Be Careful What You Joke About

Interestingly enough EMACS was written in another text editor called TECO, which had macros. TECO came with DEC computers of the day (70s & 80s) and had its roots at MIT too. I first used TECO in 1975 and EMACS a few years later. The TECO roots are long gone from EMACS, but I remember there was a keystroke sequence (can’t remember the sequence now) in early EMACS that would get you to the TECO prompt. Check //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs for the details.

Jon

Dear David.

Yesterday at Freackonomics, Stephen asked about if we feel there is a little more racism against the Latinos, especially for the Gonzales case.

I said, since I am a Latino, I can tell you, I do not feel any different. If I treat people with respect I receive the same. The question is also about how sensitive we have come.

In this case of MIT is not understandable their reaction, they live for more that the image. They study and research profound scientific aspects of our living. We certainly expected a more mature and intelligent comment toward a joke.

This society is becoming very touchy for the things we, do, say or omit.

This country was founded under the shoulder of very strong and intelligent people. We hope, lets keep it this way.

Mario Ruiz
@ //www.oursheet.com

This would be much more interesting if I knew what they were talking about

Emacs is the world’s most powerful terrible software. It’s essentially a religion that involves people who think typing Control-X then Control-S is a perfectly reasonable way to save a document. I have been using a “competitor,” the simpler “vi,” another terminal-oriented screen editor, since about 1994. Vi has a million commands, but you only need a dozen to make it work. To save a doc, you type “:w” plus return. Which is wonky, but “:” is invoke command.

Emacs is accreted software, which means that improvements have grown like coral on a rock. It’s insanely modal — it’s so modal that Mac users would claw their eyes out to use it. (There are weirdly GUI versions of emacs, even, which makes my head hurt.)

For anyone who uses Word regularly, the notion of criticizing software for obscure command sequences, modality, and so forth, probably seems ridiculous to them. But in Word, you can choose items from menus, most activities are non-modal, and most behavior is easy to figure out. And you can write macros for Word (or entire software packages, too).

Emacs is one of the very best development editors out there. Its fast, stable, can, or be made to, do most anything you want, and is available on almost every platform (including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc etc etc) and in multiple configurations well suited to a wide variety of tasks.

Still, real programmers just cat /dev/stdin

I remember using keyboard macros on a Wang word processor back in the 1970’s it did speed up my work with the clunky WP system down in the basement of NBC Burbank. But it took all night one night to program the macro!

Hah. Emacs is so bloated that you can spend forever tweaking it instead of ever editing anything.

Your article also has a key flaw… it focuses ONLY on Emacs, an editor. However, only a tiny percentage or computer users (i.e. only the technically savvy, for the most part) have ever herd of Emacs or even use it.

This is analogous to judging the usefulness of a car by its cup holders.

It was great to see that you chose our iKey software as the best macro/automation software on the Mac. That was a pleasant surprise for us. Automation software does not get a lot of press because its not flashy but it is incredibly useful to enhance productivity. Since it was not mentioned in the video your readers can find iKey at:
//www.scriptsoftware.com
and
//www.scriptsoftware.com/ikey
Thanks for making tech entertaining in a whole new way and thanks for the iPhone musical. It was a hoot.

Geekiest… Pogue… article… response… EVER!

vi vs. emacs, emacs vs vi, whatever. I’ve used both. I prefer vi (or vim or gvim, whatever)… I continue to use emacs also, because of some of the features that are just nice. Like the cvs integration, etc. The point is, this is not a forum for religious editor wars.

In fact, the point is, whether you prefer vi or emacs, no commercial, windows-based solution has such staunch proponents. Nor can any of those solutions have the auality or longevity of the unix/linux/free software/open software movement.

That we can be happy about. Open source, free software rules. Microsoft cannot catch up. No matter how much they spend on marketing. The only people they can influence via their marketing are the people who’re asleep at the wheel and have no clue anyway. Next year those people won’t matter anyway. People who don’t know technology; the followers; the people who won’t make a difference in the long run anyway.

You can’t even compare the lame solutions available on WinBlows to the power of emacs and vi. Yes, I am a Micro$oft hater. Microsoft is the whore of the information culture. Microsoft will DIE. And when they do, where do you want to be? Part of the microsloth button-pushing mentality, or part of the thinking intellectual mentality that will determine the future. That’s what it’s all about, that’s the big question.

You see, micro$oft does not want you to understand how Windblows works. They want you to PAY them to tell you which buttons to push to make something happen. And when something goes wrong, they want you to PAY them to give you a solution. They don’t want you to experience the love of understanding the inner working of their software system. They are sluts of the worst kind. They say, make love to me, give me everything, and I will only respond with the minimum required to keep our relationship going.

So hey, vi or emacs, we’re still way ahead of the crap microsoft is pushing.

-Wabi

Keyboard/mouse macros are a poor answer the question “how do I get my programs to work on their own and (potentially more interestingly) together.”

Macro programs main weak point is their state dependency. They require certain windows to be open at certain locations and generally can’t pass information from one program to another. Microsoft has created a robust control language with Visual Basic hooks in its programs but its lack of adoption by non-Microsoft programs and it’s sparse usage speaks to how overly complicated it it is for most tasks.

The ancient Amiga computer did it right. Soon after it’s arrival a standard emerged based on a very simple script language called AREXX (itself a derivative of IBM’s REXX). Virtually all Amiga programs had AREXX hooks and driving one program from another was trivially simple.

I once took a spreadsheet containing columns of GDP, Inflation and Interest rates and pushed the data over to a drawing program. When the AREXX script was done I had a beautifully visualized animation of the changing shape of the yield curve over time and it’s relation to ups and downs in growth and inflation. Given the clunky Visual Basic programs I work with now, I am amazed at the simplicity and elegance of the stuff I used 20 years ago.

Python or PERL are simple languages that could accomplish what AREXX did if only applications would provide the “hooks.” Microsoft Office opened up? Fat chance.

Textmate!!!!!