nullprogram’s skeeto ends 20 years of Emacs use by shipping native C++ replacements for Elfeed and M-x calc, then handing off maintainership of 13+ packages.
Key Takeaways
The final two blockers were Elfeed (RSS reader) and the Emacs Calculator; both are now replaced by native C++ GUI apps built with wxWidgets and CMake FetchContent.
stackcalc uses GMP and MPFR for multi-precision arithmetic, is faster than M-x calc, but lacks symbolic processing and esoteric features.
Elfeed2 reached usable state in two days, already exceeds the original in several respects, and is not yet at 1.0.
wxWidgets was chosen over Dear ImGui because active rendering is wrong for a feed reader left running all day; wxWidgets also provides sane I/O and path handling as a full platform.
Both projects build on Windows, macOS, and Linux with only a C++ toolchain and CMake: cmake -B build && cmake --build build.
Hacker News Comment Review
The main community concern is maintainership: Elfeed has 13 years of daily use behind it, and commenters doubt most users will follow the author to a wxWidgets GUI app outside Emacs.
The “newly-acquired superpowers” line drew attention; commenters surfaced the author’s linked post explaining it means AI-assisted coding at a new employer, framing this retirement as partly AI-enabled velocity.
A recurring gap noted: no clear magit equivalent exists outside an editor, leaving that part of the Emacs workflow still unresolved for people who have already left.
Notable Comments
@lowsong: surfaces the author’s own words confirming the superpowers are AI – “as of March, in my professional capacity I no longer write code myself.”
@mattdeboard: years out of Emacs and still hunting for a standalone magit replacement; VS Code’s magit extension is close but not cross-IDE.
