This is so exactly right and I've been saying it to whoever will put up with me...(and now am embarrassed I have no link to show for it. oh well, shame is good for writing. envy too!) Software production is now so easy that everything is a .emacs file (pronounced "dot emacs" btw): meaning, each individual has their own entirely personal, endlessly customizable software cocoon. As tptacek says in the OP, it's "easier…
The Emacsification of Software
291–300 of 304 posts
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
If WASM succeeded in being the one universal ABI, it could be the perfect successor to the unix pipe for the AI age. Wasm modules for libraries, that double as terminal tools.. One could only imagine
Before WASM was the CLR. Before the CLR was the JVM. Before the JVM was the Smalltalk VM. Before the Smalltalk VM was the Pascal P-Machine. Before the Pascal P-Machine was the BCPL O-Code interpreter.
I think you missed flash. And arguably, to the author's point, JavaScript in browser (not wasm).
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#293Software that today is overwhelmingly prepackaged and usually professional, which I think at this point the nerds should reclaim: * Podcast apps * Music listening apps * Feed readers * Bluesky clients * Note-taking apps * Desktop bookmarking/read-later apps * Chat and instant messaging * Time trackers * Recipe managers These are all things that you can get better-than-replacement-grade results from Claude on --- not…
Our social media should be decentralized and local first, allowing for bespoke clients on any OS. This is an experiment towards that: https://github.com/dharmatech/9social The first client is written for plan9. This keeps the design honest. (If it can run on plan9/rc/acme...) Video demo: https://youtu.be/q6qVnlCjcAI The current implementation is less than 3000 lines of code. And speaking of Emacs... 9social was heavi…
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 5 million ZX Spectrums were sold between 1982 and 1992. If all were sold in the UK (they weren’t), that would put the penetration around 25% based on the number of households in 1990.
One specific model of ZX Spectrum, which is one specific make and model of home computer. Did you live in the UK in the 1980s?
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#295Why should I use your software with oceans of padding and unlabeled hieroglyphic icons from which you've removed 99% of features? I can just do it myself now. Ostensibly, yes, the software is "worse" in some technical sense, but better in the ways that actually matter: it can be used it can do a job. It no longer exists as a stage for the author's minimalism fetish or as a vehicle for some pointless middle-manager's promotion package.
Software is a tool, it's supposed to be useful and do tasks to help the user. We've spent so much time, money, and brainpower this past decade making software as unusable and unhelpful as possible. Is it any wonder that when computer literacy has hit a huge low that people immediately and with gusto jump onto the "make your own software the way you always wanted it to be" machine?
Whether good or bad, this is a pretty natural reaction to the previously-modern state of software. The industry decided to only publish software that can only be used One Correct Way, and physically prevented any use other than the single happy path by stripping out any feature that wasn't absolutely critical. If a user wanted something other than the author's personalized emacs file, fuck them, that's their problem. We decided to only publish UIs that cannot be understood by humans and HOW DARE anyone suggest ultra-minimalist UIs that are 85% whitespace are bad, what are you a Luddite?! And the huge crew of self-entitled "well just fork it if you hate it so much" crew.
We did this to ourselves. We made software exclusive, elitist, and are shocked when the masses go "okay, I'll make my own"
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 5 million ZX Spectrums were sold between 1982 and 1992. If all were sold in the UK (they weren’t), that would put the penetration around 25% based on the number of households in 1990.
One specific model of ZX Spectrum, which is one specific make and model of home computer. Did you live in the UK in the 1980s?
Yes.
> One specific model of ZX Spectrum
I do not believe this to be the case, that number appears to include the 128K and the Amstrad variants also.
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I agree with the feeling. And actually more than "building your own" because "it's faster than installing", "Emacsification" probably also works for "using an open source project and quickly patching it just for your needs". > could have been directed to an OSS project My feeling is that it is not exactly a risk. People who are keen on contributing to open source will do it even with AI, and people who are not w…
> People who are keen on contributing to open source will do it even with AI, and people who are not wouldn't do it anyway. People are not a monolith and, for example, you have zero fucking clue about my motivations.
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People who are keen on contributing to open source will do it even with AI, and people who are not wouldn't do it anyway. People are not a monolith and, for example, you have zero fucking clue about my motivations.
The one clue I have is that you sound very aggressive for no apparent reason.
You do you.
Re: The Emacsification of Software
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one clue I have is that you sound very aggressive for no apparent reason.
It is certainly unsurprising that one who presumes to know all about others would take a small data point and use it to confirm the correctness of their presumptions, rather than to consider any sort of introspection. You do you.