On: Jeopardy Champion Ken Jennings Q&A about IBM Watson

[zach]

Ken is super-great. He was a fun and friendly guy when I met him at a book signing. I've become a regular reader of his blog, where he shares random trivia and his love of cinema, hipster bands and the 1980's era of Games Magazine.

And if you noticed he's a computer programmer and you're wondering, the answer is emacs.

[SoftwareMaven → zach]

Of course it's emacs. He can actually remember all of the commands, functions, variables, and key bindings.

(Before people get their flamethrowers out, I spend more time in emacs than any other piece of software I own.)

[jodrellblank → SoftwareMaven]

And the rest of your time in a text editor, right?

[SoftwareMaven → jodrellblank]

I spend so much time in it looking for the "optimal" way to do what I'm trying to do. I know there's a command for it somewhere!

[gthank → zach]

That's too bad about emacs. I was really starting to like him. ;-)

[jimmyjim → zach]

> ..and you're wondering, the answer is emacs.

He blog doesn't say anything about him using emacs. Just out of curiosity, can you link to where there's any sort of discussion about his setup?

[zach → jimmyjim]

He mentioned it on his forums once, way back in 2007 when I was preparing to be on the show myself:

http://www.ken-jennings.com/messageboards/viewtopic.php?p=12...

(Tuesday Trivia is his weekly email trivia contest.)

[josh33 → zach]

I'll bite: were you on the show?

[zach → josh33]

Yeah; I had a blast. At least that's my excuse for following Ken Jennings' forum so closely.

I ended up 72 victories short of Ken, though.

http://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=3965

[kevin_morrill → zach]

For those wondering his blog is at http://ken-jennings.com/blog/

[mkramlich → zach]

That's ok. I'm sure Watson prefers vi.