anyone actually caring, that's pretty petty of them, or lazy based on your other comment about it being too much work for sysadmins.
[–] kleiba2 21 hours ago
Lucky you!

But I've also worked at a different place in the past where - when I asked if I could have Emacs installed on my machine - the sysadmin asked me "What's Emacs?"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] iLemming 1 day ago
> Emacs is considered unprofessional in a lot of places

What? Why? Who the hell would ever forbid anyone from using a tool that literally makes them more productive? I mean, as the Russians say: "If drinking vodka at work interferes with your job, quit drinking vodka... at that job"

[–] kleiba2 1 day ago
The main argument is that having the same setup on all work stations makes maintenance easier for the sysadmins and you don't run into inconsistencies between developers that only come about as a result of different setups.
[–] iLemming 23 hours ago
> makes maintenance easier for the sysadmins

Develop hacker's mindset. Don't anyone tell you how to use your computer. Especially don't let your computer to dictate you the rules. Always remain in charge.

When I started at my current job, they gave me a laptop that came installed with crap called ABR - Admin By Request. Basically, for anything that required sudo, they'd force me to run it, then click a prompt: "yes, I need the [fucking] access," then another little prompt comes up, asking for "reasons," and you're supposed to type it, to which everyone on my team types some random number of letters (because there's a minimum), then press Ok to get three-hour access.

I dealt with it for exactly three days. After that I just wrote a script that periodically checks if I have the admin rights, and then waits for me to get idle (so no sudden focus stealing), then runs the sucker, sends the request, etc. I don't even see it anymore - just happens. I'm not playing their stupid games, their "security theater", I have a job to do.

[–] kleiba2 21 hours ago
> Develop hacker's mindset. Don't anyone tell you how to use your computer. Especially don't let your computer to dictate you the rules. Always remain in charge.

That would be nice in theory. I've worked in many different places throughout my career and in almost all of them, the sysadmins had the final say in what software was okay to install on your machine and which one wasn't.... because "security".

[–] iLemming 11 hours ago
> That would be nice in theory.

I just gave you an actual, practical example, not a theoretical one.

Here's another one. I wanted to try eca-emacs, the documentation website sits at https://eca.dev, Cisco Umbrella, for whatever stupid reason, blocks the entire .dev domain, and every corporate laptop comes pre-installed with Cisco Secure Client that you can't remove. I submitted a ticket, and then wasted my time on a ridiculous exchange with the "big security guy," who decided to take a power trip and refused to have the website whitelisted. Despite it being absolutely harmless. I don't know where the fuck he's purchased that condescending tone and posture. In the end, I said: "thank you for your time," and hoped to never ever have to talk to him. Then I set up a SOCKS tunnel through my local Linux box, installed the FoxyProxy extension, and voila - I'm never ever going to have to complain about a blocked website.

> sysadmins had the final say

And you can always find workarounds. Those who want to do something look for a way, not excuses. You're a goddamn computer programmer. Maybe act like one.