Emacs is the 100-year editor.

Roland Rau

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Mar 6, 2006, 4:38:27 AM3/6/06

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Dear all,

maybe some of you have seen this "Tour de Babel" article (I discovered
it via reddit.com):
http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html

Since the author appears to be slightly in favor of emacs, I thought it
is okay to post this link.
Some quotes in this article are (although it is a blog-entry about
programming languages in general):
- Emacs is the 100-year editor.
- Emacs has the Quality Without a Name.
- All of the greatest engineers in the world use Emacs. The
world-changer types. Not the great gal in the cube next to you. Not
Fred, the amazing guy down the hall. I'm talking about the greatest
software developers of our profession, the ones who changed the face of
the industry. The James Goslings, the Larry Walls, the Paul Grahams, the
Jamie Zawinskis, the Eric Bensons. Real engineers use Emacs.

Best,
Roland

P.S. Unfortunately there is not much traffic in this newsgroup. Would be
nice to read some funny/interesting messages here on a more regular basis.

Per Abrahamsen

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Mar 6, 2006, 10:14:53 AM3/6/06

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> - All of the greatest engineers in the world use Emacs. The
> world-changer types. Not the great gal in the cube next to you. Not
> Fred, the amazing guy down the hall. I'm talking about the greatest
> software developers of our profession, the ones who changed the face of
> the industry. The James Goslings, the Larry Walls, the Paul Grahams, the
> Jamie Zawinskis, the Eric Bensons. Real engineers use Emacs.

Larry Wall doesn't use Emacs < http://www.wall.org/~larry/ungeek.html >

David Kastrup

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Mar 6, 2006, 3:48:28 PM3/6/06

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Roland Rau <roland...@gmx.de> writes:

> I'm talking about the greatest software developers of our
> profession, the ones who changed the face of the industry. The
> James Goslings, the Larry Walls, the Paul Grahams, the Jamie
> Zawinskis, the Eric Bensons. Real engineers use Emacs.

Uh, James Gosling is infamous in Emacs history for teaching RMS the
hard lesson "don't trust people without a license". Jamie Zawinski is
infamous in Emacs history for teaching RMS the lesson "don't trust
people without a copyright assignment".

It's like considering Paul an icon of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
fulfiller of Jewish law. Oh, wait...

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Per Abrahamsen

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Mar 7, 2006, 1:23:05 AM3/7/06

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David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> writes:

> Jamie Zawinski is infamous in Emacs history for teaching RMS the
> lesson "don't trust people without a copyright assignment".

Eh, Jamie had, like all the Lucid people, a copyright assignment.

The problem was Ben Wing and his work for Sun.

The lesson of Jamie would be "don't trust people who has a bigger ego
than yourself", but I believe working with ESR would already have
taught RMS that.

David Kastrup

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Mar 9, 2006, 7:23:23 AM3/9/06

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Per Abrahamsen <abr...@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Jamie Zawinski is infamous in Emacs history for teaching RMS the
>> lesson "don't trust people without a copyright assignment".
>
> Eh, Jamie had, like all the Lucid people, a copyright assignment.

And the moral in that would be "don't trust David when he shoots off
about what he does not know too much about".

> The problem was Ben Wing and his work for Sun.
>
> The lesson of Jamie would be "don't trust people who has a bigger ego
> than yourself", but I believe working with ESR would already have
> taught RMS that.

Beyond a certain size, comparisons appear a bit pointless.