Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question?

[Rjjd <rjjd@tds.net>]

I started using Barry Scott's emacs at DEC sometime around 1985 (I can't 
remember which year!).  The first sentence in its manual began "You are 
about to read about emacs, ...".  It sounds like a warning.  You expect 
the next clause to be "and you'll never be the same again", but I think 
it was something like "the ultimate editor" or "the world's most 
powerful editor".  (Does anyone recall?)

In 1995, I started using gnu emacs, doing C programming on Unix, with 
what seem today the primitive facilities of etags, compile, and gud/gdb. 
  Also rmail, which at the time couldn't handle attachments.  While 
working for a defense company (bleah) for a few months last year, doing 
C++ programming, I started setting up ecb.  The IDE tools orbiting emacs 
are not all that well integrated, but they are truly ingenious. 
(Programmers need the editing/interfacing tools of emacs, and the 
integration of Visual Studio.)

This group is invaluable, and I am grateful to its contributors, who 
evidently have a lot of free time...

Regards,
Bob


William Case wrote:
> Hi;
> 
> What are all you people doing with emacs ?
> 
> I took an early retirement and now spend most of my time in a nicely
> fixed up den or office in the basement, on my computer using Fedora Core
> 6.  I am learning and exploring computers more and more every day.  I
> love it; I have come to firmly believe computers should be for the older
> and not the young.
> 
> The point of my question is I use emacs to write an occasional bash
> script or a small C program.  I screw around with beginners level lisp
> and watch things not work.  But as I read the posts on the mailing list
> it is obvious emacs is being used for much much more.  Sometimes it
> seems it has replaced the Gnome or KDE desktop.  Outside of programming,
> I am having trouble imagining why people would use it.  Do you use it
> full screen all the time; only in a terminal or a virtual terminal?  Is
> it the only program you have running at start up with everything else
> being done by command line?  
> 
> I ask here because none of my friends have any idea what I am talking
> about.
> 
> This is a casual chatty question not to be taken too seriously, but if
> some of you are taking a break from your real work, I would be really
> interested in knowing just what people really do with it.  Emacs I mean.
>