From: pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: what is the important uses of emacs lisp?
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:23:30 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87iqttc06l.fsf@hubble.informatimago.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 86tzdeynug.fsf@timbral.net
Evans Winner <thorne@timbral.net> writes:
> Michael Ekstrand <michael@elehack.net> writes:
>
> Now, to attempt to answer your question: everything.
> Emacs Lisp is used for extending, customizing, and
> implementing Emacs. Most of Emacs itself is written in
> Emacs Lisp. Emacs users use Emacs Lisp to customize
> their Emacs (setting variables and writing functions in
> their .emacs file, typically) and add new features to
> it. Software developers use Emacs Lisp to write new
> packages adding additional features and capabilities to
> Emacs.
>
> But seriously folks, why, why, oh why is Emacs so rare in
> this regard? I mean, maybe I'm just another Emacs religious
> nut, but I just can't fathom why anyone wants their software
> to be exclusively mouse-driven, rigid, inflexible,
> un-extensible, un-customizable, un-self-documenting, non
> language-based, etc. I really am surprised sometimes that
> the whole lisp machine concept never took off. I mean, I'm
> not really surprised -- after all, originally most people
> who could benefit from PCs knew nothing about them and were
> understandably intimidated and so they welcomed the whole
> point-and-grunt model of machine-human interaction. But
> now? Sheesh. Isn't it time for people to start using
> computers like intelligent civilized humans?
>
> And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse than the
> old Macintosh model of if-it-ain't-got-a-button-
> it-ain't-gonna-happen user interface, now everybody wants to
> write their user interface in some kind of Frankenstein's
> monster of web browser typesetting widgets and ad-hoc
> scripting languages and the result is that while at least
> the data entry people could really get good with keyboarding
> around the green screen crud screens once upon a time, now
> even the best of them is reduced to the data throughput
> level of a three year old[1].
>
> At least that's how it seems to me.
>
> I'm on a bit of a rampage of late because I just took a new
> sysadmin job and found that the IT department policies are
> so absurdly strict that I can't even install my choice of
> text editors on the PC there. There is a short (very short)
> list of allowed software (almost all of it proprietary, of
> course) and I'm just stuck with it. There I am running a
> million-dollar system running (nee) OS/400 and on the front
> end I'm stuck with Windows and notepad.exe. Point...
> grunt... point... grunt.
If you can have a program such as putty.exe authorized, that'd be an
escape route. Even without putty.exe, IIRC, telnet.exe comes standard
with MS-Windows. Otherwise, there are ssh-enabled java terminal
emulators running in web browsers... http://www.javassh.org/
> I'm so extremely sorry to have wasted everyone's time with
> all this ranting... though evidently not sorry enough to
> rethink sending it.
That's ok, to share the feeling. ;-)
> Anyway, long live Emacs lisp.
>
> Footnotes:
> [1] Not that I have anything against the mouse or GUIs; on
> the contrary I think they can be very useful. I just don't
> think they are a good substitute for those things... for
> which they are not a good substitute... like, er, most user
> input, for instance.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
"I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth
contest. They will not concern us again."
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2008-08-22 1:23 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <mailman.17236.1219325516.18990.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2008-08-21 14:14 ` what is the important uses of emacs lisp? Michael Ekstrand
[not found] ` <mailman.17242.1219328080.18990.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2008-08-21 23:01 ` Evans Winner
2008-08-22 1:23 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon [this message]
2008-08-22 3:15 ` stan
2008-08-22 13:06 ` Ken Goldman
2008-08-23 12:05 ` Glauber Alex Dias Prado
2008-08-23 13:53 ` Drew Adams
2008-08-23 16:32 ` stan
2008-09-11 17:53 ` Oleksandr Gavenko
2008-08-21 13:31 xiaopeng hu
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=87iqttc06l.fsf@hubble.informatimago.com \
--to=pjb@informatimago.com \
--cc=help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).