>>>>> "B" == Bob Dionne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
B> Regardless, I think "low end developers" refers to what some
B> call the "tool jockeys", who learn an IDE in order to build
B> apps, focussing on the "business logic". Often they are so far
B> removed from low level detail that you will see them not *get*
B> that things like classpaths are important in java, etc.
In this respect, a lot of undue criticism gets levelled at Emacs by
people who don't understand what RMS' GNUEmacs really is: It's almost
a Lisp machine. Emacs itself isn't the limiting factor for these
business logic coders (an honourable occupation) --- there is nothing
about Emacs that specifically prevents them from stomping the other
GUI coding tools. The only thing missing is elisp code.
I could never afford a Lisp machine when they were in vogue, so maybe
that's why I took to Emacs back in the middle 80's. By the early
90's, I'd taught my grade-school-aged children to use it to code their
webpages, and by the end of that decade I'd deployed Emacs as the
primary desktop for a blind operator who'd had very little computer
experience (some 80's exposure to WordPerfect). All it took was a bit
of Elisp and cleaning up (de-geeking) the language in the help files.
B> this enables more people from different walks of life to
B> program computers... think of what lotus spreadsheet did for
B> the bean counters of the world.
At risk of being off-topic, this is a myth. Lotus probably would have
not been the success it was were it released today when "intellectual
property" is such a royal pain of an issue. Back in those days people
freely traded pirate copies of 1-2-3 and example spreadsheets were on
every BBS. Networking between great hoards of generous users, or more
exactly, the simple process of community peer support that is the
hallmark of open source, this is what built communities like Lotus.
And this is why Emacs is still the IDE most likely to succeed -- it's
the reason why, 20 years later, we're all _still_ using it.
B> ... After all these years emacs is still the best for all
B> programmers on all platforms. Perhaps through XML the world
B> will rediscover Lisp
No, I'd amend that: Emacs is _not_ the best. It suffers from too many
gaping holes like poor multithreading and other artifacts from its
era. I've even switched to XEmacs here at TCI partially because, for
better or worse, the improved GUI support has helped our
non-programmers to migrate to Emacs for email and documentation.
IMHO, the "best" has not yet been invented, although my money is on
the upcoming major release of GNUEmacs :)
B> God bless RMS!
I'll second that.
--
Gary Lawrence Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> TeleDynamics Communications Inc
What happens on Groundhog Day? http://www.teledyn.com/fun/GroundhogDay
"There are many things which do not concern the process" --- Joan of Arc
