creating a virtual machine build environment so I didn’t have to litter my main computer with 100s of packages to build emacs.

That’s is a good idea! Despite what all others say. I’m doing this since years with my Linux box(es).

But you need to know, that self compiled programms should be stored below the filesystem tree /usr/local/.
There is a tool called stow, it has a package in most Linux distributions.
Install stow into host and VM and create a directory /usr/local/stow/ in both (host an VM).
When compiling Emacs or other programs use the --prefix option of configure. E.g. cd emacs-src; ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/emacs-v29.1. Then compile Emacs and install it in the virtual machine. After that, tar the folder /usr/local/stow/emacs-v29.1 and unpack it onto the host into the same directory. Then change dir into /usr/local/stow and run sudo stow emacs-v29.1. Maybe you need to install some libraries onto the host, use ldd /usr/local/bin/emacs to see, what libs you need. Then you are ready to use emacs. It is possible to have multiple versions of emacs installed and only one needs to be “activated” via stow.

Not sure how plain ivy sorts its candidates, but do you have by chance any additional package installed? A package, which re-sorts the candidate list? A Package like prescient, smex, flx, historian, …?

regarding Elisp:
Consider using and contributing to the packages helpful and/or elisp-demos.

In case a SLY user is reading this. Sly brings sly-switch-to-most-recent, you might have to bind it to C-c C-z yourself in sly-mrepl-mode-map.

Here is a video showing two more variants:

https://0x0.st/HJF3.mkv

Yes isearch is powerful, but you have to learn and remember its keybindings, because if you don’t: isearch quits (and I need to start that search at the beginning).

Isearch’s help C-h b doesn’t make it better, because I would need to scroll that long list in the help window, but if I do so … isearch quits.

Therefore I installed the package isearch-mb (*) and used easy-menu to add a drop down menu for isearch. Now, if I can’t remember an isearch keybinding, I am able to look at the menu bar, without isearch quitting.

(*) As always with Emacs: there are other ways to solve that.

thanks!

I found this: https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-gnu-emacs/2023-07/msg01135.html

From above link:
Those files have set no-byte-compile to t, but Emacs needs to open those files (and reports it) in order to see this setting.

So, setting native-comp-jit-compilation-deny-list won’t do any harm here. I will use it to suppress this messages.

You got me interested, but I never worked with ob-plantuml before. I’d like to try it myself.

Could you please give a full working example? One with org-block arguments and working export to latex/pdf.
Or link a tutorial?

Maybe we just need smarter auto complete frameworks that take the frequency of symbol use into account,

Since quite some years there is company-prescient in case you are using Emacs with SLIME / SLY and company.el. Look at its readme to learn there exist other similar packages (Imo since more than a decade already).