Re: Cool and Useful LISP for the .emacs file

[Burton Samograd <kruhft@hotmail.com>]

Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> writes:
> Alan Mackenzie<none@example.invalid> writes:
>> All due respect, and everything, but the above is incoherent nonsense.
>> "Worse is better"?  What's that supposed to mean?
>
> It's an expression coined by Richard P. Gabriel (a Lisp hacker) while
> trying to explain why C and Unix became so popular even though they
> (in his view) were technically inferior to The Right Thing, i.e. Lisp.
>
> See
>
>     <http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html>
>
> for more details.

Thanks for the clarification; I thought that paper was more widely
known.  Although the wording of the sentance is a bit inflammitory
without reference, I happen to find that it's closer to the way the
world works than being technically perfect (better translated as
academic).  In the end I'm still using a "worse" UNIX based OS, while
the LISP machines have faded into history (although many of the ideas
still live on inside of emacs).

-- 
burton samograd
http://kruhftwerk.dyndns.org