From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Ludwig, Mark" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: RE: Issues with emacs (was Emacs users a dying breed?) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:23:19 +0000 Message-ID: References: <87bokbb4zw.fsf@gnu.org> <87a9ztndnj.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1340652231 26256 80.91.229.3 (25 Jun 2012 19:23:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:23:51 +0000 (UTC) To: Eric Abrahamsen , "help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org" Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jun 25 21:23:50 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 1SjEt4-0008Ok-3M for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:23:50 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35165 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjEt3-0008KM-RT for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:23:49 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:56772) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjEsy-0008K9-Ja for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:23:45 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjEsw-0005NR-Gp for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:23:44 -0400 Original-Received: from usslmhub002.ugs.com ([134.244.32.85]:19906 helo=ugs.com) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SjEsw-0005Mi-Av for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:23:42 -0400 Original-Received: from USSLMMBX002.net.plm.eds.com (161.134.138.62) by USSLMHUB002.net.plm.eds.com (134.244.32.85) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 14.1.323.3; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:23:20 -0500 Original-Received: from USSLMMBX003.net.plm.eds.com ([169.254.2.245]) by USSLMMBX002.net.plm.eds.com ([169.254.1.240]) with mapi id 14.01.0323.003; Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:23:19 -0500 Thread-Topic: Issues with emacs (was Emacs users a dying breed?) Thread-Index: AQHNUXtWNsslG9aMLUWXTSxPpTuIA5cJWNWmgAIQeCA= In-Reply-To: <87a9ztndnj.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [146.122.71.14] X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Windows 2000 SP2+, XP SP1+ (seldom 98) X-Received-From: 134.244.32.85 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:85461 Archived-At: > From: Eric Abrahamsen > Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 6:38 AM > To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org > Subject: Re: Issues with emacs (was Emacs users a dying breed?) >=20 > On Sun, Jun 24 2012, Tom wrote: >=20 > > Bastien gnu.org> writes: > > > >> > >> The good news is that, whether Emacs users are a dying breed > >> or not, the only remedy to this hypothetical issue is to have > >> more Emacs developers. > >> > > > > But how to have more developers. I see 3 possibilites: > > > > 1. Motivate more users to be volunteer developers? Any idea how > > to do that? >=20 > One possibility: if a pure-Lisp implementation of Emacs became the > "main" implementation, I wonder if many Elisp-gurus who aren't > particularly enthusiastic about C programming would be encouraged to > expand their hacking into the Emacs basics. >=20 > If the line between programming Emacs packages and programming Emacs > guts were blurred or erased altogether, I'll bet you'd get a lot more > people able and willing to contribute work on fundamentals like the > display engine or multi-threading. Perhaps in the abstract this is a good idea, but it's not at all clear to m= e that you want a bigger crowd of people working on either of those two are= as, in particular. They're very tender areas, and it's likely that a worke= r needs a lot of context in order to successfully modify these things. Lea= rning the context takes time and I believe our do-everything-faster culture= does not particularly reward the slow learning processes necessary in orde= r to learn complex programming contexts such as these. Some of the context= comes from bug reports. (IMHO, in general, far too many people attempt to write or modify multi-thr= eading code than are actually competent to do so. The hardware and softwar= e complexities involved in getting robust memory ordering across processors= with good performance are simply beyond the average programmer....) Cheers, Mark Ob.Help:=20