Even More Batteries Included with Emacs

The latest “batteries included” roundup for Emacs — the famously all-in-one text editor beloved by power users — was supposed to be a celebration of overlooked built-in goodies. Think: hover over a word and get a dictionary popup, use wildcards to open or manage many files at once, and uncover more secret tools hiding in plain sight. But the real fireworks were in the comments, where the community immediately turned the post into a therapy session, roast battle, and love letter all at once.

The biggest split? One camp says Emacs is packed with amazing features that nobody can find, while the other says discoverability is not the real problem — the real issue is that keeping the thing working can feel like a part-time job. One commenter said they loved Org mode, a popular planning system inside Emacs, but gave up because updates kept breaking things and they were tired of "fixing my emacs when I want to get some work done." Ouch. Another longtime user went even harder, pushing back on the article’s core idea and saying the problem isn’t hidden features at all.

Then came the comedy. Security heavyweight tptacek casually dropped the most relatable confession in the thread: after using Emacs since 1994, they still don’t understand Dired, the built-in file manager. Meanwhile, defenders insisted the instability talk is overblown, with one Doom Emacs user saying things mostly work fine. And of course, someone revived the eternal nerd joke: “Emacs is a great OS… if you complement it with vim then you may have a working editor as well.” Classic. The result? A simple feature roundup became yet another episode in tech’s longest-running soap opera: is Emacs a hidden treasure chest, or a maze built by wizards for other wizards?