nullprogram.com author skeeto ends 20 years of Emacs use, shipping native C++ wxWidgets replacements for his own Elfeed and M-x calc packages.
Key Takeaways
Replaced Elfeed with Elfeed2 and M-x calc with stackcalc, both native C++ GUI apps built with wxWidgets and CMake FetchContent, cross-platform out of the box.
wxWidgets chosen over Dear ImGui for feed reader use: passive rendering, richer widget toolkit, sane I/O and path handling; known issues include character encoding bugs and accidental quadratic-time operations.
stackcalc uses GMP and MPFR for multi-precision arithmetic, faster than Emacs calc but missing symbolic processing and full feature parity.
A dozen actively-used Emacs packages including Elfeed, emacs-aio, Skewer, simple-httpd, and nasm-mode are seeking new maintainers; unclaimed packages will be archived.
Build is minimal: only a C++ toolchain and CMake required; works with w64devkit on Windows.
Hacker News Comment Review
Emacs users are skeptical Elfeed2 replaces Elfeed for them; staying inside Emacs is the point, and a wxWidgets GUI breaks that workflow entirely.
Commenters debate modal vs. single-mode editing without a clear winner; several note they use Evil or Vim modes but never fully left Emacs due to feature gaps like Magit.
LLM-assisted development is cited as a real factor enabling rapid rewrites that would previously take weeks, which one commenter flags as a reason Emacs is actually gaining relevance for interactive text processing.
Notable Comments
@whacked_new: argues LLMs increased their Emacs use for rapid interactive scripting, directly countering the retirement narrative.
@TFNA: notes skeeto is Elfeed’s author and warns Emacs users will resist leaving their environment for a standalone GUI replacement.
