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: In defense of Customize [was: Trying to right-align my window on startup] Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 21:39:03 +0100 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: <87fvo351j3.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> References: <3cec217d-8adb-4e6c-b239-eff0c8b520c9@googlegroups.com> <6hrwqhkjfv6.fsf@sap.com> <6hr38k5rd3n.fsf@sap.com> <87k3dhwbql.fsf@nl106-137-194.student.uu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1391200814 12670 80.91.229.3 (31 Jan 2014 20:40:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 20:40:14 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jan 31 21:40:23 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 1W9Ksw-00014x-7B for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 31 Jan 2014 21:40:22 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57953 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W9Ksv-0002dP-RP for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:40:21 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.kjsl.com!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!zen.net.uk!dedekind.zen.co.uk!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 48 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: VVbyYd/iFZoeWNmD9i++cQ.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:G4PorUzfBR6QTrepIUm19JFSigk= Mail-Copies-To: never Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:203577 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:95846 Archived-At: phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk (Phillip Lord) writes: > You can argue that this is true of everything beyond > the lambda calculus. It's not that useful an argument > though. > > Haskell was designed to show what you could do with a > lazy functional language, and it does that well. It > is the case that you can do things in this > environment that are not possible in other > languages. Whether these are worth the constraints or > not is a different issue. Yeah, only those paradigms are general ways to describe general things (perhaps Haskell is a bad example, as it is a straight-arrow realization of an idea, or even ideal) - nonetheless, some persons say C is for "the computer elite, that writes Unix" (and its software). So what to use instead? Pascal - that will get you structured. Smalltalk and/or C++ - to get modular, well-partitioned software, that is easy (supposedly) to debug. Or the functional languages, be it Haskell, Erlang, or Common Lisp, with no side-effects, recursion, and set functions, so that the order of execution wont matter so you get concurrent software, with short "how-not-what" code. There might be some truth to all that in the sense that it is helpful to think about, and practice, but one thing is not better than the other (especially not speaking generally) and for 98% of all situations it comes down to the problem, and the person solving the problems, and the tools (rather than "paradigmatic" methods) that [s]he uses. So in this case, instead of discussing what can't be done, whatever problem we have should be specified and then I'm confident there are numerous people who can solve it, using methods from a wide range of fields. I don't use customize (though I don't think it is bad, it is actually good given its scope and ungrateful task), and I have actually no idea how Joe Emacs user fares with setting settings, so someone else has to specify what the exact problem is. -- underground experts united: http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573