127K views · Sep 23, 2012 · 3:56 · 1 HN recommender · 3 mentions · discussed 2014–2026
A four-minute Emacs Rocks screencast demonstrating the multiple-cursors package for Emacs. It shows how editing at many places at once can replace repetitive manual edits.
Why Hacker News points people here: Cited as the canonical demo of multiple cursors and of fluent, efficient Emacs editing.
“One of the better examples of the usefulness of multiple cursors is from Emacs Rocks”HN comment, 2026
“One of the better examples of the usefulness of multiple cursors is from Emacs Rocks”
Demonstrates usefulness of multiple cursors over macros.
dot repeat is the wrong comparison. A closer one would be macros, but even then a good multiple cursors implementation is often faster, more intuitive, and requires less cognitive overhead. One of the better examples of the usefulness of multiple cursors is from Emacs Rocks (link goes to 0:23): this video
Shows multiple cursors exist in emacs.
I don't know how much faster navigating a buffer can be than doing it in emacs or vim, both of which can switch buffers with the press of a single key and do fuzzy-matching of buffer/file names with a keystroke or two. They can also navigate by moving or clicking around tree-structured directory trees, through menus, and many other ways. Again, it would be nice if people offered specifics when they described something another editor could do that emacs or vim allegedly couldn't. How exactly do you navigate a buffer in Sublime that's allegedly "much quicker"? Can you give an example (including exactly which keys you press and exactly what it does in response)? Or can you at least show a video demonstrating this navigation? As for multiple cursors, both vim and emacs have had them for years.[1][2][3][4][5] [1] - link [2] - link [3] - link [4] - link [5] - this video
“Not as fluent as magnars, but this is a good example of what I mean”
Example of fluent emacs workflow by magnars.
I have all commands I don't remember bound to leader keys. When in calc I have [leader key] m and then which-key pops up everything I have stored. Other than that, I use scratch in elisp mode and eval. Not as fluent as magnars, but this is a good example of what I mean (towards the end): this video
