Talim Kalayaan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > There is a difference between discussion and stroking each other's ego. :)
Working with Emacs is a humbling experience. It brings you face to face with accumulated centuries of developers' work. Emacs involves people in its development to an unusual extent. Working with vi and even Eclipse made me feel more like a user than a co-developer. Working with Emacs made me feel part of the community, even when I was still struggling to make sense of the parentheses. If in that sense, Emacs worship is considered ego-stroking, then sure, I'm guilty. I can't help but express my appreciation for one of those things that has really changed my life and made free, open source software really meaningful to me. For the culture, really, that made it possible. It's a piece of software, but it's also a conversation with so many developers around the world. To newbies: if you're curious about the thrills of open source development and you want a nice, easy way to get started, why not try modifying Emacs? It's easy to pick up. All the source code is there, and you can modify it on the fly. We've had complete non-programmers try it out and fall in love with programming. They get thrilled when they share their tweaks and other people respond with comments and suggestions. This is good stuff. Try it out. =) I suppose Emacs is off-topic. After all, it's cross-platform, not Linux-specific. I could easily be extolling the wonders of Emacs on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, or BSD. Emacs doesn't require Linux. (Neither does Apache, but you don't see people waxing lyrical about web servers that often, do you?) The flood of Emacs-related posts that deluge the list whenever someone unwittingly brings up the topic is probably incomprehensible to people who've never tried Emacs or tried Emacs as just an editor and didn't like it. Still, I want to share what makes open source real for me. Not kernel hacking, which is still too intimidating despite the existence of projects like kernel-janitor. Not network or system administration, which I don't have the patience to do. Just the free and flexible customization of something I use everyday and the thrill of sharing these customizations with other people in a community that spans the world. I guess that's why I post on PLUG instead of plug-misc. I don't think PLUG should just be a venue for asking and answering technical questions, but also for sharing nifty hacks and examples of how far a Linux system can be pushed. Other people push their systems in terms of hardware and services. I push mine in terms of how well it can fit me, how well it can anticipate my needs. I want to stroke other people's egos. I want people to discover how they can contribute to free and open source software, to experience the thrill of seeing their code out there and being used. Open source development isn't just for PHP wizards or C freaks who can contribute to existing projects or launch an entirely new project on their own. Maybe--just maybe!--people who thought themselves just users of a text editor will be inspired to think about how they can start customizing their own. -- Sacha Chua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - open source geekette http://sacha.free.net.ph/ - PGP Key ID: 0xE7FDF77C interests: emacs, gnu/linux, personal information management, CS ed sachac on irc.freenode.net#emacs . YM: sachachua83 _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
