Re: Emacs, was Re: YAPAS (Yet Another Python Advocacy Story) (fwd)

[rspier@speed.seas.upenn.edu (Robert Spier)]

>>>>> "NR" == Nicolai Rosen <nick@netaxs.com> writes:
NR> I don't really think that that's a fair measure. The higher up
NR> features that rarely get used are exclusively Lisp while a lot
NR> more of the lower level stuff is C.

Sounds like smart programming design.  Make the oft-used stuff really
fast, and everything else, normal.  And everything important you do is 
LISP, you cannot run EMACS without running LISP code.  The Emacs
binary actually does a neat trick to improve loading speed.  They
initialize the LISP interpreter, and load in the most commonly used
LISP functions -- at compile time -- and then 'dump' this to disk
similar to a core file.. Then at runtime, they reload that binary
image and continue from where they left off.

NR> Besides, emacs is still not Word. I'd like to see somebody do a
NR> word like program in a scripted language (hehe, here's where I
NR> invite people to contradict me).

Emacs does a lot more than Word.  If you want to do a point by point
comparison, we can.  But Word v. Emacs stops being appropriate for the
monger list pretty quickly.  I'm sure we'll find Emacs (and related
packages) has more features than word, is more configurable than word,
and does almost everything Word does and enough things Word doesn't,
to make your issue moot.

If you want to argue that Word is a typesetter and Emacs is a text
editor, then you are right.  But Word is a typesetter and Emacs is a
versatile application programming environment with a useful UI.  (I
run my mail software within it, among other things.)

-R

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