Re: Consideration for Rust contributions in Emacs

[Bob Rogers]

   From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
   Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2023 21:04:47 +0200

   > From: John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org>
   > Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2023 13:22:44 -0500
   > . . .
   > On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 12:06 PM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
   > . . .
   > > Moreover, familiarity with the internals implemented in C is IME quite
   > > necessary even for Emacs developers who almost never touch that layer.
   > 
   > For some definition of Emacs developer, I do agree.

   I think for any serious Emacs developer.  Limiting the familiarity to
   the Lisp level will leave many important aspects look like black
   magic, because what we expose to Lisp is higher-level abstractions
   that sometimes create a completely inaccurate mental picture of what
   really happens . . .

I can speak to that.  As someone not competent to hack on emacs at the C
level, I nevertheless find I need to dip into the C code from time to
time in order to understand what the elisp is doing, with increasing
frequency over the last 30-odd years.  I think that shows a net elisp =>
C migration during that time.

   A good example is the machinery that triggers redisplay and how it
   integrates into the Emacs "main loop".

I try really hard to stay out of redisplay.  ;-}

                                        -- Bob Rogers
                                           http://www.rgrjr.com/