Why Emacs?
I think emacs is probably one of the biggest mistakes to ever happen to computer science.<p>First, let's remember that emacs is not powerful in and of itself. It requires mastery to understand the potential and power that lies in it. The inclusion of emacs lisp is amazing, but seriously? Have you programmed a separate application in emacs lisp? You haven't? What? You used Scheme or Common Lisp instead? Than why the fuck are you defending emacs lisp?<p>And that is the biggest flaw. The flaw no one likes to talk about. How many people have picked up emacs and quit? I certainly have. Numerous times. How big do you think the population of people who have tried emacs is to the number of current users? Seriously, in terms of a conversion rate, it's absolutely terrible. And you think that's a good thing? Don't give me that bullshit about how only "smart" people will put the effort in. It isn't about fucking effort. It's about giving people the confidence to learn more about your software. And emacs almost definitely fails there.<p>And that's the whole fucking point of computer science. It's not writing the "greatest" programs. It's sharing. Sharing techniques, skills, libraries and ideas. And emacs is an artificial barrier. And worse than that, the most elite people in CS continue to protect it and cannot comprehend that their elitism is to the detriment to CS as a whole. It's complicated, arbitrary and designed in a terrible manner. I don't care if it makes sense to you. What matters is that you should be able to easily defend any design decision. And you can't.<p>We need more people to start programming. We need better editors. Why is it that CS has some of the oldest, most decrepit tools with the most adamant defenders? Why?<p>Seriously, we deal with fucking computers all day. The most arbitrary representation of knowledge possible. And all people do is whine about how things are "good enough" or "no, someone made this decision a long time ago, and now a lot of people make the same choice, so don't be stupid and choose that."<p>The number of new computer languages being invented is almost fucking SLOWING down. WTF? Computer science is about the drive to find better ways to express and share knowledge, and that means trying new things. Usually, they will suck. But jesus, we have to keep trying. And whatever we do, we have to help a). more people try programming, and stick to it b). support people following their own loony ideas.<p>I mean seriously, it's fucking sad how slow shit happens. Common lisp, one of the more powerful languages ever invented, got a wonderful tool called quicklisp last year. 15 FUCKING YEARS AFTER CPAN CAME OUT. Why the fuck is shit so fucked up, I mean jesus, it's fucking inexcusable. Our descendants are going to mock us to our faces til we fucking hara-kiri.