And another thing...

Posted Jul 6, 2007 10:36 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

The original, while an interesting historical document that should certainly be preserved, is hardly as thorough or as interesting as the latter-day Jargon File/TNHD... (IMHO, the best parts are not even the dictionary, but stuff like "The Story of Mel" and "A Story about Magic"...) The complaint at that page (that the focus was changed from LISP/AI to Unix) hardly seems fair, given that's the way the WORLD was changing, as well... Hackerdom was changing with it, and so too should its record of known jargon...

I don't know what ESR did or didn't do in later versions of the Jargon File; maybe he did go overboard on some entries... But, don't write off the whole thing... It was really VERY good, at one point... Specifically, the version as published in book form as "The New Hackers Dictionary" was great, IMHO... And, quite frankly, I don't see anything too wrong/different with the newest version he has on his site now, either... Where exactly are all the supposed attrocities in it?? (In fact, it looks like they may not exist at all...)