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digitalmars.D - Interesting language comparison article

reply "Walter Bright" <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:
http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html
Mar 12 2006
next sibling parent Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html 
 
 



 I loved C++ in college, because it's all I knew. When I heard that my
 languages prof, Craig Chambers, absolutely detested C++, I thought:
 "Why? I like it just fine."



Just like me!!
I used to love C++, because it was all I knew! When I heard my prof (who 
also goes by the first name Craig) say it's the worst language he'd 
used, I thought to myself, "Why? it's a great language!"
Now I hate C++!


C++ is the dumbest language on earth


so true!
Mar 12 2006
prev sibling next sibling parent John Demme <me teqdruid.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:


 http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html


Has anyone told him about D yet?
Mar 13 2006
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Tom <Tom_member pathlink.com> writes:
In article <dv2gj0$169t$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...

http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html 


I think it's wiser to use just a subset of C++ features (the good and useful
ones)  than to make fun of or utter than you hate the language. I do also
dislike very C++ things and also hate other languages (as Perl for example). But
I know they could be useful if wisely used. In the same way I actually love D, I
do also miss features that it lacks (e.g. constness) and not because of that I
stand against it. IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
the author doesn't like than anything else.

Tom;
Mar 13 2006
parent reply Charles <noone nowhere.com> writes:
 IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
 the author doesn't like than anything else.


Yes, but alot of his rants ring true for me.  Like whitespace and python 
, any language that makes whitespace meaningful is hard to take seriously.


 All of the greatest engineers in the world use Emacs


So true :).



 Emacs has the Quality Without a Name.


I think D shares this Quality.


Charlie

Tom wrote:

 In article <dv2gj0$169t$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
 

http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html 


 
 
 I think it's wiser to use just a subset of C++ features (the good and useful
 ones)  than to make fun of or utter than you hate the language. I do also
 dislike very C++ things and also hate other languages (as Perl for example).
But
 I know they could be useful if wisely used. In the same way I actually love D,
I
 do also miss features that it lacks (e.g. constness) and not because of that I
 stand against it. IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
 the author doesn't like than anything else.
 
 Tom;
Mar 13 2006
next sibling parent Ben Phillips <Ben_member pathlink.com> writes:
In article <4415EF50.7010101 nowhere.com>, Charles says...

 IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
 the author doesn't like than anything else.


Yes, but alot of his rants ring true for me.  Like whitespace and python 
, any language that makes whitespace meaningful is hard to take seriously.


Theres nothing wrong with the indentation (imo), its the required newline
problem that kills Python for me.
Mar 13 2006
prev sibling parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Charles wrote:

  > IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
  > the author doesn't like than anything else.
 
 Yes, but alot of his rants ring true for me.  Like whitespace and python 
 , any language that makes whitespace meaningful is hard to take seriously.


That's a completely irrational argument.


 

 All of the greatest engineers in the world use Emacs


 
 So true :).
 


I think emacs is stupid. :)
Mar 13 2006
next sibling parent Kyle Furlong <kylefurlong gmail.com> writes:
Hasan Aljudy wrote:

 Charles wrote:

  > IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
  > the author doesn't like than anything else.

 Yes, but alot of his rants ring true for me.  Like whitespace and 
 python , any language that makes whitespace meaningful is hard to take 
 seriously.


 
 That's a completely irrational argument.
 

 All of the greatest engineers in the world use Emacs


 So true :).


 
 I think emacs is stupid. :)


Have you ever seen an experienced emacs user work? o_0
Mar 13 2006
prev sibling parent reply J C Calvarese <technocrat7 gmail.com> writes:
In article <dv4uo9$1337$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Hasan Aljudy says...

Charles wrote:

  > IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
  > the author doesn't like than anything else.
 
 Yes, but alot of his rants ring true for me.  Like whitespace and python 
 , any language that makes whitespace meaningful is hard to take seriously.


That's a completely irrational argument.


I disagree. Python will complain about invisible errors due to its reverence for
whitespace.

I wasted a ridiculous amount of time before I figured out that Python wouldn't
compile my program because it saw a difference between a tab and the equivalent
number of spaces. Now I know what I did was wrong, but a tab and several spaces
still look identical on my screen. IMHO Python would be better if it used
something visible (such of {}, begin/end, etc.).

jcc7
Mar 14 2006
parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
J C Calvarese wrote:

 In article <dv4uo9$1337$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Hasan Aljudy says...
 

Charles wrote:


 IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
 the author doesn't like than anything else.


Yes, but alot of his rants ring true for me.  Like whitespace and python 
, any language that makes whitespace meaningful is hard to take seriously.


That's a completely irrational argument.


 
 
 I disagree. Python will complain about invisible errors due to its reverence
for
 whitespace.
 
 I wasted a ridiculous amount of time before I figured out that Python wouldn't
 compile my program because it saw a difference between a tab and the equivalent
 number of spaces. Now I know what I did was wrong, but a tab and several spaces
 still look identical on my screen. IMHO Python would be better if it used
 something visible (such of {}, begin/end, etc.).
 
 jcc7


Good point.
I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from 
all computer systems in the world!! :P
The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a 
separate character!!
Mar 14 2006
next sibling parent reply "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:dv83h7$1op3$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Good point.
 I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from all 
 computer systems in the world!! :P
 The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a 
 separate character!!


I take personal offense at that.

;)

I will use hard tabs till the day I die.  You will have to pry my tab key 
from my cold, dead hands.
Mar 14 2006
next sibling parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:dv83h7$1op3$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 

Good point.
I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from all 
computer systems in the world!! :P
The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a 
separate character!!


 
 
 I take personal offense at that.
 
 ;)
 
 I will use hard tabs till the day I die.  You will have to pry my tab key 
 from my cold, dead hands. 
 
 


:P

Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the 
"so called" tab character!!
Mar 14 2006
parent reply "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:dv84il$1q3l$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the 
 "so called" tab character!!


I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on 
nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much 
quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about 
spaces?
Mar 14 2006
next sibling parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:dv84il$1q3l$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 

Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the 
"so called" tab character!!


 
 
 I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on 
 nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much 
 quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about 
 spaces? 
 
 


Tabs are a bit inconsistent.

They are, as you say, a bit costumizable, but the result is that they're 
also not "portable"!
They aren't reliable for text layout. When you write a piece of code 
that uses tabs and try to insert it in forums (I mean real forums, not 
NGs), they won't always look like what you expect.

Plus the python problem mentioned above!

I think "tabbing" is a kind of a high level concept, shouldn't be 
implemented in ascii. Just like "bold", "italics", and "underline" 
aren't implemented in ascii.
Mar 14 2006
parent reply "Unknown W. Brackets" <unknown simplemachines.org> writes:
That's only because they are used inconsistently.  The general rule is 
that tabs should never be used after a non-tab character on a line. 
Bam, instant portability and everyone gets their own tab size.

It's the crazies that try to indent equal signs with tabs that give hard 
tabs a bad name.  That should be spaces because you're lining up 
characters, not indenting.

Plus I like my files slightly smaller.  I checked once, and at 4 spaces 
to a tab I save a surprising amount of space.  This is probably because 
I'm a prude about one statement per line and such.

As for forums, being that I wrote forum software previously, I can tell 
you with some assurity that this is only caused by using crappy forum 
software.  The software I was involved with supported tabs just fine, 
and I used them in the code examples I posted with it.

Tabbing is elementary.  I don't bold parts of my code.  No one complains 
about language Z requiring thing X to be italic.

-[Unknown]



 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:dv84il$1q3l$1 digitaldaemon.com...


 Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for 
 the "so called" tab character!!



 I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines 
 up on nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, 
 and it's much quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  
 What's so great about spaces?


 
 Tabs are a bit inconsistent.
 
 They are, as you say, a bit costumizable, but the result is that they're 
 also not "portable"!
 They aren't reliable for text layout. When you write a piece of code 
 that uses tabs and try to insert it in forums (I mean real forums, not 
 NGs), they won't always look like what you expect.
 
 Plus the python problem mentioned above!
 
 I think "tabbing" is a kind of a high level concept, shouldn't be 
 implemented in ascii. Just like "bold", "italics", and "underline" 
 aren't implemented in ascii.
Mar 14 2006
parent reply Don Clugston <dac nospam.com.au> writes:
Unknown W. Brackets wrote:

 That's only because they are used inconsistently.  The general rule is 
 that tabs should never be used after a non-tab character on a line. Bam, 
 instant portability and everyone gets their own tab size.


That's a good rule, but you also need to make sure that lines with tab 
indentation aren't being mixed with lines with space indentation. Most 
editors don't enforce this, but it ought to be solvable. The problem 
with tabs might simply be that so many text editors don't handle them 
correctly.
Mar 15 2006
parent reply "Unknown W. Brackets" <unknown simplemachines.org> writes:
Ah, yes, that's a good point as well.  I'm very careful to only use 
reasonable-quality editors, such as Visual Studio (which actually 
auto-corrects this issue and clears lines that are just whitespace if 
you don't type anything on them.)

And, another point about tabs is that it makes it a lot easier to 
navigate code with the carrot.  I always assume people who hate hard 
tabs must not like arrow keys or something....

-[Unknown]



 Unknown W. Brackets wrote:

 That's only because they are used inconsistently.  The general rule is 
 that tabs should never be used after a non-tab character on a line. 
 Bam, instant portability and everyone gets their own tab size.


 
 That's a good rule, but you also need to make sure that lines with tab 
 indentation aren't being mixed with lines with space indentation. Most 
 editors don't enforce this, but it ought to be solvable. The problem 
 with tabs might simply be that so many text editors don't handle them 
 correctly.
Mar 15 2006
parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Unknown W. Brackets wrote:

 Ah, yes, that's a good point as well.  I'm very careful to only use 
 reasonable-quality editors, such as Visual Studio (which actually 
 auto-corrects this issue and clears lines that are just whitespace if 
 you don't type anything on them.)


This is why I said it's kind of a high level concept. Too many 
complicated tasks to take care of.
The low cohesion principle says that hard-wired tab character should be 
removed because putting it in ascii code makes things way too 
complicated, when they should be very simple!

Tabs are not elementary; spaces are.


 
 And, another point about tabs is that it makes it a lot easier to 
 navigate code with the carrot.  I always assume people who hate hard 
 tabs must not like arrow keys or something....


You know .. I wasn't there (where "there" refers to the whole computer 
scene) before mice & guis.
I generally think that arrow keys are not the way to go for browsing 
text. Just use a mouse!


 
 -[Unknown]
 
 

 Unknown W. Brackets wrote:


 That's only because they are used inconsistently.  The general rule 
 is that tabs should never be used after a non-tab character on a 
 line. Bam, instant portability and everyone gets their own tab size.



 That's a good rule, but you also need to make sure that lines with tab 
 indentation aren't being mixed with lines with space indentation. Most 
 editors don't enforce this, but it ought to be solvable. The problem 
 with tabs might simply be that so many text editors don't handle them 
 correctly.
Mar 15 2006
parent reply "Unknown W. Brackets" <unknown simplemachines.org> writes:
How in the world can you write code efficiently with a mouse?  If I had 
to use my mouse with any sort of frequency, it would probably halve my 
efficiency right there.  Then again, I've gotten comments about my speed 
before.

I did a lot of programming in DOS.  It's all about knowing your 
keyboard.  I don't even have to worry about saving anymore, it's a 
knee-jerk reaction - I just hit Alt-F-S every then and again like some 
people breathe.  Do you use your mouse for that too?

And even back then, there were editors that handled tabs well - but none 
that handled italics.  It's not that hard to get right, some people just 
don't try anymore these days.

-[Unknown]



 Unknown W. Brackets wrote:

 Ah, yes, that's a good point as well.  I'm very careful to only use 
 reasonable-quality editors, such as Visual Studio (which actually 
 auto-corrects this issue and clears lines that are just whitespace if 
 you don't type anything on them.)


 
 This is why I said it's kind of a high level concept. Too many 
 complicated tasks to take care of.
 The low cohesion principle says that hard-wired tab character should be 
 removed because putting it in ascii code makes things way too 
 complicated, when they should be very simple!
 
 Tabs are not elementary; spaces are.
 

 And, another point about tabs is that it makes it a lot easier to 
 navigate code with the carrot.  I always assume people who hate hard 
 tabs must not like arrow keys or something....


 
 You know .. I wasn't there (where "there" refers to the whole computer 
 scene) before mice & guis.
 I generally think that arrow keys are not the way to go for browsing 
 text. Just use a mouse!
 

 -[Unknown]



 Unknown W. Brackets wrote:


 That's only because they are used inconsistently.  The general rule 
 is that tabs should never be used after a non-tab character on a 
 line. Bam, instant portability and everyone gets their own tab size.



 That's a good rule, but you also need to make sure that lines with 
 tab indentation aren't being mixed with lines with space indentation. 
 Most editors don't enforce this, but it ought to be solvable. The 
 problem with tabs might simply be that so many text editors don't 
 handle them correctly.
Mar 15 2006
next sibling parent Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Unknown W. Brackets wrote:

 How in the world can you write code efficiently with a mouse?  If I had 
 to use my mouse with any sort of frequency, it would probably halve my 
 efficiency right there.  Then again, I've gotten comments about my speed 
 before.
 
 I did a lot of programming in DOS.  It's all about knowing your 
 keyboard.  I don't even have to worry about saving anymore, it's a 
 knee-jerk reaction - I just hit Alt-F-S every then and again like some 
 people breathe.  Do you use your mouse for that too?
 
 And even back then, there were editors that handled tabs well - but none 
 that handled italics.  It's not that hard to get right, some people just 
 don't try anymore these days.
 
 -[Unknown]


I wasn't talking about coding, but about browing.
I always hit ctrl-s subcounciously, even more, I always hit ctrl-a 
ctrl-c when I post anything on the net.

I was talking about "browsing" code.
If you know your shortcuts, you should also know that ctrl-arrow takes 
you to the next word aotumatically, no matter how many spaces/tabs there 
are. I've seen work in DOS too.
Mar 15 2006
prev sibling parent Oskar Linde <oskar.lindeREM OVEgmail.com> writes:
Unknown W. Brackets skrev:

 How in the world can you write code efficiently with a mouse?  If I had 
 to use my mouse with any sort of frequency, it would probably halve my 
 efficiency right there.  Then again, I've gotten comments about my speed 
 before.


I would agree with you totally had I not watched one particular 
professor coding using only his mouse. Copy-paste, copy-paste,... He was 
incredibly fast. Unbelievable. He only resorted to using his keyboard 
when really necessary, like typing in a new identifier or similar. So, 
you can code efficiently with a mouse. I've seen it. :)

/Oskar
Mar 15 2006
prev sibling next sibling parent Sean Kelly <sean f4.ca> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:dv84il$1q3l$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the 
 "so called" tab character!!


 
 I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on 
 nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much 
 quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about 
 spaces? 


Look at some code that was written with different tab settings from 
yours.  Now have someone else who uses the "tabs to spaces" setting make 
some changes and look at it again.  Things get jumbled enough if people 
only indent standard code lines, but if they're trying to line up 
declarations or functions parameters or whatever as well, this process 
can quickly produce unreadable formatting.


Sean
Mar 14 2006
prev sibling parent Oskar Linde <oskar.lindeREM OVEgmail.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley skrev:

 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:dv84il$1q3l$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Stick to the tab key all you want. I want to kill the ascii code for the 
 "so called" tab character!!


 
 I never understood this whole hard-tab-hating stuff.  Everything lines up on 
 nice neat columns, they can be set to whatever width you want, and it's much 
 quicker to move through them using the arrow keys.  What's so great about 
 spaces? 


I think Emacs is to blame for many of the problems with hard tabs. Emacs 
doesn't use tabs for indentation. It uses spaces. Tabs are used to 
optimize the number of spaces needed. The problem with this is that the 
tab width isn't standardized. (8 used to be more or less the standard, 
but not anymore)

This has some implications. If you use emacs with 3 character 
indentation, (and the default 8 character tab width) you get: (. is 
space, - is tabbed space)

...if (1) {
......if (1) {
--------.if (1) {
--------....if (1) {
--------.......if (1) {
----------------..if (1) {

etc...

(The Phobos and DMD front end sources are an example of using 4 
character indentation and width 8 tabs:

....for (i = 0; i < global.params.objfiles->dim; i++)
....{
--------if (i)
--------....cmdbuf.writeByte('+');

Even when you use the same tab width as indentation width, you get 
problems when lining up lists, like:

void myfunc(int firstArgument,
--------....int secondArgument,
--------....int thirdArgument)

IMO, the best strategy would be to use tabs for indentation and spaces 
for alignment. That way, the code would look good at any tab-size 
setting (adjustable by user preference) and arguments would still line 
up properly.

/Oskar
Mar 15 2006
prev sibling next sibling parent "Unknown W. Brackets" <unknown simplemachines.org> writes:
Same here.

It allows me to work with other developers who have different opinions 
on what size a tab should be.  I can't understand why people hate it so 
much, except that they want things to look exactly like *they* like them.

-[Unknown]



 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:dv83h7$1op3$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Good point.
 I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from all 
 computer systems in the world!! :P
 The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a 
 separate character!!


 
 I take personal offense at that.
 
 ;)
 
 I will use hard tabs till the day I die.  You will have to pry my tab key 
 from my cold, dead hands.
Mar 14 2006
prev sibling parent Fredrik Olsson <peylow gmail.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley skrev:

 "Hasan Aljudy" <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:dv83h7$1op3$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 

Good point.
I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from all 
computer systems in the world!! :P
The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a 
separate character!!


 
 
 I take personal offense at that.
 


And I take offewnse as well! It should be two speces! Four spaces is a 
waste of space.

But then tabs are good. If everyone would use tabs properly, everyone 
could view and edir their code with as huuuuuge of more visually 
pleasing, tab size as they like.

// Fredrik
Mar 16 2006
prev sibling parent reply Charles <noone nowhere.com> writes:
 The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a
 separate character!!


If you were using emacs you could change to that in 1/2 a second :P.

Charlie

Hasan Aljudy wrote:

 J C Calvarese wrote:
 

 In article <dv4uo9$1337$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Hasan Aljudy says...


 Charles wrote:


 IMHO that article is more making fun of languages with which
 the author doesn't like than anything else.


 Yes, but alot of his rants ring true for me.  Like whitespace and 
 python , any language that makes whitespace meaningful is hard to 
 take seriously.



 That's a completely irrational argument.




 I disagree. Python will complain about invisible errors due to its 
 reverence for
 whitespace.

 I wasted a ridiculous amount of time before I figured out that Python 
 wouldn't
 compile my program because it saw a difference between a tab and the 
 equivalent
 number of spaces. Now I know what I did was wrong, but a tab and 
 several spaces
 still look identical on my screen. IMHO Python would be better if it used
 something visible (such of {}, begin/end, etc.).

 jcc7


 
 
 Good point.
 I say the clurpit is the evil tab character, it should be removed from 
 all computer systems in the world!! :P
 The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a 
 separate character!!
Mar 15 2006
parent Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Charles wrote:

  > The "Tab" keyboard button should just be a `macro` for 4 spaces, not a
  > separate character!!
 
 If you were using emacs you could change to that in 1/2 a second :P.
 
 Charlie
 


I know, alot of edtiros have that option, but not all of them, hence the 
inconsistency.
It should be that way *everywhere*.
Mar 15 2006
prev sibling parent reply Sean Kelly <sean f4.ca> writes:
It's an interesting article with some quotable tidbits, but that the 
author ended by praising Ruby with such enthusiasm made me skeptical of 
his earlier claims.  I also thought it was a bit odd that his section on 
Lisp was really a section on Emacs.  About the only conclusion I could 
draw is that "Emacs is awesome and the tool of uber gurus, and Emacs is 
tightly integrated with Lisp, therefore Lisp is uber cool but also only 
for uber-gurus."  And even that's a stretch.


Sean
Mar 14 2006
parent reply Kyle Furlong <kylefurlong gmail.com> writes:
Sean Kelly wrote:

 It's an interesting article with some quotable tidbits, but that the 
 author ended by praising Ruby with such enthusiasm made me skeptical of 
 his earlier claims.  I also thought it was a bit odd that his section on 
 Lisp was really a section on Emacs.  About the only conclusion I could 
 draw is that "Emacs is awesome and the tool of uber gurus, and Emacs is 
 tightly integrated with Lisp, therefore Lisp is uber cool but also only 
 for uber-gurus."  And even that's a stretch.
 
 
 Sean


Emacs is extremely difficult to grok for someone brought up in the RAD era.

It gives me a headache trying to use it "like a guru"

:-P
Mar 14 2006
parent reply Hasan Aljudy <hasan.aljudy gmail.com> writes:
Kyle Furlong wrote:

 Sean Kelly wrote:
 

 It's an interesting article with some quotable tidbits, but that the 
 author ended by praising Ruby with such enthusiasm made me skeptical 
 of his earlier claims.  I also thought it was a bit odd that his 
 section on Lisp was really a section on Emacs.  About the only 
 conclusion I could draw is that "Emacs is awesome and the tool of uber 
 gurus, and Emacs is tightly integrated with Lisp, therefore Lisp is 
 uber cool but also only for uber-gurus."  And even that's a stretch.


 Sean


 
 
 Emacs is extremely difficult to grok for someone brought up in the RAD era.
 
 It gives me a headache trying to use it "like a guru"
 
 :-P


Real "gurus" don't need computers; they carry everything in their 
head!!! /sarcasm

Seriously, why does relying on old technology makes a person a "guru"?
Mar 15 2006
parent Kyle Furlong <kylefurlong gmail.com> writes:
Hasan Aljudy wrote:

 Kyle Furlong wrote:

 Sean Kelly wrote:


 It's an interesting article with some quotable tidbits, but that the 
 author ended by praising Ruby with such enthusiasm made me skeptical 
 of his earlier claims.  I also thought it was a bit odd that his 
 section on Lisp was really a section on Emacs.  About the only 
 conclusion I could draw is that "Emacs is awesome and the tool of 
 uber gurus, and Emacs is tightly integrated with Lisp, therefore Lisp 
 is uber cool but also only for uber-gurus."  And even that's a stretch.


 Sean



 Emacs is extremely difficult to grok for someone brought up in the RAD 
 era.

 It gives me a headache trying to use it "like a guru"

 :-P


 
 Real "gurus" don't need computers; they carry everything in their 
 head!!! /sarcasm
 
 Seriously, why does relying on old technology makes a person a "guru"?


Actually, that wasn't my point at all. Editing text in Emacs is, once learned,
many times faster than "normal" text editing. My 
point was that this method of editing takes much practice and latent skill to
master. Yes Emacs is old, but old does not mean 
outdated or less useful, in this case it means (almost) bug free.
Mar 15 2006