Listen at: https://archives.anonradio.net/202504020000_screwtape.mp3
This week we will talk about the Unix Philosophy and how it compares and contrasts with whatever one might call the “Emacs Philosophy.”
The impetus for the discussion is a series of blog posts by @ramin_hal9001 [fe.disroot.org] called “Emacs fulfills the UNIX Philosophy”:
…as well as a fascinating discussion [mastodon.sdf.org] that took place over this past week on ActivityPub on the topic of the Unix philosophy and history of Lisp on Unix in which some very knowledgeable people have contributed anecdotes and facts.
#technology #programming #SoftwareEngineering #RetroComputing #lisp #r7rs #SchemeLang #UnixPhilosophy
This weeks #ClimateCrisis #haiku by @kentpitmanwithin each of us
our loved ones, in tiny form,
caring's innate yield
company at a distance
legacy in case of loss
@ramin_hal9001 @kentpitman I think there are many aspects to "Emacs philosophy" but one of them is "ITS philosophy". This again has many aspects, one example of which is the how Emacs is "unexeced" when built. This seems rather quirky today, but makes perfect sense and is standard procedure on ITS and other PDP-10 systems.
Another aspect is the user interface which is based on key strokes. This UX tradition can be traced all the way back to the TX-0 and the TMRC community (original hackers).
@larsbrinkhoff @ramin_hal9001 @kentpitman the old unexec model is gone from emacs now though. It wasn't compatible with some changes to glibc.
@loke @larsbrinkhoff @ramin_hal9001 @kentpitman the portable dumper still does essentiall the same thing; loads files and dumps the state.