An Engine for an Editor (matklad.github.io)

Just wanted to say that this was a great read and thank you for sharing!

I’ve been meaning to learn emacs for almost 20 years at this point. This was the first time I’ve really understood the core data structures around emacs.

The concept of a narrow waist is really interesting. It is the common layer that the editor and package authors talk though. Emacs’ choice of string attributes is simple but also powerful. This is contrast to other editors that try to use something more structured like JSON or a DOM, which is probably easier for the editor, but is less hackable then attributes.

In addition to magit being awesome, it's sometimes very useful that since macros work everywhere I can use them in magit buffers.

Or in grep buffers to apply some change to a known pattern for refactoring if it's too difficult for tooling.

Relating back to the article, it's the text-based nature that easily allows for something like macros to work everywhere.