Re:Absolute Beginner's Guide to Emacs (2012)
by lispm on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @10:03AM
(#18608762)
> Emacs is an ok lisp machine
GNU Emacs is an extensible text editor, but not a Lisp Machine. A Lisp machine is a computer with a Lisp OS on the metal. This means the OS itself is written in Lisp and not just some specialized application, interfacing to a foreign underlying OS. A Lisp OS has also an open GUI and not just an editor-buffer-based UI.
With GNU Emacs the extensibility ends when one calls an OS tool or an OS library - for a Lisp Machine there is no such distinction.
GNU Emacs is a mostly single-threaded editor, with a horrible user interface and heroic efforts from users to deal with thousands of modes and keystroke combinations.
None of the extensible Lisp applications are 'Lisp Machines': not Autocad, not Audacity, not iCAD, not Creo Elements, not GNU Emacs, not OpusModus, not Macsyma, ... They are Lisp applications which expose a development interface and a development environment (yes, Autocad has Lisp development tools) and users are writing complex applications on top of those.
On a real Lisp Machine, an Emacs-like text editor is just one application and one interface style.
GNU Emacs is an extensible text editor, but not a Lisp Machine. A Lisp machine is a computer with a Lisp OS on the metal. This means the OS itself is written in Lisp and not just some specialized application, interfacing to a foreign underlying OS. A Lisp OS has also an open GUI and not just an editor-buffer-based UI.
With GNU Emacs the extensibility ends when one calls an OS tool or an OS library - for a Lisp Machine there is no such distinction.
GNU Emacs is a mostly single-threaded editor, with a horrible user interface and heroic efforts from users to deal with thousands of modes and keystroke combinations.
None of the extensible Lisp applications are 'Lisp Machines': not Autocad, not Audacity, not iCAD, not Creo Elements, not GNU Emacs, not OpusModus, not Macsyma, ... They are Lisp applications which expose a development interface and a development environment (yes, Autocad has Lisp development tools) and users are writing complex applications on top of those.
On a real Lisp Machine, an Emacs-like text editor is just one application and one interface style.