From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: ken Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: becoming a developer [was: Re: Issues with emacs] Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:03:43 -0400 Message-ID: <4FE9268F.1030708@mousecar.com> References: <87bokbb4zw.fsf@gnu.org> <4FE67DF4.1010903@mousecar.com> <8262af46dv.fsf@gmail.com> Reply-To: gebser@mousecar.com NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1340679839 22452 80.91.229.3 (26 Jun 2012 03:03:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:03:59 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Sivaram Neelakantan Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jun 26 05:03:59 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SjM4K-0005qh-HJ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 26 Jun 2012 05:03:57 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35993 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjM4K-0008ER-2x for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:03:56 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:35368) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjM4F-0008EI-KM for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:03:52 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjM4D-0003a5-Sh for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:03:51 -0400 Original-Received: from mout.perfora.net ([74.208.4.195]:61599) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjM4D-0003Zc-Ld for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:03:49 -0400 Original-Received: from dellap.mousecar.net (dsl093-011-016.cle1.dsl.speakeasy.net [66.93.11.16]) by mrelay.perfora.net (node=mrus3) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0M5uHB-1RuiS00Hu5-00xwGs; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:03:47 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:10.0.4) Gecko/20120424 Thunderbird/10.0.4 In-Reply-To: <8262af46dv.fsf@gmail.com> X-Provags-ID: V02:K0:Om8rLLoj16yx2zi1inx+KmoiH1QXDhmqW02xWqxK264 eWRHsFIOO3zajsMJ2L1R1KAUBjBBm/IujaTvIbCzQcE9YT6zwX 2HxwkM02+iHUNTxToZ7dwe8IsblXCCh5A3rj/QGz4wD8swVFjI +WupIXD1CbFTKIvliysS8DnLNXMeRh8bJfbmZcnV396QlSEsIM CrrFrpKMmj7T0/9PqymCK/lfF8PVJyBqskOeRXllcxCOco6XxC f16z5Qu/Sv7q8gtkL8mB6zpobP+0mxPWitHD28XmW/CKcNGeTa qEF/j7WLb/+FaYKf+iJA+ef+bm+ulhSDg4hsAXey/AmuQSZfsY LKgjFOnfbkI98Z2nMWc2hAaLCA5HY2YqxO+yOmyWd X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 74.208.4.195 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:85472 Archived-At: On 06/25/2012 02:02 PM Sivaram Neelakantan wrote: > On Sun, Jun 24 2012,ken wrote: > > > [snipped 37 lines] > >> 5. Make the elisp documentation and tutorials so easy and fun to learn >> that tons of people actually want to write code. >> > > That'll be the day! :-) > > > > > sivaram Sivaram, People familiar with C say it's a difficult language. But I guess they never tried it. You can pick up a book on it and if you give it a little bit of time every day, you can learn enough in a week to write interesting and working programs. And it's fun. Shell programming like bash and ksh are easy and fun too. C++ too, but to a lesser degree. But elisp.... I tried repeatedly over more than ten years to learn it, bought and read a couple books on it, did some tutorials, of course spent a lot of time in the docs, but it wasn't until just a few years ago (and with a lot of help from this list) that I was able to write my first elisp program. I started a second one last year and I'm still plodding really slow through it (but not often). It takes so long to get things to work that I'm discouraged from spending time on it. Half the time I'm trying to figure out the code and moan to myself that, if I could write this function in C, I would have had it written in one-tenth the time... or less. Then, after I've written some working elisp code and look at, I see it's not that difficult. So how is it that it took so long to figure out? Maybe, if I live to be three hundred, I'll write an elisp book myself.