Re: Emacs C tutorial

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

E Sabof <esabof@gmail.com> writes:

> It is good material, but I was thinking of something
> more practical.

The thing is, C isn't very practical. :)

C is great as a system language. It is very low-level
(at least nowadays one would say), very fast, very
straightforward... And this role, it has in Emacs as
well!

You should use C for stuff that will be implemented
once and then seldom if ever touched. It is not for
interactive trial-and-error fine-tuning.

Lisp on the other hand is highly interactive, not at
all kernel-like and "you should never notice it"
bu-hoo arms down. In a way, Lisp is much more playful
and alive. And that's why it is much closer to the
user and why so many users, eh, use it!

So for users to improve Emacs by means of its C is
like burning down the house to kill the rats. Not to
mention, in practice that would be very unpleasant,
having to recompile for every tiny change. For this
reason alone, if I were to use C for each change and
extention to the Emacs UX, that would make me not do
it...

-- 
underground experts united