3 ms·
Which side of the debate was he on personally?
by mrandolph 7y ago
Which side of the debate was he on personally?
- troymc 7y agoI'm guessing Emacs, because vi has modes and he was not a fan of modes.
- ilaksh 7y agoI'm not sure that debate was really important since it's clear that his real answer was 'none of the above'.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoHe was very much in favor of modeless design, which emacs is much closer to than vi is. My argument was that emacs still has modes, operationally. You can make it a debugger, a mail reader, or a text editor by invoking code that puts it in that "mode." So the discussion quickly becomes what is meant by 'mode' and how are operational modes different than semantic modes which are different than presentation modes. If you haven't guessed it was pretty memorable for me, it helped me see some insights into the difference between design and engineering.