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Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

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Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#11

Post by jmillikin »

fleitz wrote: post #4
ktizo wrote: post #2

I view Richard Stallman's attitude to this as though he has set himself up as some kind of social/technological guinea-pig for the general public good. Yes, he is fanatical in several senses, especially nasal and botanical, by all accounts ( read Stallman does Dallas: http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html ). But the day that Stallman cannot get on the internet, without compromising his own set of restrictions, is t…

Last time I checked iOS (the router OS) is not free, he probably does violate his own principles connecting to the Internet. Rms is like a vegan always preaching some moral high ground and always violating it whenever it becomes inconvenient.

"I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then."

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#12

Post by justauser »

fleitz wrote: post #4
ktizo wrote: post #2

I view Richard Stallman's attitude to this as though he has set himself up as some kind of social/technological guinea-pig for the general public good. Yes, he is fanatical in several senses, especially nasal and botanical, by all accounts ( read Stallman does Dallas: http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html ). But the day that Stallman cannot get on the internet, without compromising his own set of restrictions, is t…

Last time I checked iOS (the router OS) is not free, he probably does violate his own principles connecting to the Internet. Rms is like a vegan always preaching some moral high ground and always violating it whenever it becomes inconvenient.

If you're referring to Cisco, it's IOS. You're right though that the odds of him not touching something like IOS or JUNOS or IronWare border on close to impossible.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#13

Post by flomo »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #10

Oh boy. RMS wrote yet another opinion that we just have to read. I'll be hated for this but I must state the obvious. This is a list of really boring opinions. Interesting for rms fanatics but many are barely explained and most aren't realistic to actually try out unless you want to be a software philosopher for a living. Did people just see Stallman in the title and up vote? Come on.

Ditto. Stallman is an enormously interesting figure in the history of software development. But who really cares how he reads his email or books his speaking engagements? (And the less one knows about his personal life is probably for the better.)

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#14

Post by dill_day »

I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundametally similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. When you start Lisp, it does `read', `eval', and `print', all of which are missing in Python.

Could someone explain what he means? (Did Python not have a repl when he wrote that?)

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#15

Post by sgt »

I did however find this comment quite interesting. He recommends Lisp to beginner programmers. Honestly this makes me want to play with Lisp (I do just about every other popular language but I've never done Lisp):

"The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most other languages.

When you start a Lisp system, it enters a read-eval-print loop. Most other languages have nothing comparable to read, nothing comparable to eval, and nothing comparable to print. What gaping deficiencies!

Lisp is no harder to understand than other languages. So if you have never learned to program, and you want to start, start with Lisp. If you learn to edit with Emacs, you can learn Lisp by writing editing commands for Emacs. You can use the Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp to learn with: it is free as in freedom, and you can order printed copies from the FSF."

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#16

Post by officialchicken »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #10

Oh boy. RMS wrote yet another opinion that we just have to read. I'll be hated for this but I must state the obvious. This is a list of really boring opinions. Interesting for rms fanatics but many are barely explained and most aren't realistic to actually try out unless you want to be a software philosopher for a living. Did people just see Stallman in the title and up vote? Come on.

I was surprised to see that there were no rules whatsoever on the consumption/conservation of energy (nutritional or electrical) - such as avoidance of corn flakes encumbered by Montasano patents.

i.e. "I only drink rain water and pure grain alcohol"

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#17

Post by billpatrianakos »

flomo wrote: post #13
billpatrianakos wrote: post #10

Oh boy. RMS wrote yet another opinion that we just have to read. I'll be hated for this but I must state the obvious. This is a list of really boring opinions. Interesting for rms fanatics but many are barely explained and most aren't realistic to actually try out unless you want to be a software philosopher for a living. Did people just see Stallman in the title and up vote? Come on.

Ditto. Stallman is an enormously interesting figure in the history of software development. But who really cares how he reads his email or books his speaking engagements? (And the less one knows about his personal life is probably for the better.)

Well that was my initial thought but to be fair those things certainly can be interesting if you're a fan of his.

That said, this is really nothing new. I've read this same list many times and it's actually been linked here several times. The difference is just that in its other incarnations it was in plain text form or some other variation of the same HTML list.

Then there's the fact that it really is just a self-righteous sounding list. Like if I said "I'm browsing HN on my iPad because I find it convenient for reading and I can smoke cigarettes in my garage while I carry it around". Those ridiculous details are the kind of thing you find in his lists. And of course no one is going to go all plain-text when using a computer but the way Stallman makes it sound seems like he's saying he's superior to us because he's cool enough to not need all those fancy GUI dealies. So what?

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#19

Post by ajross »

flomo wrote: post #13
billpatrianakos wrote: post #10

Oh boy. RMS wrote yet another opinion that we just have to read. I'll be hated for this but I must state the obvious. This is a list of really boring opinions. Interesting for rms fanatics but many are barely explained and most aren't realistic to actually try out unless you want to be a software philosopher for a living. Did people just see Stallman in the title and up vote? Come on.

Ditto. Stallman is an enormously interesting figure in the history of software development. But who really cares how he reads his email or books his speaking engagements? (And the less one knows about his personal life is probably for the better.)

I count three of you now who cared enough to post here mocking him.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#20

Post by ajross »

dill_day wrote: post #14

I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundametally similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. When you start Lisp, it does `read', `eval', and `print', all of which are missing in Python. Could someone explain what he means? (Did Python not have a repl when he wrote that?)

Python's read doesn't return a s-expression, nor does its print take one; they just use strings. It's eval likewise takes a string. The part missing that lisp has is the inspectable data structure containing an arbitrary parse tree and function result.
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