> The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't know what it means for a programming language to be powerful and elegant. Once you learn Lisp, you will see what is lacking in most other languages.
Then:
> My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. As a result, I have not had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as Perl, Python, PHP or Ruby.
It's a combination of code/data equivalence, syntax that makes that useful in development flow, ability to do DSL's, and conceptual simplicity of the core features. I mean, basic LISP interpreter takes a page or two to write in the language with that interpreter able to bootstrap features of about any other.
Combining that with a professional LISP can have a profound, combined effect on people that irritates them when they use tools with less power.
Edit for nice example of ot making hard things easier:
It's hard (if not impossible) to pick a single attribute of 'Lisp' that's shared by all the languages that are part of the Lisp family of languages. There are Lisps without macros, there are Lisps without the simple syntax, there are Lisps without dynamic typing, or lexical scope, or any of a dozen other features that are present in at least on Lisp.... so I think reducing Lisp to a handful of features and calling that 'basically it' is a good way to miss the point. (Not to belabor the obvious
In it, he describes through a though experiment what it means for a language to be defined by its community and how that impacts its development and use. It isn't as much about the specific features as it is the approach that led the language to get to have those features in the first place.
Just to illustrate, the simple syntax is a good example. It's not immediately obvious why simple syntax is a good thing... in fact, given the fact people prefer infix and a big part of the backlash against Lisp is due to the syntax, you might argue that it'd be better for Lisp to drop the syntax entirely. (As was tried in Dylan and Logo) That, you'd lose a lot that's not necessarily obvious. There's a real value in having a concrete syntax for your language's core data types and then defining the language in terms of those data types. The simple syntax isn't the point as much as what it enables you do accomplish.
The thing about Lisp is it operates at a lower-level than most programming languages. Not the terms of machine level (like assembly language) but in terms of compiler level (parse trees).
There is a simple elegance to it but I also think it pushes a lot of complexity into other places. My opinion is that the trade off in where the complexity is doesn't benefit most programmers/projects -- Lisp users would obviously disagree.
As a lisp user, I would argue that infix syntax, while it appears simpler, puts a lot of cognitive load on the reader that lispers don't have to worry about. In an infix syntax, you have to worry about getting the syntax right, avoiding syntactic ambiguity, and making sure your precedence order is correct. In languages like C++ or Haskell, this can get very complicated.
Think of it this way: infix syntax is just another form of DWIM. The computer is trying to act like it thinks the way you do. However, it doesn't, and because it's pretending to, bugs happen. Lisp doesn't pretend, and this helps to avoid bugs.
I'd argue the differences in syntax in other languages actually make reading the code easier. The consistency of Lisp makes it harder for humans to read.
Infix is such a small percentage of what I do, it hardly matters. And where it's extremely critical, I have to share with non-programmer humans so consistency there helps.
> IMO, it makes it harder for humans to learn, but not to read once they have.
Why would it be harder to learn yet easier to read? If anything it's syntax is easier to learn (because there is so little syntax) but harder to read (also because their is so little syntax) and harder to understand (because the syntax doesn't reveal as much semantics).
What I meant is that there's a steeper learning curve to actually reading it. But once you do, it beats everything else in readability and writability.
It's elegant, conceptually simple, and it's just fun to hack. It has a regular syntax, which means that once you learn the syntax you never have to worry about it again. There's no operator precedence, so you don't have to worry about messing that up. It's relatively easy to read (although I've created my share of monstrosities, so it's possible to do so), and you also get the power of macros, which can help to repeat yourself less, and give you a lot of power, should you ever need it (I have hardly ever written a macro, and it's not the main draw, but it's there). It has the ability to add your own syntax, to an extent: You need raw strings, string interpolation, external representations of data, or a more concise syntax for functions? You're covered.
As I've grown up, I've realized that "such assertive terms" tend to translate to "I have an unfettered view of the inside of my ass, and I'm positive what everything looks like in here".
I once read that those who are prideful (i.e. arrogant, conceited, pompous) are universally despised, because those who are humble recognize and abhor the ugliness of this vice, and those who are prideful can't stand the thought others thinking they're better than them.
Being successful does not imply not being despised. In fact, it often seems the two are positively correlated. Success is often shorthand for wealth and power, and there's a lot more to life than that.
That's not what I meant. Universally meaning, not on an individual basis, but categorical basis, of whether each person is humble or not. It's along the lines of the phrase "there's two types of people" where everyone belongs to either one group or another. Why is semantically correct communication so inherently difficult? Why was this comment of mine necessary? I once heard this is why Latin became the universal language: because it had much more nuance and complexity than other languages, which as it turned out was necessary when managing an empire that spanned the known world, so no other language would do.
In my dictionary, "universally" has two definitions: "by everyone" and "in every case". You're only using the first definition. I'm using the second one.
Sure, but they do things like misapply the label "freedom to read" on an article that seems to mainly be about not getting the entertainment one might desire on the terms one might desire. I was hoping for something more rigorous than preaching to the choir.
> A friend once asked me to watch a video with her that she was going to display on her computer using Netflix. I declined, saying that Netflix streaming was such an affront to freedom that I could not be party to its use under any circumstances whatsoever.
RMS is a very principled man, but I think he may have misunderstood "Netflix and chill".
"A friend once asked me to watch a video with her that she was going to display on her computer using Netflix. I declined, saying that Netflix streaming was such an affront to freedom that I could not be party to its use under any circumstances whatsoever."
When you refuse netflix and chill due to ideological conflicts with the key distribution model, just stallman things
agreed. he asks for a cup of tea, milk and sugar; if you cant provide this he brings his own tea bags.
the only thing that may put people out today is his aversion to 'Linux' over 'GNU/Linux' and open source vs free software; this is not unreasonable given his work to promote his own interpretations.
I'm often amazed at what we've done with programming languages. They're perfect examples of accurately and concisely communicate information in a small space
I admire Stallman's unworldly, unfettered commitment to his principles. It's difficult to live an ethical life, and twice as difficult to live an ethical life under capitalism. Stallman's manic devotion to assiduously following his own moral compass is, bizarre though its manifestation may be, something we should all aspire towards.
That being said, I'm perpetually frustrated by the boneheadedness of his ethical commitments. They strike me as ineffective and, more critically, unsound: it seems to me like Stallman ad-hoc transformed an (absolutely justified) distaste for closed-source software into a system of ethics by, fundamentally, adopting aphorisms as axioms. Whether this was done as a post-hoc justification for his depth of passion in this area, or whether it was just a gradual metastasis, I don't know.
I also admire him but I think it's also funny he continues on this dogmatic existence.
I think he ought to let himself make mistakes, punch out for the day, crack open a brewski, kick back with an iPad, and listen to some classic rock, Google some porn on pornhub (incognito of course) and just take a load off.
Even if he started using closed source products in old age or, God forbid, did anything for profit or selfish reasons, he's still a good guy who made a difference in the world. His legacy lives on in his Copyleft, all those sweet GNU tools and Emacs.
But all the same life moves pretty fast. And if he doesn't stop and look around once in a while, he could miss it.
Yeah, there's probably something to be said for stringent limitations on the kinds of technology you can use as an antidote to ease of spending every waking moment looking at a screen. If I wasn't allowed to use Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, an OS with nonfree drivers, any DRMed media, and so forth, I'd probably spend a lot less time screwing around. I'd miss out on a lot too, of course, but the tradeoff may not be all that bad -- my life would, in all honesty, probably be substantially improved just by not having a smartphone to look at constantly.
That's a pragmatic assessment about lifestyle, of course -- it's not germane to the rigor of Stallman's ethics (or, more accurately, the apparent lack thereof).
Taking a day off from your principles seems suspect, at best. (That's not to say that there's no way to justify doing so -- but it's difficult to conceive of what that might be.)
Also, I frankly doubt that Stallman's life would be improved by kicking back with an iPad and a beer and jerking it to Internet porn. Classic rock, maybe -- but there's no contradiction between that and his approach (as long as it's DRM-free).
I'm not the guy you replied to but I would say living ethically is difficult under capitalism because capitalism is all about competition, which incentivizes certain unethical behaviors: keeping secrets (closed-source software), sabotaging others (patent trolls, lawsuits), and taking away freedom from your customers (vendor lock-in, not using open standards).
As opposed to life under communism? I have family that grew up under communism and they told me that everything is about stealing in that system. You get a job not because it pays more, but because it lets you steal more. You horde things that you're not allowed to. You steal steal steal, because no one can live well on the ration books. Unless you're part of the nomenklatura, in which case your official job is stealing.
I'm not defending the Soviet Union. I'm not even defending communism, nor proposing a concrete alternative to capitalism. But the fact that other systems have led to worse abuses absolutely does not absolve capitalism of its crimes -- even the least-bad criminal is still a criminal.
(And it's not clear that capitalism is, in fact, the best of the bunch: it's bizarre that Silicon Valley, a culture that is so dedicated to pushing the boundaries of the possible that curing death is a completely pedestrian ambition, believes that /this/ economic system is the real global maximum.)
capitalism trades work for capital in an infinite loop, as long as it is free to bargain as little work for as much capital it is exploitative. The only non exploitative capitalism is a non-liberal capitalism which limits the bargaining, but since greed and corruption go in tandem, whatever tries to govern capitalism, eventually becomes just another bargaining iteration for capitalism itself. therefore the only implementation of non exploitative capitalism is capitalism ruled by an incorruptible system, which is utopia, or maybe AI overlords.
> I have family that grew up under communism and they told me ...
I guess that settles it.
P.S. Your family did not grow up “under communism” unless they grew up in Ukrainian Free Territory[1] or Catalan and Aragon countryside during the Spanish Civil War[2], which are the two only socio-economic entities in modern history to reasonably approximate communism. What your family grew up in is state socialist Bolshevik dictatorship. If you're going to get all worked up about ideological wars, you should at least learn what these words mean, instead of blindly reproduce vulgar, politically illiterate Cold War obfuscations.
Spare me the No True Scotsman fallacies. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx lays out the agenda:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production...
That you think this is a no true Scotsman fallacy just shows you have no idea what you're talking about and are just blindly ideologically raging. It's not a NTS fallacy, it's a words-have-non-arbitrary-meaning non-fallacy. The agenda you quote is about “Socialism“, or even more precisely “dictatorship of the proletariat”, the transitional period Marxists envision to precede communism. I'm not going to argue about that, I think history has shown how horrible of an idea it is. Communism is by definition a stateless (do notice how many times the state is mentioned in that agenda), classless society of free associations of producers and consumers with distribution and consumption based on “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need“ principle. Further reading: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-wa...
What system does not incentivize unethical behaviors? Any system can be subverted to one's own benefit. This does not necessarily reflect poorly on the system.
I want to be careful here to avoid asserting that there is a system that is known to be ultimately more ethical than capitalism under current global conditions. (Social democracy may fit the bill, but I'm not prepared to argue that here.) That, however, doesn't mean that capitalism is ethical, or makes it easy to live an ethical life. The mechanics of capitalism are fundamentally exploitative -- again, even if they are less objectionable than many alternatives -- and participation in a capitalist economy makes you party to this. Nearly everything that I do is inflected with some sort of abuse: my laptop contains lithium ion batteries that use cobalt mined in insane conditions, my commute uses oil that, in turn, funds the malignant gangster-kings of Gulf states, my sweater was sewn in factory conditions that endanger the lives of people whose only mistake was being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. (And this is to say nothing of the tremendous misery that occurs /within the United States itself/.)
Again, I am not here proposing an alternative to capitalism. But -- even if it was the best system around -- its abuses are monstrous.
>The mechanics of capitalism are fundamentally exploitative
No it's not. The mechanics are capitalism are fundamentally about mutual benefit. I give you money because having your product is worth more to me than having the money. You give me the product because having the money is worth more to you than having the product. Mutually beneficial exchange is the cornerstone of capitalism. At the end of the transaction, we are both better off.
That's not to say that there's not problems around monopoly and violence, but the latter is the failure of the state, not of the market. And monopoly is not exclusive to capitalism. Under alternative systems, everything is controlled by a monopoly (the state).
It all depends on context. In some cases I do, and in some cases I don't. However, one of the reasons I run my own business is to avoid compromises like that when possible.
Mutually beneficial exchanges can still be exploitative. You give me money, I don't shoot you, we're both better off. Whether or not capitalism is "fundamentally" exploitative depends a lot on definitions, but the issue of violence isn't limited to state actors, and the market can definitely coerce people.
Oh, I know; my point was that the principle of mutually beneficial exchanges doesn't preclude an overall negative outcome. I don't know if capitalism is an ideology, but it certainly stems from a certain ideological framework (it's hard to have capitalism without belief in property.)
I'm pretty sure that by definition it does prevent a negative outcome, since "mutually beneficial" generally means that each person is better off than before the trade, meaning there are positive payoffs on both sides - I'm not sure where exactly you get a negative from there.
In the example of "give me what I want or I'll shoot you", you could argue that "X prevents Y from being shot" and "Y gives X what he wants" is a benefit for both sides, but that ignores the first part, "X puts Y in a position where he is going to be shot" is not mutually beneficial, so the salient part of the example (the threat) is not actually an example of mutually beneficial exchange.
Again, my point was that even if every exchange, in and of itself, is mutually beneficial, the overall society can still be unpleasant. But it should also be noted that mutually beneficial exchanges do not prevent negative results even directly, but merely improve the outcomes for those who are agreeing to the transaction; two parties can agree to an exchange that leaves them both better off than they were before, but harms a third party. Which doesn't even bring up that these exchanges are based on perceived benefit...
That's a great example of a mutually beneficial but morally repugnant trade, but markets generally don't coerce people in this sense. Markets more often reach the fairest possible solution given an initially unfair situation (say, where one side has a gun and the other doesn't), and the fairness or unfairness of the whole thing depends on how property rights were initially allocated.
>I give you money because having your product is worth more to me than having the money. You give me the product because having the money is worth more to you than having the product
That is just trade, not capitalism. You are mixing them.
Who forced you to use the laptop, to wear that sweater, or to live more than a walk away from your commute? And can I have a citation on the "tremendous misery" in the United States?
Nobody was forced, it's just the most convenient (cheapest, readily available, whatever). Only using truly ethical products is not going to be as convenient. Hence "difficult", not "impossible".
Well keep in mind that RMS lives his ethics because his ethics are about closed source and only closed source along with some lip service to resenting his ID being checked (he's happy to ignore it to get to his paid talks, so really pretty fluid there). His ethics are simply not impacted anything you listed.
So it's amazingly easy to live RMS's ethics when you're given money to talk about living your ethics and those ethics are not impacted by most of the world around you.
Capitalism is far from exploitative. It is based on mutually beneficial trades by both party's choice.
Maybe those people are working because it offers better pay than other jobs, even if the conditions seem bad to you? (this may not be true in all situations)
It's probably easier to live ethically in a horticultural band that is relatively isolated from rival human groups. The noble savage myth can be a reality given an optimal environment.
I don't believe that his commitment to his supposed ideals is in any way 'moral'. I'd refer to his position that 'only free software is ethical' as simply wrong - and arrogant.
Yes - we can admire his tenacity, and some of the great things he's contributed.
Paradoxically, his 'ideals' have probably contributed to his personal ability to make these things, at the same time, his ideology is I think more than naive, it's just plain wrong.
I like Stallman, but I take him with a huge dose of salt.
I am a Theology/Philosophy degree holder. Academically speaking I am always amazed at how brilliant the man actually is. When i hear him speak in a more conversational manner I always think, "That guy thinks he just got RMS, but RMS actually knows the guy lost the logical/ethics/battle.
I still remember when The Linux Action Show interviewed RMS and Bryan Lunduke couldn't even wrap his brain around the ethics piece besides (I have to feed my family). RMS said get a different job if closed source is your job and explained his ethical system.
I disagree with RMS on most things but I do identify him as an intellectual genius above my own abilities. As crazy as he is we are so far better off in this world with RMS then a world without RMS.
Sure, but you'll agree that's not the common acceptation. Anyway, I guess it was a typo for costumes. I found interesting the implication that you need to "consume" to have fun.
Also, Python has "eval" and "print" functions that are even called "eval" and "print". One could argue that Python eval is different from LISP eval, but I don't understand what RMS means by "missing"!
> Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. As a result, I have not had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as Perl, Python, PHP or Ruby.
What he means is that he skipped the languages that have it!
Dear HN - at what point does the proclivity towards a philosophy transition to insanity? Is it when an FSF zealot refuses medical treatment demanding the source code of the firmware used in his life-saving medical device? Is it when he refuses to use the roads paved by insert paving device here running closed source software?
>I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me.
>However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.
>Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)
>That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead.
While his views can be seen as extreme, there's a hint of open-mindedness scattered throughout.
I think it's fairly clear he's not at insanity yet.
Yes, the man is a proper ideologue, in a way that most of us will never be about anything. But even in this list, he mentions using computers with non-free BIOS options, accepting trivial-case non-free Javascript, and otherwise conceding to basic common sense. He even acknowledges that he'll use totally closed software in incidental contexts like a library computer!
He goes much further out of his way than most of us would, certainly. We all have standards for 'acceptable inconvenience', and his standards would drive me mad. But even Stallman isn't practicing the kind of zealotry those examples imply.
While I don't agree with his stance on a number of things, I find the consistency and unapologetic nature of posts such as these refreshing. This is the thing I believe. You don't have to, but here's why I think it's wrong not to.
A case can be made that they're too set in stone, with no flexibility - but isn't that what makes them principles? They are core beliefs and in absence of fundamentally view-altering events, they seldom see changes after we reach maturity. IMO if you find yourself rationalizing your way around your own principles, then what you have are a set of things you'd like to believe about yourself - which is quite a different thing.
For as many years as RMS has been in the public eye, I've never seen him rationalize away his principles for the sake of convenience. Agree with him or not, that's a rare thing and I can't help but respect it.
How is that refreshing? This has basically been the natural state of human thinking until maybe around the enlightenment. People used to just say things like "all is water" or "all is fire" in very principled assertive ways all the time.
What I find refreshing is the tiny tiny tiny percentage of people that treat their beliefs like a probability distribution that they update very frequently with new empirical and analytic information.
But we're not talking about a mis-evaluation of facts or insufficient data to form a proper conclusion. The core belief here is along the lines of "data should not be constrained, and my access and usage of data is nobody's business but mine".
People say things like, "all software should be free" but continue to pay the bills by working for a non-free company. They say, "I think DRM is wrong" but many will still buy DRM'd content when they want it badly enough.
Coming across someone who holds a firm, clearly defined belief (again, regardless of whether I agree with the belief - that's not related to the point I'm trying to make) and who also adheres to that belief in all aspects of life - that's the refreshing thing.
I can't say I disagree with him on many points - I just have too much shit to do. I also want stuff that works over purity. He even tacitly acknowledges that he's in a special situation.
> I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundamentally similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. `read', `eval', and `print' are all missing in Python.
Maybe I'm getting lost in the semantics but doesn't Python have a REPL a la the interpreter?
The point he's stuck on is that the versions of 'read', 'eval', and 'print' in Python aren't the same as the ones in Lisp. In Python, you read a string, eval that string into a value, then print that value. The intermediate representation is a string -- just a bunch of characters. In Lisp, you read a data structure, eval that data structure into another data structure, then print out its form -- nested lists and atoms that you can inspect and manipulate, rather than characters that you need to parse to do anything useful with.
> After a few years I found out that this was due to the hard keys of my keyboard. I switched to a keyboard with lighter key pressure and the problem mostly went away.
My experience as well. I'd been using Apple's keyboards for years, and was experiencing hand pain. I switched to a nice mechanical keyboard that activates with a click part way down so I don't need to bottom out the keys. The hand pain went away and I can't stand typing on those "chiclet style" keyboards now.
Every coder should take the time to find the keyboard that suits their body best once funds allow it. I can't imagine doing serious (development) work on a laptop for more than an hour or so without a decent keyboard (currently using a DasKeyboard with Cherry switches), a well-positioned monitor, and a good mouse (a left-handed Razor Deathadder now).
Still I see a lot of developers just pop open their laptop on a desk and work like that for the rest of the day…
I agree. You can sort of get away with abusing your body until you can't, and a lot of people ignore small pain and discomfort in favor of convenience. I know too many devs who have had their productivity seriously inhibited by RSI pain.
I've also switched from the "magic trackpad" to a trackball. I lose a few of those fun gestures, but the rotation on my wrist from swiping on a pad was doing me no favors, and now I genuinely prefer a trackball to anything else for "work" activities.
I end up working on a laptop a lot of the time, but nothing feels quite as good as my Unicomp Model M. And Unicomp stuff sells for cheaper than a lot of the Das stuff, plus it's nicer IMHO (but that's just me).
I never much saw the point of a good mouse: You're not going to be using it all that much (emacs user), you're not getting much in ergonomics out of it, and you probably don't need the sensor accuracy. Am I wrong about where the money goes, or something?
A good programmer is measured by the programs that he does. Sometimes you can win the day by programming in visual basic, if works and its efficient then why not?.
> An explanation of the concept of designing a "user experience" which also shows why I find it loathesome. This is why I want stallman.org to remain simple: not a "user experience" but rather a place where I present certain information, views and action opportunities to you.
A lot of what user experience has become is trying to induce users to do what you want them to rather than "how do I make it easy for the user to do what they want." That, along with a tendency towards what I perceive as "over-design," makes this viewpoint refreshing.
I'd like to live my life with strict principles like that. Non-aggression principle style. Unfortunately, other statists don't let me.
There is one other small thing too, I like Microsoft products.
I admire Stallman. I think he's crazy, or at least a little weird, but I can respect him: he's extremely talented, he has his principles, and dammit, he sticks to them.
It's like Randall puts it: This is a man who believes in something.
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> My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. As a result, I have not had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as Perl, Python, PHP or Ruby.
There's a whole lot to the programming world than disproportionately popular dynamic languages.
What is so great about Lisp that other languages don't have? Macros? Simple syntax? I mean, that's basically it, right?
This is just fanboyism for a language he has nostalgia for. Nothing else.
It does not mean that other programming languages do not have merits though.
Also, is it really "nostalgia" if the language is still in use? Some dialects, even more so.
Combining that with a professional LISP can have a profound, combined effect on people that irritates them when they use tools with less power.
Edit for nice example of ot making hard things easier:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699065
One of my favorite points about Lisp was made by Kent Pitman back in 1995: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html
In it, he describes through a though experiment what it means for a language to be defined by its community and how that impacts its development and use. It isn't as much about the specific features as it is the approach that led the language to get to have those features in the first place.
Just to illustrate, the simple syntax is a good example. It's not immediately obvious why simple syntax is a good thing... in fact, given the fact people prefer infix and a big part of the backlash against Lisp is due to the syntax, you might argue that it'd be better for Lisp to drop the syntax entirely. (As was tried in Dylan and Logo) That, you'd lose a lot that's not necessarily obvious. There's a real value in having a concrete syntax for your language's core data types and then defining the language in terms of those data types. The simple syntax isn't the point as much as what it enables you do accomplish.
homoiconicity
There is a simple elegance to it but I also think it pushes a lot of complexity into other places. My opinion is that the trade off in where the complexity is doesn't benefit most programmers/projects -- Lisp users would obviously disagree.
Think of it this way: infix syntax is just another form of DWIM. The computer is trying to act like it thinks the way you do. However, it doesn't, and because it's pretending to, bugs happen. Lisp doesn't pretend, and this helps to avoid bugs.
Infix is such a small percentage of what I do, it hardly matters. And where it's extremely critical, I have to share with non-programmer humans so consistency there helps.
>I have to share with non-programmer humans
Non-programmers read your code?
Why would it be harder to learn yet easier to read? If anything it's syntax is easier to learn (because there is so little syntax) but harder to read (also because their is so little syntax) and harder to understand (because the syntax doesn't reveal as much semantics).
Ha ...
RMS is a very principled man, but I think he may have misunderstood "Netflix and chill".
When you refuse netflix and chill due to ideological conflicts with the key distribution model, just stallman things
the only thing that may put people out today is his aversion to 'Linux' over 'GNU/Linux' and open source vs free software; this is not unreasonable given his work to promote his own interpretations.
That being said, I'm perpetually frustrated by the boneheadedness of his ethical commitments. They strike me as ineffective and, more critically, unsound: it seems to me like Stallman ad-hoc transformed an (absolutely justified) distaste for closed-source software into a system of ethics by, fundamentally, adopting aphorisms as axioms. Whether this was done as a post-hoc justification for his depth of passion in this area, or whether it was just a gradual metastasis, I don't know.
http://stallmanism.wikidot.com/
I think he ought to let himself make mistakes, punch out for the day, crack open a brewski, kick back with an iPad, and listen to some classic rock, Google some porn on pornhub (incognito of course) and just take a load off.
Even if he started using closed source products in old age or, God forbid, did anything for profit or selfish reasons, he's still a good guy who made a difference in the world. His legacy lives on in his Copyleft, all those sweet GNU tools and Emacs.
But all the same life moves pretty fast. And if he doesn't stop and look around once in a while, he could miss it.
That's a pragmatic assessment about lifestyle, of course -- it's not germane to the rigor of Stallman's ethics (or, more accurately, the apparent lack thereof).
Also, I frankly doubt that Stallman's life would be improved by kicking back with an iPad and a beer and jerking it to Internet porn. Classic rock, maybe -- but there's no contradiction between that and his approach (as long as it's DRM-free).
(And it's not clear that capitalism is, in fact, the best of the bunch: it's bizarre that Silicon Valley, a culture that is so dedicated to pushing the boundaries of the possible that curing death is a completely pedestrian ambition, believes that /this/ economic system is the real global maximum.)
I guess that settles it.
P.S. Your family did not grow up “under communism” unless they grew up in Ukrainian Free Territory[1] or Catalan and Aragon countryside during the Spanish Civil War[2], which are the two only socio-economic entities in modern history to reasonably approximate communism. What your family grew up in is state socialist Bolshevik dictatorship. If you're going to get all worked up about ideological wars, you should at least learn what these words mean, instead of blindly reproduce vulgar, politically illiterate Cold War obfuscations.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Aragon
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production...
Again, I am not here proposing an alternative to capitalism. But -- even if it was the best system around -- its abuses are monstrous.
No it's not. The mechanics are capitalism are fundamentally about mutual benefit. I give you money because having your product is worth more to me than having the money. You give me the product because having the money is worth more to you than having the product. Mutually beneficial exchange is the cornerstone of capitalism. At the end of the transaction, we are both better off.
That's not to say that there's not problems around monopoly and violence, but the latter is the failure of the state, not of the market. And monopoly is not exclusive to capitalism. Under alternative systems, everything is controlled by a monopoly (the state).
That's not capitalism by any definition.
That's extortion and it was a well known practice thousands of years before we invented (or at least understood) capitalism.
I'd argue capitalism is not even an ideology, it's just a simple understanding of comparative value and how to go beyond zero-sum economics.
In the example of "give me what I want or I'll shoot you", you could argue that "X prevents Y from being shot" and "Y gives X what he wants" is a benefit for both sides, but that ignores the first part, "X puts Y in a position where he is going to be shot" is not mutually beneficial, so the salient part of the example (the threat) is not actually an example of mutually beneficial exchange.
That is just trade, not capitalism. You are mixing them.
Actually, it's like this: I give you money because I want to make a profit and become richer. You work in order to survive.
So it's amazingly easy to live RMS's ethics when you're given money to talk about living your ethics and those ethics are not impacted by most of the world around you.
Maybe those people are working because it offers better pay than other jobs, even if the conditions seem bad to you? (this may not be true in all situations)
Yes - we can admire his tenacity, and some of the great things he's contributed.
Paradoxically, his 'ideals' have probably contributed to his personal ability to make these things, at the same time, his ideology is I think more than naive, it's just plain wrong.
I like Stallman, but I take him with a huge dose of salt.
I still remember when The Linux Action Show interviewed RMS and Bryan Lunduke couldn't even wrap his brain around the ethics piece besides (I have to feed my family). RMS said get a different job if closed source is your job and explained his ethical system.
I disagree with RMS on most things but I do identify him as an intellectual genius above my own abilities. As crazy as he is we are so far better off in this world with RMS then a world without RMS.
don't you get a REPL when you type "python" in a terminal?
What he means is that he skipped the languages that have it!
> I edit the pages on this site with Emacs ...
has a formatting error.
>I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me.
>However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.
>Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)
>That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead.
While his views can be seen as extreme, there's a hint of open-mindedness scattered throughout.
Yes, the man is a proper ideologue, in a way that most of us will never be about anything. But even in this list, he mentions using computers with non-free BIOS options, accepting trivial-case non-free Javascript, and otherwise conceding to basic common sense. He even acknowledges that he'll use totally closed software in incidental contexts like a library computer!
He goes much further out of his way than most of us would, certainly. We all have standards for 'acceptable inconvenience', and his standards would drive me mad. But even Stallman isn't practicing the kind of zealotry those examples imply.
A case can be made that they're too set in stone, with no flexibility - but isn't that what makes them principles? They are core beliefs and in absence of fundamentally view-altering events, they seldom see changes after we reach maturity. IMO if you find yourself rationalizing your way around your own principles, then what you have are a set of things you'd like to believe about yourself - which is quite a different thing.
For as many years as RMS has been in the public eye, I've never seen him rationalize away his principles for the sake of convenience. Agree with him or not, that's a rare thing and I can't help but respect it.
What I find refreshing is the tiny tiny tiny percentage of people that treat their beliefs like a probability distribution that they update very frequently with new empirical and analytic information.
People say things like, "all software should be free" but continue to pay the bills by working for a non-free company. They say, "I think DRM is wrong" but many will still buy DRM'd content when they want it badly enough.
Coming across someone who holds a firm, clearly defined belief (again, regardless of whether I agree with the belief - that's not related to the point I'm trying to make) and who also adheres to that belief in all aspects of life - that's the refreshing thing.
Maybe I'm getting lost in the semantics but doesn't Python have a REPL a la the interpreter?
My experience as well. I'd been using Apple's keyboards for years, and was experiencing hand pain. I switched to a nice mechanical keyboard that activates with a click part way down so I don't need to bottom out the keys. The hand pain went away and I can't stand typing on those "chiclet style" keyboards now.
Still I see a lot of developers just pop open their laptop on a desk and work like that for the rest of the day…
I've also switched from the "magic trackpad" to a trackball. I lose a few of those fun gestures, but the rotation on my wrist from swiping on a pad was doing me no favors, and now I genuinely prefer a trackball to anything else for "work" activities.
I never much saw the point of a good mouse: You're not going to be using it all that much (emacs user), you're not getting much in ergonomics out of it, and you probably don't need the sensor accuracy. Am I wrong about where the money goes, or something?
A lot of what user experience has become is trying to induce users to do what you want them to rather than "how do I make it easy for the user to do what they want." That, along with a tendency towards what I perceive as "over-design," makes this viewpoint refreshing.
It's like Randall puts it: This is a man who believes in something.
> "I have a Twitter account called rmspostcomments, which I use to log in on other sites to post comments on articles."