in this video about why I do not use EMAX. Now if you're an OG subscriber to this channel you will know that literally two years ago I did a video and sort of a video competition where I put out a video said, convince me to use EMAX. Okay and that's what I wanted people to do. I wanted them to submit tutorials and stuff like that and people have been asking me about you know where's the update? Are you gonna use EMAX? Have you started using it? Of course if you watch my videos you know I don't. Actually maybe at this point I should even explain what EMAX is because I am sure there are a lot of people who watch this channel who don't know. So maybe I should at least say what it is. So GNU EMAX is Richard Stolman who wrote it but it is a I guess it's improperly called a text editor. It used to be a text editor but it was so extensible that basically you can do everything in this text editor. It is one program to rule them all. It can send email. You can do web browsing. You can look at PDFs. You can do like people. When you use EMAX and you get into it, EMAX becomes your operating system and everything else you know if you might use Ubuntu or something like that but that's really just your boot screen into getting into EMAX. So that is the EMAX ideal and a lot of people of you know EMAX has a lot of very famous features. One of the biggest ones is of course org mode and stuff like that. org mode, it's sort of hard to explain but it has some crazy interesting features. I guess I mean it's one of those things. I guess it started out as a scheduling application or mode or something like that but it can do all these crazy things in terms of like monitoring the time you use on things. It can like compile documents in weird way. I don't know. It just does everything. Okay. So a lot of people ask me now. Now first off 95% of the people who do it ask it as if I don't know what EMAX is. Hey there's this program called EMAX maybe you should check it out. Oh you've heard of EMAX? Have you ever heard of org mode? It's really cool. You should try it out. Oh you don't like EMAX findings? Did you know you can use a VIM mode in EMAX? I don't know why people do this. Like I'm sorry I have the internet too. I have YouTube's recommended video section too. I've seen all this stuff. I've seen all these videos. Anyway when I put out this video two years ago what I wanted is people to put up tutorials that were sort of like tutorials on my channel where it's just like you know a couple of minutes. Here's how you do this. Here's how it's useful but I wanted the equivalent MMAX. I wanted people to show me things I could not do easily or as elegantly without EMAX. You know I wanted to see how EMAX does things better. Now needless to say I have not started using EMAX. Okay. First off now this is going to sound like rambling. This is totally relevant to the actual question but I want to talk about the what kind of things I got in that video competition. Okay. For example there was a guy I think his YouTube I don't know if he actually puts up videos anymore but he had a YouTube channel called Uncle Dave and he like he put out like you know again I said like oh do do a brief tutorial a couple minutes about cool things you can do in EMAX. He did like why I use EMAX part one it was like 40 minutes and of course there are you know he showed some cool stuff but the thing about it and I mean I had used EMAX in the past I tried to familiarize myself with it and I knew some of the features but I guess not just from his videos but other people as well. The pattern is extremely long videos basically saying EMAX is a terrible choice if you just want to switch like EMAX is good for tinkerers who want to learn like a totally new program and totally how to I don't know redo everything they already do but in EMAX and I don't know it's cool from the EMAX perspective but in terms of like actually getting efficiency out of it that is something that is sort of you know long time in the future if you're gonna switch to EMAX. I'll just say that there's basically of all the videos I watch of all the things that people sent me I basically saw nothing that I found in EMAX that was really impressing impressive impressing it didn't it wasn't impressing me and it wasn't impressive either or at least nothing too out of the ordinary and I guess even more than that as I started to think about really what this channel is about this channel is about man that sounds so stupid really my experience in using a computer let me explain it again the sounds like rambling but this is answering the question okay when I started familiarizing myself with a Linux operating system or a Unix like operating system it really went like this and I think this is how it usually goes you look at GUI applications and you look at minimalist alternatives to them and when you learn to use a minimalist alternative you sort of get closer to how the system actually works you're getting lower level as you learn how to use a system and that's that's something really nice because if you have a better you know as you familiarize yourself with the system and you have a better lower level knowledge of it you realize all these crazy things you could do with it just by having an intimate knowledge of it okay that's the only way I can describe it so for me learning like becoming good at computers I mean to simplify things is more about stripping away the unnecessary craft and looking at core essentials okay now my perspective on EMAX now I'm gonna say EMAX might be perfect for you and other people it might even be good for me in an alternate universe but from my perspective now if I were to start using EMAX EMAX would be like you know I've been learning about this a Unix based operating system by stripping away things and getting at core principles using EMAX would be like plopping this enormous redundant mess on top and saying now this is your operating system now you know all the stuff you learned about the principles of you know Unix based operating systems and tech streams and pipes and all that stuff although of course EMAX Lisp still has stuff like that I mean it has its own internal logic that can be very elegant it's sort of it seems a little like I'm making unprogress you know I'm going backwards right where it where again you know I don't really find anything about EMAX although there are cool features oh wow look at the cool looking things you can do in org mode none of that is cool enough for me to first off I'm not actually I'm not a big fan of cool things I don't do things just because they're like wow they're interesting or something like that like I don't the org mode of course which does a much of scheduling and stuff like that that is just not something I do with a computer like I don't have a need for that it's interesting it can do that but it's one of those things where it's like okay I mean of course org mode does more than that of course I I always have to make caveats here because people say actually it does more than that well actually blah blah yes yes I know but again from my perspective using EMAX is sort of like making things like putting an extra layer of complexity over my system which I now know very well and I would just have to relearn that and I might I might even get something out of learning EMAX but it just seems like a lot of redundant learning now notice what I'm not doing here oh no it's probably too late in the video for people even notice but I'm not knocking EMAX I'm not saying it's a waste of time I'm not saying any of that kind of stuff because I know that EMAX can you know if you get into EMAX it can be like a super productive workflow and stuff like that so like I'm never gonna knock that any more than I'm gonna knock familiarizing yourself with the Unix based operating system I guess I I guess I would be more comfortable with EMAX if we're actually just an installable operating system with that you didn't I mean you didn't have to install some like you just booted into EMAX you know what I mean I would feel like oh okay it's just the different operating system that's sort of how I really look at it I guess and that's how I think it should be looked at so I guess the question then is should I switch my operating system from Unix to EMAX I'm not convinced there's any I mean I again I might learn stuff about the operating system but I don't know how much generalizable stuff I can get out of that that's actually gonna be useful so anyway in general hopefully that explains why I'm not I don't use EMAX again it's something if you have a lot of time you're just wasting I guess and you might be interested in EMAX it might be something to look into but I think the learning curve I mean comparing it to them I think you know VIM of course VIM is a text editor EMAX is called a text editor it's really not I mean it's has it does everything but edit text well but if you compare VIM to EMAX VIM is one of those things that you learn and within the first like day or two of you using it you're like wow I feel so stupid for never using this before especially if you've like nox people who use VIM you're like wow I just feel so dumb like not using like there's so many things that I can do so much more effectively just by having a very basic knowledge of them okay EMAX although I've tried it many times I've tried to use it I've never felt like that or if I'm eventually gonna get something out of if I'm gonna get some maximum gain of productivity from using EMAX you must have to invest a lot of time in it because I've never you know I've never been able to do it all the time that I've used and again I've had two years now to play around with it I've seen more than that I've used it even before I did that original video and there's just nothing that is like I don't know there is just nothing for me anyway that's hopefully explained to why I don't use EMAX but also I think my computing philosophy generally I don't like new schemes of doing like I like things getting simpler and minimalist not not just because for the meme of minimalism but because I like things being more bare bones because it's easier to understand everything that's going on and if I add on this is also why I don't like containers and these kind of things that I don't know I just find them big cringe or all this kind of okay so recently maybe I should do a separate video on this yeah I'll do a separate video on that but um anyway that's that's why I don't use EMAX hopefully that was coherent enough but anyway see you guys next time