Hacker News Reader

Comment by gkya | Hacker News Reader

I really dislike this style of writing. When I came to the actual important part I was exhausted already having read paragraphs of much-ado-about-nothing. GNU Emacs is older than me, and it's probably older than X Windows, certainly it'll have some weird things here and there. Why the shock?

I haven't ever experienced any flickering on emacs myself, but thanks to the author for the patch anyways. One thing I'm looking forward to is the concurrency patch.

View on HN

> style of writing

Styles of reading also vary. You do not always have to struggle through "boring" parts to be able to understand the parts that you think are more important or interesting. (I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the entire piece, having found all parts equally interesting and fun to read.)

Yes that's what I eventually did, just skipped forward to the end. But still the general dismissiveness of the article is off putting.

Then don't read it. Surely there will be a summary blog post written for those that don't like long form. I personally enjoy the meandering sometimes. It's the difference between reading a book and reading the cliff notes, they each have their place.

It's not of your business whether I read it or not. This is my opinion on the prose style, addressed to the author, and secondarily to other bloggers here.

As someone that been on HN for 9 years, pushing back on these kinds of comments is my business. This is my opinion on the value of you coming to Hacker News to complain about the author's writing style, and secondarily aimed at other commenters here. Your style of just summarily shitting on how the author wrote this piece adds no value to the discussion. Clearly lots of other people like it, this has been the #1 piece on HN for hours. If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to read it or asking for your opinion.

In the mean time comments like yours dissuade other people from putting themselves out there. I'll get 100 positive responses on something I write or say at a conference, but the 1 hater always sticks out more. If that means fewer people write publicly it makes us all worse off.

I really wish I could flag responses to my comments because what you do is a personal attack on me and this will go by because my top level comment is at the end of the thread.

But there are real issues with the style of trashing on old tech for being old, which this post is full of. Emacs is being criticized for making what amount to practical technical decisions. This is a relevant point in the current tech climate of rewriting the last framework "because 2013 is so old".

Didn't sound like the author was trashing on emacs for being old, to me. It sounded loving, if anything. I was practically jealous of his intimate relationship with his editor by the end of it.

He did make changes to the codebase, so it's a lot more than the idle whining you typically see. That is one thing I will give him.

> As someone that been on HN for 9 years

This kind of pissing contest does nobody any good, while we're on the topic of adding value to HN

Usually, one must read a piece to build an opinion on its style and comment about it. Just sayin'.

As you see you better keep them comments to yourself. This guy wrote that I'm "shitting on" things and "nobody cares about [my] opinions", and no mod intervention. A couple months ago I told a guy he was being too pedantic and my thread was detached.

I enjoyed it. He gave himself the freedom of writing personally.

It was an irresistible title for me. I think it had something to do with the fact that I was hungry when I read "Buttery Smooth Emacs" and before I knew it, I had read the article.

I have to agree. I tried hard to read it, but half way through I couldn't shake the "my 8-year old is more mature than this" and gave up.

The author doesn't appreciate the motivation and constraints that led to this. Obviously Emacs has been hugely successful despite these perceived "flaws". For me, it's a feature that it still supports old terminals and yes, I do use it. I haven't seen the patch, but it wouldn't surprise me if it breaks old functionality that some of us depends on.

I got the impression that the author really loves Emacs and has spent a huge portion of his life caring about it and I think there's a huge amount of enthusiasm in the post.

It manages to be fairly lighthearted and fun, while still teaching me something about Emacs. All in all, I really liked it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com