Re: Emacs for over aged hippies?!

[Bob Proulx]

Emanuel Berg wrote:
> I was in a discussion on rec.bicycles.tech on
> the properties of the combination spanner
> (combination wrench) but as it happened the
> discussion drifted away across the Pacific to
> Easter Island, Russian history, and
> 
>     Word Star, perhaps the most successful of
>     the early word processes. It was
>     a monolithic program in assembly language
>     and ran on the Z-80 processor, on the CP/M
>     operating system. It was written by a guy
>     named " John Robbins Barnaby", in four
>     months. 137,000 lines of assembler code.

I used Wordstar "'back-in-the-day" myself.  It was a good editor for
the time.

> To this I wrote:
> 
>     There is an Emacs mode (built in,
>     actually): wordstar-mode Command: Major
>     mode with WordStar-like key bindings.
> 
>     Is that the same? Sounds like it.

Emacs has a wordstar-mode mode available.  But that is not real
Wordstar which was written in x86 assembly language.  Emacs ws-mode
was written by Juergen Nickelsen.  The NEWS file says it has been
removed with this note:

  *** tpu-edt.el, ws-mode.el
  These emulations of old editors are believed to be no longer relevant
   - contact emacs-devel@gnu.org if you disagree.

At one time Wordstar was one of the very popular editors.  Therefore
having an emacs mode that used the same keybindings was also a
somewhat popular way to allow people to use emacs but immediately be
productive using keybindings that they already knew.

But it is now twenty years later and I think very few people use
Wordstar.  George R. R. Martin not withstanding.  (He is the very
prolific Game of Thrones author and is well known as someone who
writes everything he writes in Wordstar.)  Therefore emacs wordstar
mode is going to have a smaller user base too.

>     For the real deal tho one would get a Z-80
>     CP/M emulator to run... or a time machine.

Or an x86 running DOS.  I am sure it would run fine under FreeDOS.

> And then I got:
> 
>     Emacs? Good Lord! I thought you had to be
>     an over aged hippie to use that :-)
> 
> ???

They are joking with you.  They included a smiley to explicitly say
they were joking.  Don't make too much of it.  Just smile and either
say nothing or joke back.

The implication is that people who learned emacs are all of the same
generation.  Hippies were usually stereotyped as being 20-something
and "different".  An older generation from the time of the hippie era.
But add 20 years and now we would be an old hippie.

Most people think of "My Generation" by The Who.  But in this
conversation maybe The Zimmers version applies better.

  The Zimmers "My Generation"
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqfFrCUrEbY

Bob

P.S. If you don't know the song here is original by The Who.

  The Who - My Generation
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594WLzzb3JI