Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers for the next unfortunate googler

Posted Feb 17, 2012 15:27 UTC (Fri) by renox (guest, #23785)
In reply to: Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers for the next unfortunate googler by man_ls
Parent article: Wayland - Beyond X (The H)

> X11 was released are now 24 years old

Focusing on the age of the first release is a CADT syndrome..

Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers

Posted Feb 17, 2012 16:22 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

Ah, these kids... 1988 was the year of the latest version, X11, not the first. Its history started around 1981, or so the Wikipedia article states. If you prefer to refer to the latest revision X11R7, then it's only 7 years old... and on that memorable event X11 gained the ability to use ravaging new autotools (a project started in 1991).

Look at it as you may, X is probably the oldest component in use on our systems, except perhaps if you are an Emacs user. I don't know anything about the X codebase except that it is scary and that its creators (not exactly teenagers) seem to loathe it. And now I will link the mandatory Xkcd comic and will leave this humongous article (404 comments at this time) alone.

Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers

Posted Feb 17, 2012 17:24 UTC (Fri) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link] (3 responses)

>Look at it as you may, X is probably the oldest component in use on our systems, except perhaps if you are an Emacs user

Your point being?
Even if I don't use Emacs, I know that it's very powerful and that it has many satisfied users, which show nicely my point: age doesn't really matter when you're talking about software.
And Linux isn't young too..

You know the reason of the comic you linked?
The fact that now the X server is able to work correctly most of the time without the user having to touch its configuration file, whoa X progressed! Incredible!

>I don't know anything about the X codebase except that it is scary and that its creators (not exactly teenagers) seem to loathe it.

LibreOffice has/had exactly the same issue, but they're cleaning their codebase, of course they have many more developers than X.

Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers

Posted Feb 18, 2012 3:56 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

>Even if I don't use Emacs, I know that it's very powerful and that it has many satisfied users, which show nicely my point: age doesn't really matter when you're talking about software.
Does it? The number of emacs' users is utterly dwarfed by the number of Microsoft Visual Studio users or Eclipse users.

And can we honestly say that emacs is really better? I don't think so.

>You know the reason of the comic you linked?
>The fact that now the X server is able to work correctly most of the time without the user having to touch its configuration file, whoa X progressed! Incredible!
Actually, it is. Few more years and popular toolkits on Linux desktops might start to use XInput2 in earnest.

>LibreOffice has/had exactly the same issue, but they're cleaning their codebase, of course they have many more developers than X.

They don't operate under the same constraints.

Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers

Posted Mar 1, 2012 14:10 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Ah yes. Because the utility of software is perfectly expressed by a popularity contest. Windows is objectively better than Linux by that metric, and various obscure embedded OSes are even better! Look at the number of units shipped!

Software can have different target markets. Someone satisfied with Visual C++'s editor is unlikely to need or want the flexibility of Emacs: someone whose mind is written in Lisp and who dreams in Emacs keybindings is never going to be satisfied with Visual C++. (I wish the 'dreams in Emacs keybindings' part was a joke, but I got out of an allergy-induced nightmare last night by hitting C-g to wake me up. It worked.)

Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers

Posted Mar 1, 2012 15:48 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Because the utility of software is perfectly expressed by a popularity contest.

Well… yeah. What else can you suggest?

Windows is objectively better than Linux by that metric, and various obscure embedded OSes are even better!

Windows is most definitely better, but various obscure embedded OSes are not: they are not in the same market. In some cases embedded Linux does better then other embedded OSes (smartphones, for example), in some case it's worse (featurephones, for example), but on desktop it's so far behind it's not even funny.

Software can have different target markets.

Ah-ha. So you do get it. You just refuse to admit defeat.

Someone satisfied with Visual C++'s editor is unlikely to need or want the flexibility of Emacs: someone whose mind is written in Lisp and who dreams in Emacs keybindings is never going to be satisfied with Visual C++.

Sorry, but no. For that to happen someone must first be exposed to Lisp. People whose mind is written in Lisp are not numerous enough to form a genuine separate market. If you'll take a look on the “new generation”, you'll find out that a lot of them used Visual C++ at one point or another, but most have never ever tried to use Emacs. For them it may not even exist.

This means that when “old generation” will go away (which is kind of inevitable) Emacs will be just a footnote in a Wikipedia.