From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Emanuel Berg Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: editor and word processor history Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 02:07:51 +0200 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: <87ha45tru0.fsf@debian.uxu> References: <8738fsatxy.fsf@debian.uxu> <87wqd37vwu.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1401581423 28091 80.91.229.3 (1 Jun 2014 00:10:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2014 00:10:23 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Jun 01 02:10:19 2014 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 1WqtLu-0007Tw-H0 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 01 Jun 2014 02:10:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33302 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WqtLt-0000Ey-PB for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 31 May 2014 20:10:17 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsgate.cistron.nl!newsgate.news.xs4all.nl!194.109.133.86.MISMATCH!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed3a.news.xs4all.nl!xs4all!news.stack.nl!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 75 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: SIvZRMPqRkkTHAHL6NkRuw.user.speranza.aioe.org Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:0rsTgZVgP43yT8GZ/NJScDQW1OY= Mail-Copies-To: never Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:205723 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:97993 Archived-At: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" writes: > You can always use simulators: > > http://www.masswerk.at/google60/ > > Otherwise, it wouldn't be too hard to configure emacs > to reproduce the feel and constraints of software > development in the 60s or 70s. > > M-x caps-mode RET M-x computer-paper RET > (https://gitorious.org/com-informatimago/emacs/source/master:pjb-computer-paper.el) I'll save those links and if I ever get the people I'm associated with right now to publish a magazine, I'll write an article on this topic, trying that stuff out. The attraction of the past is of course that then only (or almost so) computer people used computers. Then along came the masses which of course is a good thing (well, it's complicated). What surprises me so much though is that computer work still is so focused on technology - then, it made sense, a necessity even, but now? As an illustration, during my 5-6 years of extremely focused hacking I never felt the need for a single program that didn't already exist in I don't know how many flavours. I had to change a lot of things a lot, every day actually, but never an entire program. Still, when I talk to people, it is always, we are doing a new application, a new programming language, a new cloud-based service... I don't understand that. What's going on? And, even though there were programmers in the 60s and 70s, in absolute figures, aren't there one zillion more today? So there is something wrong with the picture which I don't get. Anyway, speaking of computers, the 60s, and chess, I was sent the following interesting review of the documentary (?) "Computer Chess": As an inveterate computer chess aficionado for many years dating back to Sargon II on my Apple II+ and carried up to the present-day domination of chess programs Houdini, Komodo and Stockfish (not joking, non-computer chess people), I can certainly appreciate many little details in this film [...] that might pass unnoticed. Captured is the weird mix of collegiality, rivalry and paranoia that has always been endemic to the hobby, represented in this film by a collection of marginal characters, deranged charlatans, academic uber-geeks and scruffy pot-smoking counterculture types in a Holiday Inn sometime in the 1979-1982 period. Especially laudatory is the film`s authenticity with respect to the tournament scenes: you see glimpses of awkward board positions that could only have been produced by primitive chess programs of that era, and the still-operational hardware of the period dug up for these scenes is simply fabulous. Likewise we can enjoy the preposterous grooming and clothing of the post-disco era, captured en passant with pitiless candor. Juxtaposed against the participants of this computer tournament are a motley collection of encounter group' New Agers occupying the hotel at the same time; they serve to put the chess geeks into perspective and produce a number of very funny interactions. Another reviewer notes that this film is Felliniesque: that is precisely correct, and an apt approach to the whole idea of computer age pioneers hauling now-archaic hardware hundreds of miles to play in a computer chess tournament in some cheap hotel. (NH aka 'Cato the Younger' in computer chess circles.) -- underground experts united: http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573