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I'm still struggling to figure out why ESR is relevant, or ever was relevant, for that matter. As far as I can tell, his most significant engineering accomplis
by jemfinch 15y ago
I'm still struggling to figure out why ESR is relevant, or ever was relevant, for that matter. As far as I can tell, his most significant engineering accomplishment was fetchmail, and I'm not sure many here would call it very significant these days.
(I'm willing to accept the downvotes I'll likely get if only someone will answer me on this point.)
- ryanklee 15y agoApart from his being a great public advocate for open source software, he wrote "The Art of Unix Programming" and "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" -- both very influential.
- docgnome 15y agoThe Art of Unix Programming is even a good book! I though can't stand ESR's rhetoric.
- pmr_ 15y agoAlso ncurses (which is still widely used) and a large amount of GNU Emacs code. I cannot comment on how much of the code that is in use in those tools now is still his, but I don't think that matters. But probably his writing and advocacy for Open Source is more influential than his code.
- piggity 15y agoStruggle no more! How can anyone forget his seminal work - Sex Tips for Geeks http://catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/ http://catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/
- Ideka 15y agoHow does it matter whether ESR is (or was ever) relevant or not?
- meatsock 15y agohis historical relevance to hackerdom was firmly cemented by his work on the jargon file, in my opinion.
- bwarp 15y agoWell that's a silly comment. Is your entire life based around percieved relevance? Zuckerberg could be considered "more relevant", but that doesn't make him a good person with morals.