Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#21

Post by mrtron » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:00 AM UTC

I think it is really tough for younger people to realize that technology can be seen as a highly dangerous in different forms.

Instead of trashing his principles, perhaps try to see the motivation behind them. I respect anyone who establishes their own code and adheres firmly to it. RMS meets this criteria. He is also very open and honest about his views which I find refreshing.

I also think that this type of boycotting/selectively using technology will become far more common with physical hardware as it rapidly develops. Robots will not smoothly integrate with everyone's tastes.

Consider a highly sophisticated sex robot not noticeably different from a normal human. I can imagine there will be a strong division of people for and against this type of human intimacy replacement.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#22

Post by kunj2aan » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:02 AM UTC

billpatrianakos wrote: post #17

flomo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-ri…

>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

I think you are completely missing his point. He is not claiming to be superior because he uses those tools, he thinks his freedoms are not restricted by them.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#23

Post by jakeonthemove » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:03 AM UTC

Stallman is a smart man, a genius - that's exactly why his way of computing will never be used by most other people.

I do my computing in a terribly inefficient way - Windows and GUI as much as possible to avoid text/code and throw as many apps and resources at a task as possible to make it easier/faster - I've managed to outgrow a T9600 Core 2 Duo in daily use (it's 100% loaded all the time), and now I'm on the way to doing so with a Core 2 Quad.

If RMS saw me, he'd probably shoot me on the spot :-D, but still, things get done....

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#24

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:09 AM UTC

sgt wrote: post #15

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 o…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#25

Post by billpatrianakos » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:10 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #19

flomo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not mocking. Definitely being a little sarcastic. But why do we have to get into a holy war over Stallman. You know as well as I do that what I said is true but unfortunately Stallman's cult following absolutely must punish anyone who points out the obvious. So I said what I needed to. I was actually being sincere, not trying to outright mock him for the sake of mocking him.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#26

Post by salgernon » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:10 AM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #18

"...I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me." that's one tough pill to swallow, sir.

I thought that at first too, but then I started reading blogs that were scraped and fed to my kindle. Now I find that it is much easier to read and take the time to comprehend content when the cost of following links (through the kindles ersatz browser)is so high. Since most of what I'm interested in reading centers on computers or general science, plain text formatting and lack of images isn't a problem.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#27

Post by ktizo » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:13 AM UTC

mrtron wrote: post #21

I think it is really tough for younger people to realize that technology can be seen as a highly dangerous in different forms. Instead of trashing his principles, perhaps try to see the motivation behind them. I respect anyone who establishes their own code and adheres firmly to it. RMS meets this criteria. He is also very open and honest about his views which I find refreshing. I also think that this type of boycott…

I just started idly wondering from your comment what sort of restrictions Stallman would place on a sex robot.

Please don't inspire me to think of such things again.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#28

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:15 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #20

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.

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#29

Post by bfrs » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:15 AM UTC

Can someone help me understand what the purpose of this is:

I have several free web browsers on my laptop, but I generally do not look at web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites operated for or by the GNU Project, FSF or me. I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#30

Post by ramses » Sat, Apr 07, 2012, 5:17 AM UTC

bfrs wrote: post #29

Can someone help me understand what the purpose of this is: I have several free web browsers on my laptop, but I generally do not look at web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites operated for or by the GNU Project, FSF or me. I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me.

He does not want to be tracked.