Item — HN Reader

I'm intrigued. As it stands, two people have claimed that this doesn't belong here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552857

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552812

One even flouts the guidelines to tell us they've flagged the item. And to be honest, I'm rather glad they have, because now I can see a different perspective than mine, and I have the chance to learn something.

I don't understand why these people think this doesn't belong here. It's about software design, and the suggestion that modern opinions, dogma, even, might not be as definitely true as we claim. If Emacs can survive, even thrive, without being designed in a "modern" way, doesn't that give cause for pause?

    ... because the software is so light on
    bureaucracy, it is easy to customize and
    to contribute to.

Would someone care to refute this? More than once I've attempted to contribute to a project, knowing that I can improve some aspect, and been thwarted by the sheer magnitude of the task in coming up to speed with all the nuances of the existing design.

Rather than simply saying that it doesn't belong, can you actually refute the claims? I'd like to see a reasoned discussion - that's why I thought it was interesting.

2 comments

OP isn't much but a 'emacs is successful despite being bad software engineering in these ways', which isn't all that interesting. What would be more interesting is a discussion why those ways aren't bad for emacs or how emacs overcomes those handicaps.

For example, in an earlier Cook post on Unix philosophy, I linked http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/06/30/where-the-unix-phil... to ESR's discussion of Emacs http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch13s03.html#id... and the followup discussion about the interesting idea of contexts/frameworks http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch13s04.html

That could be more than a blog post, it could be a real contribution.

But even though the OP doesn't have that, I was hoping the discussion here could, in effect, "crowd-source" such a contribution. So often in the past on HN I've seen relatively content-poor posts lead to serious discussions that pull together expertise and experience from a wide range of people, and the discussion has been a great reference.

EDIT: Don't mind the down-vote(s) - don't really care about karma - but I'd love to know why people disagree with my comment. Thx in advance.

> I don't understand why these people think this doesn't belong here.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be rude. I just feel like its a couple of paragraphs long and doesn't have any substance. Like the other guy said, its a fluff piece. And the one thing you specifically pointed out of the article is actually incorrect.

>> because the software is so light on >> bureaucracy, it is easy to customize and >> to contribute to.

> Would someone care to refute this?

I would. Emacs was specifically NOT light on bureaucracy. That is specifically why xemacs created.

Anyway, hope you have a good day.