Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

Filipp Gunbin <fgunbin@fastmail.fm> writes:

> Macros can be viewed as an Emacs-specific way of
> writing programs - by using the benefits of an
> interactive editor.

Macros are even in the *name* of Emacs so they would
seem essential. That christening was a long time ago,
of course.

There are macros in many other tools. Perhaps they are
not editable. Probably the whole thing is not as
refined as in Emacs.

> Resulting code is not that editable, but in my
> practice I didn't usually have to edit that code,
> when it's easier just to re-record a similar macros,
> if needed.

So you don't write code - you write macros to write
the code for you. Now we have ventured far beyond my
horizon. It would be interesting to see you in action.

>> When you have done something with Elisp, you can
>> save that for future use. What it is is clearly
>> defined and easy to read and edit. Not only that,
>> if it is modular, as it should, you can use it for
>> other, unexpected things in the future.
>
> Why then use awk when you always can write
> equivalent program in C?

Answer: because awk is a shell tool which comes with
features and interfaces to fit that particular
habitate, while C is a general-purpose programming
langauge with which you can create any tool,
including awk.

This is awk:

    get-group () { awk '{print $5}' < /proc/$1/stat }

and this is C:

    $ apt-get source gawk

:)

No, I'm not saying you should always use this instead
of that, and in particular you seem to have a style
which is completely based on macros so to you I'm not
saying anything.

Some boxers are boxers, some are punchers on the
outside, while some are body punchers on the inside;
some are brawlers, or even southpaw counter-punchers
that moves forward! Because there are world champions
representing every and each of those styles, plus many
that I haven't mentioned, plus a fewsome from
categories I don't even know about, this all tells me
there is not any one style that is better than all
other. The important thing is to have a style.
When you have it, keep refining it, every day.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573