July 24, 2026
Folder drama in plain text
My Emacs Configuration (Dired)
Emacs fans turn a file-browser blog into a battle over why basic stuff still needs setup
TLDR: The post explains how one Emacs user relies on Dired, a built-in file browser, for everyday file management inside their editor. But the real story is the comments: fans praised its hidden powers while critics roasted Emacs for still making basic behavior feel harder than it should.
A quiet blog post about one person’s favorite way to browse files inside Emacs — an old-school text editor with a fiercely loyal fan base — somehow turned into a full-on comments-section soap opera. The author walks readers through Dired, Emacs’s built-in file browser, explaining how they use it daily to jump around project folders, open the current directory instantly, and manage files without leaving the editor. For longtime Emacs users, this is catnip. For everyone else, it’s basically: “wait, your text editor is also your file manager?”
And that’s where the community energy really kicks in. Some readers were delighted, cheering small quality-of-life tricks like hiding clutter and editing filenames in place, with one calling a feature “particularly neato.” Others showed up ready to throw elbows. The spiciest complaint came from a frustrated commenter who said the Emacs crowd seems “allergic to sane defaults,” blasting the fact that opening something as simple as a JPEG image still often needs manual setup. That sparked the classic tech-world culture war: is deep customization a superpower, or just unpaid labor for users?
Meanwhile, power users piled in with their own flexes. One bragged about mass-renaming files with multiple cursors and keyboard macros like a wizard casting spells on folders. Another dropped a tool for batch-running shell commands on Dired files, basically turning the thread into a mini talent show. The overall vibe: half “Dired rules actually”, half “why is this still so hard in 2026?” — and yes, that tension is exactly why the comments were more dramatic than the blog post itself.
Key Points
- •The post is part of a broader series about the author's Emacs configuration and focuses specifically on Dired.
- •Dired is presented as Emacs' built-in file manager, allowing directory and file operations through an Emacs buffer.
- •The author moved from primarily using bash, zsh, and later Midnight Commander because they wanted more interactive file management features.
- •For project-based navigation, the author uses `C-x p d` to open a chosen directory inside a project and `C-x p D` to open the project root.
- •The author frequently uses `C-x C-j` to open Dired in the current working directory and has rebound the default `C-x d` command to `C-x C-d`.