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My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

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Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#21

Post by hga »

betteringred wrote: post #3

I think it's interesting how he never explicitly says that he forked Gosling Emacs (I think that's what he did, but if not please correct me!). "Therefore, when I wrote my second implementation of Emacs, I followed the same kind of design...Now, this [GNU Emacs] was not the first Emacs that was written in C and ran on Unix. The first was written by James Gosling, ... I discovered that Gosling's Emacs did not have a r…

Yes, he did. At that time or a bit later I worked for UniPress; the owners knew that taking any action about that beyond a polite request would untimely be harmful. But it was seriously reckless of RMS to put his GNU effort in jeopardy.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#22

Post by jarcane »

agumonkey wrote: post #10
jarcane wrote: post #2

"They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off." That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so th…

Programs are so absurd to most people... they have to use rote learning to do anything with it (that's why changing the slightest bit will drive them mad). And most programs are full of hidden state. This is everything a programmer despise, we spend a huge amount of time ensuring our paradigms are principled and transparent, but these qualities rarely make it to the user level. So I cannot but sympathize with normal…

Oh I don't just mean programming; I've run into perfectly intelligent people who nonetheless respond to even the most basic computing tasks as if you've asked them to insert their tenderparts into a badger's den. Now, I'm perfectly willing to accept that some people just won't "get" computers, but I've also seen elderly retirees who took to it like a fish to water once you talked them out of being afraid of the thing in the first place.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#23

Post by muyuu »

CurtMonash wrote: post #7

The fate of Symbolics wound up having little to do with Stallman, Greenblatt, or LMI. Sun et al. just blew away Symbolics with the economies of scale of UNIX workstations, and the advantages of LISP didn't persuade many people to go with LISP machines instead. Similarly, Rational Software started out making ADA machines, and only survived and prospered after a total pivot away from hardware and ADA alike.

He didn't say that he sunk Symbolics himself.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#24

Post by muyuu »

oldmanjay wrote: post #8
CurtMonash wrote: post #7

The fate of Symbolics wound up having little to do with Stallman, Greenblatt, or LMI. Sun et al. just blew away Symbolics with the economies of scale of UNIX workstations, and the advantages of LISP didn't persuade many people to go with LISP machines instead. Similarly, Rational Software started out making ADA machines, and only survived and prospered after a total pivot away from hardware and ADA alike.

Stallman has the normal sort of blindness most zealots have for areas outside of their zealotry. I have always found it a little bit fascinating to see what a naive view of the world he really has for anything that isn't the politics of software. Which I don't say to be unfair, although I could see those who idolize him taking it that way.

I agree with your assessment but the comment you're replying to is making an untrue assumption, he didn't say that he sunk Symbolics himself or anything close to that. He said that he hindered their plan to drive LMI out of business for some time.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#25

Post by pdpi »

easytiger wrote: post #14
jarcane wrote: post #2

"They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off." That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so th…

I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way. So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder…

> My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front

Thought you were going to say it was Learn You a Haskell For Great Good.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#26

Post by jarcane »

pdpi wrote: post #25
easytiger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way. So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder…

> My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front Thought you were going to say it was Learn You a Haskell For Great Good.

I'm actually reading that one right now. It's quite good, and has made a Haskell fan out of me already despite getting a bit fatigued by chapter 8.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#27

Post by Dewie »

jarcane wrote: post #2

"They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off." That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so th…

Some people are excited about programming in the sense that they can "make the computer do stuff". But the way I see it, I make the computer "do stuff" by just simply pressing the power-on button. And writing a "hello world" doesn't make the computer accomplish more than to write the same string in a word processor.

Maybe some people should just be reminded that programming is not fundamentally different from using a computer in general. Just that you have more fine-grained control.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#28

Post by nickik »

CurtMonash wrote: post #7

The fate of Symbolics wound up having little to do with Stallman, Greenblatt, or LMI. Sun et al. just blew away Symbolics with the economies of scale of UNIX workstations, and the advantages of LISP didn't persuade many people to go with LISP machines instead. Similarly, Rational Software started out making ADA machines, and only survived and prospered after a total pivot away from hardware and ADA alike.

One of the huge problems of the Lisp maschines was that they where quite happy with taking money from military and other huge copperation and did not really try to compete with in that market.

They where also not quick enougth to get at least a subset of there software running on other hardware.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#29

Post by userbmf »

easytiger wrote: post #14
jarcane wrote: post #2

"They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off." That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so th…

I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way. So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder…

100% agreed, reading this is like being 8 and walking down a path with your hero holding your hand explaining about whatever is mystifying you. It's that pleasant.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#30

Post by bch »

lispm wrote: post #16
bch wrote: post #9

> At the time, TCL was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a very low opinion of TCL, basically because it wasn't Lisp. I figured this was the case[1], but hadn't actually seen it stated explicitly. His dislike usually seemed broached in hated of a commercial shepherd (Sun), or going on about (perceived or real) technical shortcomings. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408617

Ousterhout did some marketing pieces and he stated a lot of random things. http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html There was some controversy around it at the time...

I didn't realize that was a very controversial paper.

If the timelines are correct though, that wouldn't have been offending rms yet:

> rms: That was not the end of the GNU projects involved with Lisp. Later on around 1995, we were looking into starting a graphical desktop project. [...]

>

> At the time, TCL was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a very low opinion of TCL...

--

JOs paper appears to be published 1998, 3 years later, citing papers from 1996.

[edit: formatting]

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