Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?"

[Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, July 31, 2013 2:49:15 AM UTC+5:30, Barry Margolin wrote:
> I think that almost anything that tells the computer to perform a set of 
> operations can be considered programming. Some programs are more complex 
> than others, and some programmers have more skills and know how to make 
> the computer jump through more hoops.

I think that computer science is impoverished by the penchants of academic computer scientists.

Analogy: Say I am a physicist and since E = mc2 therefore mass is just energy and therefore we dont need to study mechanics/statics etc.  Just heat light electricity etc is enough.  I dare say this would create a skewed view of physics and create impoverished physicists out of students who came under such a regimen.

In the same vein CSists emphasise algorithms too much over data.
From the typical academic viewpoint: Elisp is just a lisp with some additional features suitable for editor-writing.
From a data viewpoint: Elisp is more different from vanilla lisp than lisp is from C, given its primitive data-structures like buffer, window etc.
Anyone who knows the goings-on of the typical academic setup will know that the first view has more traction there than the second.
And thence follows the reduced respectability of VB, Cobol, sql, spreadsheets as compared to 'serious' languages like C/C++.

Some more of the foibles of us academics in my blog-post and the followup:
http://blog.languager.org/2011/02/cs-education-is-fat-and-weak-1.html

> It's like many other skills. If someone only knows how to play 
> "Chopsticks" on the piano, they're still making music. They're not going 
> to get hired as a professional musician, though.

Heh! In that category myself. My friends and colleagues think I am a musician.
But for me it remains ever a black art how real musicians can take a random tune and add a left-hand in real-time.