I was searching the #Emacs subreddit for ‘IRC’ and found this justification for using Emacs for more than just editing text:
‘Emacs is the last remnant of Lisp-based operating systems that predate Unix … Lispers had to migrate to Unix.’
‘With Emacs, people are basically trying to painstakingly recreate the look and feel of Lisp Machines of yore and forget that they need Unix to run them.’
🔗 https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/2zvhmu/emacs_vs_linux_why_not_use_a_terminal_and/cpn4qfs/
One of my favourite features of Emacs is the lengths it goes to integrate into, and provide an interface onto, Unix (particularly #GNU).
And SLIME with Common Lisp is an excellent IDE — although Genera was the better Lisp environment overall.
In those senses it does feel like the last refuge of the Lispers.
@amdt Just a question - have you seen Mezzano?
@phoe I haven’t. Have you used it? Is it any good?
@amdt I have used it and wouldn't yet recommend it for a main operating system, unless you really know what you are doing and can live with the severe lack of software.
It's constantly in development, but is currently advanced enough to run on some bare metal configurations. It's also usable on VMs.
@amdt Although the #Emacs is a #lisp machine meme sounds appealing, it is not true. Emacs is a 'lisp machine' where everything is text. Lisp Machine allowed you to interact with the objects in memory as they were running. In that respect it is more similar to Smalltalk than to Emacs.
Ken Pitman makes a good argument here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/XpvUwF2xKbk%5B101-125%5D
@PuercoPop I agree: sometimes people claim Emacs is a Lisp Machine — because it interprets a Lisp, supports introspection somewhat and provides a uniform user interface — but even if that were true, in comparison it is a very poor Lisp Machine. It’s no surprise Smalltalk is more similar since Symbolics was heavily inspired by that environment. Thanks for the link!
The same user continues:
‘Many Lisp fans are nostalgic and still hoping for a “Hello everybody out there, I’m doing a (free) Lisp operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like Genera)” moment during their lifetime. Until that happens, that text editor and its extensions are the closest we’ll ever come to a Lisp machine like environment.’
🔗 https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/2zvhmu/emacs_vs_linux_why_not_use_a_terminal_and/cpob8ln/