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

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

Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> writes:

>>  Yes, a struct is just a memory pattern. You are saying, a Lisp
>> list isn't - is it moving around in memory, is it fragmented, or
>> is allocation made dynamically based on the elements? Is that
>> the difference? With pointers, isn't that what you get in C?
>> Please explain.
>
> Well... I dont know if this is the best forum for these
> discussions :-)
>
> In short: A language becomes more powerful when it has less...
>
> Think of registers and interrupts disappearing from assembly to C,
> making C better than assembly in 95% use-cases.  Now if you were
> an assembly programmer, you would pooh-pooh a C (like) language:
> "How can having less make it a better language?"
>
> It makes it better because one's thoughts have more clarity.
>
> You may remember the quote from Bruce Lee: I am not afraid of the
> man who knows 10 thousand kicks. I am afraid of the man who has
> practiced one kick 10 thousand times.  Likewise in programming,
> doing few things well gets you further than doing many things
> sub-optimally.
>
> And so assignment disappearing from C to haskell makes haskell
> programmers able to have better thoughts [Well they say 100% of
> the time; I say 80% of the time ;-) ]
>
> I could go on eg why lisp can be C-like or haskell-like depending
> on how you use it etc etc.  Or answering
>
>> Are you saying: C doesn't have hash tables, search trees, etc.,
>> you have to make them yourself with data types and pointers, and
>> put them into structs, and then have the algorithm traverse
>> them, and all this you do manually, with no support from the
>> language?
>
> However as I said this is getting too too OT for this group.
>
> If you want we can continue off-list.  Do read my blog though
> http://blog.languager.org/ in case you find may my ideas painful
> to your delicate digestion :-)

OK, the international press is content with that answer.

-- 
Emanuel Berg - programmer (hire me! CV below)
computer projects: http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
internet activity: http://home.student.uu.se/embe8573