My Emacs Zero to IDE Journey
I recently encountered a situation where JetBrains IDEs weren't working for a project, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to keep paying the yearly fee. I decided to de-IDE myself and as part of it I decided to look at my options. The more I saw of Emacs the more interested I got. However using the Doom emacs distribution kind of threw me in the deep end without actually understanding how Emacs operates. I was lost and bounced off quick. I decided to take the approach of starting with vanilla Emacs and trying to get it to work for me as an IDE one step at a time. This post was me documenting…
In plain words
This is a documentation series and GitHub repository that guides developers through configuring vanilla Emacs as a fully-featured IDE from scratch. The author documents the step-by-step process of building IDE capabilities in Emacs, explaining the reasoning behind each configuration choice and extension, rather than providing quick tips. It is intended for developers interested in transitioning away from commercial IDEs and understanding how to customize and extend Emacs to meet their specific needs.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Contribute to KallDrexx/emacs-zero-to-ide-journey development by creating an account on GitHub.
These posts are meant to document my attempts to setup Emacs as a daily driver and fully customizable IDE from vanilla emacs. The hope is to get to the point where I can comfortably replace my use of JetBrains IDEs with Emacs, and importantly understand how I can extend it to go even further. Each post is intended to explore different concepts to actually understand what extensions/workflows work well and why they work (or not) for me. Most of the posts will not be quick tips and instead will be an in depth look at specific areas. The posts are also ordered in general sequence that I discovered the functionality at, and may not necessarily be the most logical ordering from a newbie…from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
I recently encountered a situation where JetBrains IDEs weren't working for a project, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to keep paying the yearly fee. I decided to de-IDE myself and as part of it I decided to look at my options. The more I saw of Emacs the more interested I got. However using the Doom emacs distribution kind of threw me in the deep end without actually understanding how Emacs operates. I was lost and bounced off quick. I decided to take the approach of starting with vanilla Emacs and trying to get it to work for me as an IDE one step at a time. This post was me documenting that and actually trying to understand each component or feature I was trying to utilize. I figured I would post it here in case someone else is interested and wants to try and break through the Emacs wall.
More work this month
the category →
The app store for voice native apps that lives in your notch
Work · 28d ago · voiceos.com
The New Calendly▲211Handle all of the work before, during, and after meetings
Work · 17d ago · calendly.com
Launched alongside, August 2026
the whole month →- TL
Life & fun · 10d ago · louisabraham.github.io
- SA
Hello HN! I found that picking out plausible but diverse skin tones for my digital art and game development projects was kind of difficult, and I got curious about if there was a way to define a color space that made it easy. I've built a color picker and procedural generation algorithm based on the space as well as a bunch of other fun js features and demos throughout the page that use the equations. If you find it interesting, I have lots of explanations of how I built it and what properties the space has. The methodology might be a bit shaky, but hopefully the result is as helpful for…
Life & fun · Aug 2026 · toneyalexander.github.io
I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.
AI · 17d ago · simedw.com