6 ms·

Xah Lee can't program a line of Lisp on his own. Most of that code is collected from elsewhere. There are much better resources to learn Emacs Lisp from.

by lispm 11y ago

eric_the_read 11y ago
What are some good ones? I'd love to have something to suggest to the elisp-curious.
- catern 11y ago
  An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp is good, and is available both from inside emacs in M-x info, and on the web at https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html
packetslave 11y ago
seems like an unnecessary personal attack
- lispm 11y ago
  It's just the truth. I've seen him posting code for a long time. He has posted lots of bad advice, because he does not understand much Lisp programming and makes claims about all kinds of random stuff.
  - sooheon 11y ago
    As someone who comes across his writings once in a while I wish you would counter his bad advice with your good advice, rather than simply write that its bad.
    - lispm 11y ago
      That's a fulltime job. comp.lang.lisp did that several years. Just take from this discussion that his Lisp style is non-idiomatic and he writes in some primitive crappy imperative style. See my other example in this discussion.
brudgers 11y ago
The way to handle an unhelpful resource is to flag it. Even better would be to submit superior resources. The ad homenim is unproductive because it just makes people dumber and makes mean behavior look normal.
- lispm 11y ago
  Xah Lee has trolled Lisp groups for years. It's well known that much of his 'advice' is useless. The number of bullshit posts by him is a bignum. His comp.lang.lisp trolling is legendary. Nothing 'ad homenim' or mean - just saying how it is.
  - manish_gill 11y ago
    As an emacs beginner, I've landed on his site numerous times, often finding it helpful. The fact that he might or might not have trolled some mailing list is of no concern to me. If you have a better alternative resource, please present it. If you can find technical faults in this resource, you should provide them so the author can correct it and other might learn of them as well. Otherwise, stop trying to justify ad hominem with meaningless retorts.
    - lispm 11y ago
      > The fact that he might or might not have trolled some mailing list is of no concern to me. It's not meaningless to me. > If you can find technical faults in this resource, you should provide them so the author can correct it and other might learn of them as well. We had extensive discussions with him for years. Literally thousands of posts can be found on comp.lang.lisp. The only Lisp he learned was some imperative crappy style, while lecturing everyone how dumb they are.
      - josteink 11y ago
        > The only Lisp he learned was some imperative crappy style Not to be trolling myself, but I believe that's part of the "practical" aspect. You'll find much of the same in "Practical common lisp".
xahlee 11y ago
what a malicious lie. I have written some 10 packages, at least hundred thousand lines of emacs lisp since 2005, all public in github or on my website. http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/xah_emacs_modes.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/xah_emacs_modes.html the only borrowed code i can think of now, now named xah-extend-selection in xah-fly-keys, by Nikolaj Schumacher, fully credited in the inline doc still. (and that function is also in ergoemacs-mode, fully credited still, now lead by Matt F.) Any code, that possibly may be considered borrowed, i'm painstaking to give credit, often taking sometimes a hour to find the person's REAL NAME correctly (as opposed to nicknames) (if public), personal site url or blog url or social network url if any, to link to, painstakingly ask the which url he prefers, and often ask permission too when it is clearly not necessary. One can find lots of “i learned this from xyz” in my website. I learned emacs lisp, starting in 2005, the first 5 years with much help from comp.emacs or gnu.emacs.help newsgroup, and freenode's irc emacs channel, and emacs wiki. This is also fully credited. Xah's Emacs Tutorial: Acknowledgment http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/thanks.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/thanks.html linked at the bottom of my emacs tutorial. I know lisp before. Read entire Scheme r4rs and 75% of SICP in 1998, 1999. These can be verified in newsgroup. I coded Wolfram Language for 6 years before 1999, and worked at Wolfram Research for half a year. I have several eassys documentinging these facts. For example: Xah Lee's Computing Experience (Impression Of Lisp from Mathematica) http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah_comp_exp.html http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah_comp_exp.html personally, i generally don't borrow code, because i'm rather one of those weird or aloof guy with meticulous control of things, down to every character placement. In my elisp life since 2005 to today, i must have stolen ideas, concepts. I can't recall explicitly which at the moment, but i can say in good faith that any non-trivial concepts i've used in my project i've given acknowledgement. Note: i've been considered a troll in comp.lang.lisp and other newsgroups from about 2000 to 2010. There were many heated arguments, and there are some who will say negative things about me wherever my name is mentioned. I do not think of myself as a troll, and have written many essays on this. Netiquette Anthropology: a Tale of Tech Geekers http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/troll.html http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/troll.html PS unrelated but instead of a separate post: I want to thank many people who have helped a year ago. That was a big help. Thank you. I do dish-washing part-time, and am ok.
- 11y ago
tumba 11y ago
I have no desire to get into a personal argument, but I would like to point out that one contribution he has made for me that have not seen elsewhere is that he has chosen to use Emacs as a text-processing scripting environment in preference to Perl or Python or some other scripting languages. Without commenting on issues of style or idiom I found his write-ups of this experience using the text-editing primitives of Emacs to be useful and interesting. For example, consider: "Text Processing: Emacs Lisp vs Perl" http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_text_processing_lang.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_text_processing_lang.html "How to Write grep in Emacs Lisp" http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_grep_script.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_grep_script.html
- lispm 11y ago
  I would avoid this stuff. His language advocacy is not very convincing and he also fails to understand what grep does.
  - klibertp 11y ago
    OMG, he actually loads all the files to temporary buffers and calls it `grep`? And the other text is misguided for the most part and reveals a misunderstanding of some basic concepts. tumba, please don't use these texts. I second lispm here. Only read these once you have a solid understanding of described concepts yourself.
    - xahlee 11y ago
      emacs lisp cannot load one line of a file. It's whole or nothing.
tangue 11y ago
When learning Emacs Xah Lee's works has been really helpful, and I'd like to thank him. If someone think Xah's wrong they have to produce better ressources.

Xah Lee can't program a line of Lisp on his own. Most of that code is collected from elsewhere. There are much better resources to learn Emacs Lisp from.

by lispm 11y ago

Xah Lee can't program a line of Lisp on his own. Most of that code is collected from elsewhere. There are much better resources to learn Emacs Lisp from.

eric_the_read 11y ago

What are some good ones? I'd love to have something to suggest to the elisp-curious.

catern 11y ago
An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp is good, and is available both from inside emacs in M-x info, and on the web at https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html

packetslave 11y ago

seems like an unnecessary personal attack

lispm 11y ago
It's just the truth. I've seen him posting code for a long time. He has posted lots of bad advice, because he does not understand much Lisp programming and makes claims about all kinds of random stuff.
- sooheon 11y ago
  As someone who comes across his writings once in a while I wish you would counter his bad advice with your good advice, rather than simply write that its bad.
  - lispm 11y ago
    That's a fulltime job. comp.lang.lisp did that several years. Just take from this discussion that his Lisp style is non-idiomatic and he writes in some primitive crappy imperative style. See my other example in this discussion.

brudgers 11y ago

The way to handle an unhelpful resource is to flag it. Even better would be to submit superior resources. The ad homenim is unproductive because it just makes people dumber and makes mean behavior look normal.

lispm 11y ago
Xah Lee has trolled Lisp groups for years. It's well known that much of his 'advice' is useless. The number of bullshit posts by him is a bignum. His comp.lang.lisp trolling is legendary. Nothing 'ad homenim' or mean - just saying how it is.
- manish_gill 11y ago
  As an emacs beginner, I've landed on his site numerous times, often finding it helpful. The fact that he might or might not have trolled some mailing list is of no concern to me. If you have a better alternative resource, please present it. If you can find technical faults in this resource, you should provide them so the author can correct it and other might learn of them as well. Otherwise, stop trying to justify ad hominem with meaningless retorts.
  - lispm 11y ago
    > The fact that he might or might not have trolled some mailing list is of no concern to me. It's not meaningless to me. > If you can find technical faults in this resource, you should provide them so the author can correct it and other might learn of them as well. We had extensive discussions with him for years. Literally thousands of posts can be found on comp.lang.lisp. The only Lisp he learned was some imperative crappy style, while lecturing everyone how dumb they are.
    - josteink 11y ago
      > The only Lisp he learned was some imperative crappy style Not to be trolling myself, but I believe that's part of the "practical" aspect. You'll find much of the same in "Practical common lisp".

xahlee 11y ago

what a malicious lie. I have written some 10 packages, at least hundred thousand lines of emacs lisp since 2005, all public in github or on my website. http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/xah_emacs_modes.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/xah_emacs_modes.html the only borrowed code i can think of now, now named xah-extend-selection in xah-fly-keys, by Nikolaj Schumacher, fully credited in the inline doc still. (and that function is also in ergoemacs-mode, fully credited still, now lead by Matt F.) Any code, that possibly may be considered borrowed, i'm painstaking to give credit, often taking sometimes a hour to find the person's REAL NAME correctly (as opposed to nicknames) (if public), personal site url or blog url or social network url if any, to link to, painstakingly ask the which url he prefers, and often ask permission too when it is clearly not necessary. One can find lots of “i learned this from xyz” in my website. I learned emacs lisp, starting in 2005, the first 5 years with much help from comp.emacs or gnu.emacs.help newsgroup, and freenode's irc emacs channel, and emacs wiki. This is also fully credited. Xah's Emacs Tutorial: Acknowledgment http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/thanks.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/thanks.html linked at the bottom of my emacs tutorial. I know lisp before. Read entire Scheme r4rs and 75% of SICP in 1998, 1999. These can be verified in newsgroup. I coded Wolfram Language for 6 years before 1999, and worked at Wolfram Research for half a year. I have several eassys documentinging these facts. For example: Xah Lee's Computing Experience (Impression Of Lisp from Mathematica) http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah_comp_exp.html http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah_comp_exp.html personally, i generally don't borrow code, because i'm rather one of those weird or aloof guy with meticulous control of things, down to every character placement. In my elisp life since 2005 to today, i must have stolen ideas, concepts. I can't recall explicitly which at the moment, but i can say in good faith that any non-trivial concepts i've used in my project i've given acknowledgement. Note: i've been considered a troll in comp.lang.lisp and other newsgroups from about 2000 to 2010. There were many heated arguments, and there are some who will say negative things about me wherever my name is mentioned. I do not think of myself as a troll, and have written many essays on this. Netiquette Anthropology: a Tale of Tech Geekers http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/troll.html http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/troll.html PS unrelated but instead of a separate post: I want to thank many people who have helped a year ago. That was a big help. Thank you. I do dish-washing part-time, and am ok.

11y ago

tumba 11y ago

I have no desire to get into a personal argument, but I would like to point out that one contribution he has made for me that have not seen elsewhere is that he has chosen to use Emacs as a text-processing scripting environment in preference to Perl or Python or some other scripting languages. Without commenting on issues of style or idiom I found his write-ups of this experience using the text-editing primitives of Emacs to be useful and interesting. For example, consider: "Text Processing: Emacs Lisp vs Perl" http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_text_processing_lang.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_text_processing_lang.html "How to Write grep in Emacs Lisp" http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_grep_script.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_grep_script.html

lispm 11y ago
I would avoid this stuff. His language advocacy is not very convincing and he also fails to understand what grep does.
- klibertp 11y ago
  OMG, he actually loads all the files to temporary buffers and calls it `grep`? And the other text is misguided for the most part and reveals a misunderstanding of some basic concepts. tumba, please don't use these texts. I second lispm here. Only read these once you have a solid understanding of described concepts yourself.
  - xahlee 11y ago
    emacs lisp cannot load one line of a file. It's whole or nothing.

tangue 11y ago

When learning Emacs Xah Lee's works has been really helpful, and I'd like to thank him. If someone think Xah's wrong they have to produce better ressources.