4 ms·

RMS to me is really a curious case. He doesn't know how to install GNU+Linux and relies on others to do it. He doesn't know how to take a screenshot, and I reme

RMS to me is really a curious case. He doesn't know how to install GNU+Linux and relies on others to do it. He doesn't know how to take a screenshot, and I remember reading other snippets from him about not knowing how to perform other basic tasks.

gosub100 11mo ago
See also: Knuth. Literally wrote the book on algorithms, but barely is able to do more than open a window in FVWM.
- clra 11mo ago
  Can you cite this in some way? Given he's shown the competence to write and typeset an impressive series of books, I find this claim pretty hard to believe.
  - gosub100 11mo ago
    https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/.fvwm2rc https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/.fvwm2rc Here is his fvwm rc. Given that it's fully documented, I will walk back my assumption that he can barely open a terminal. I researched it a bit and recalled an interview where he said something like "all I use X windows for is is to open a terminal in FVWM", so he clearly can customize it, but he prefers a minimalist setup.
- svat 11mo ago
  This couldn't be further from the truth. He has given several talks where he's projecting his computer, you can see him comfortably switching between all the programs he uses (Emacs, Mathematica, etc); in fact he is very efficient and has them customized just the way he wants it. (I even recall some blog post where the author watched one of these talks and was amazed by just wizardly he was navigating between programs or Emacs buffers or whatever.) If you scroll down to the bottom of https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html you can see his configurations for Emacs and fvwm and even macOS keyboard layouts; some of them were updated as recently as this year. This 2020 profile has a photo of him standing at his desk: https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knuth-cant-stop-telling-stories-20200416/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knu... and in the 2008 interview with Binstock (https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/other/knuth-interview.pdf https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/other/knuth-interview.pdf = https://web.archive.org/web/20250408034153/http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856 https://web.archive.org/web/20250408034153/http://www.inform...) he mentioned the set of tools he uses, which includes even “in rare cases, on a Mac with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator”. Overall he is very comfortable with his computer. > I designed my own bitmap font for use with Emacs, because I hate the way the ASCII apostrophe and the left open quote […] I prefer rxvt to xterm for terminal input. Since last December, I’ve been using a file backup system called backupfs, which meets my need beautifully […] Incidentally, with Linux I much prefer the keyboard focus that I can get with classic FVWM to the GNOME and KDE environments that other people seem to like better. To each their own.
- anthk 11mo ago
  FVWM setups can be really complex. Ditto with (c)twm. Once you are free to choose your windows geometry and keybindings, everything it's just either bloat or severely restricted.
venturecruelty 11mo ago
I don't know why people take him so seriously. He said some decent things about software freedom, and the rest of his entire existence seems to be him being deliberately obtuse and generally off-putting. I find it bizarre that there's this strange carve-out here for him, especially considering that he would absolutely loathe 99% of the software that gets discussed here.
- munificent 11mo ago
  > He said some decent things about software freedom Well, he also created GCC and GNU Emacs. Linux and the idea that developer tools should be free wouldn't exist without him.
- GuB-42 11mo ago
  RMS is an extremist, and not the kind of person I tend to agree with, he seems to be a bit of an asshole too... But that's also the kind of people we need. Companies are not going to compromise on their profits, we need someone to balance that and not compromise on software freedom. With these two extremes we can take an balanced position and that's how we got Linux and distros like Debian: it is free software, but it is also pragmatic. If we only had pure GNU (HURD), we wouldn't get far, but if we didn't have GNU at all, it would be even worse. Richard Stallman didn't just talk. He actually wrote code, famously Emacs, and started the whole GNU project. I am not aware of recent technical contributions though.
  - mcny 11mo ago
    This is very well put. I appreciate him because I can't or rather I won't be like him. We need people like him and I will be the first to say "not it".
  - hombre_fatal 11mo ago
    I lived a year in a great hostel run by a German girl in Mexico. She was always planning social events, hyping the place so that it was full of interesting people, and more. It was the most social part of my life even though I was 30. But she also was frantic and obsessive and short tempered which was off putting. Other guests would often complain about her, and they would phrase it as if she’d be cool if only she could turn down that one aspect about her. I had the same reaction at first too. But eventually it became painfully obvious to me that that’s not how people work. Because the quirk you’re complaining about is the same quirk that got her to start a successful hostel across the world that we’re all enjoying. We aren’t a bunch of independent levers that we get to adjust. Yet for some reason we pretend like that’s the case.
adalacelove 11mo ago
Most screenshots for these well known guys are quite boring. Coincidence? I think if you want to be good at something you need focus.
- agumonkey 11mo ago
  Maybe what we need is a screenshot of their brain thinking
- anthk 11mo ago
  The more 'h4ck3r' screenshot you have with useless toys at /r/unixporn in Reddit, the less you actually know about computers. Most i3 setups there are for showoff; cwm has better defaults and conmuting between tags it's far more manageable than fighting with tiles where often the window resolutions are either useless or scramble your content. Also most fluxbox or *box users will have far better setups than i3 ones because they use their actual setups to do actual stuff instead of posting screenshots.
  - opan 11mo ago
    Hard disagree. The fact that they have customized their system to such a degree shows they do know how to use computers. I think you're trying to conflate that with other things like programming ability, which are orthogonal.
    - sph 11mo ago
      Wrong. Knowing to customize a theme != knowing to use a computer != knowing how computers work. I can say I know computers and how they work pretty well, but these days I have much better things to do to learn the best way to themes my shell so that it matches my waybar, and that both switch colourscheme when dark mode activates. I could learn if I wanted, but I’m not a teenager anymore; I don’t care. Incidentally, when I had the time concern myself with GTK themes and wallpapers and Compiz, my knowledge in computers was a tenth of what it is now. It would be like saying a car decorator is the most expert of mechanics.
Boxxed 11mo ago
I once asked a YC alum, "Got any good Paul Graham stories?" And he had a couple; apparently the dude would often ask for help with basic tech things like setting up his wireless. Same kind of thing, I guess.
- anthk 11mo ago
  TBH with everchaning ifconfig/ip/systemd under GNU/Linux you almost forget that over years when your focused on Lisp or similar. Under OpenBSD as the settngs are pretty much the same over releases, you can use ifconfig and /etc/hostname.if almost forever. That's it, upgrade and forget.
HeadlessChild 11mo ago
An engineer at my work literally designed the processor architecture that lives in our products but he is more or less computer illiterate.
epolanski 10mo ago
I write software and use computers from ages, but put me in front of any app I haven't authored and I have no clue how to do things. Often I find that apps have features only because I see others using the application. Make me do anything on applications banking/government/delivery-related and I have to ask family members.
- bdangubic 10mo ago
  haven’t authored or just don’t use? I would assume that tools that you use you know inside and out (e.g. Code or IntelliJ)
  - epolanski 10mo ago
    You might be onto something, because interestingly I don't think there's any software at all I know inside out or have ever mastered. I've used everything from DAWs, image editors, IDEs, terminal emulators, operating systems, dev tools, spreadsheets and I'm quite sure I've never went much in depth in any of them. I'm not like that on the abstract level. I know the ins and outs of functional programming concepts and their mathematical definitions, many deep details of programming languages or their compilers and many other things but I suck at tooling. It's not just IT-related. I can explain thoroughly the chemistry of dough making (which is far from simple), but I never got very good at making it, so friends of mine that know nothing about how it works still make better bread or pizza than I do.
    - bdangubic 10mo ago
      fascinating!

gosub100 11mo ago

See also: Knuth. Literally wrote the book on algorithms, but barely is able to do more than open a window in FVWM.

clra 11mo ago
Can you cite this in some way? Given he's shown the competence to write and typeset an impressive series of books, I find this claim pretty hard to believe.
- gosub100 11mo ago
  https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/.fvwm2rc https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/.fvwm2rc Here is his fvwm rc. Given that it's fully documented, I will walk back my assumption that he can barely open a terminal. I researched it a bit and recalled an interview where he said something like "all I use X windows for is is to open a terminal in FVWM", so he clearly can customize it, but he prefers a minimalist setup.
svat 11mo ago
This couldn't be further from the truth. He has given several talks where he's projecting his computer, you can see him comfortably switching between all the programs he uses (Emacs, Mathematica, etc); in fact he is very efficient and has them customized just the way he wants it. (I even recall some blog post where the author watched one of these talks and was amazed by just wizardly he was navigating between programs or Emacs buffers or whatever.) If you scroll down to the bottom of https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html you can see his configurations for Emacs and fvwm and even macOS keyboard layouts; some of them were updated as recently as this year. This 2020 profile has a photo of him standing at his desk: https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knuth-cant-stop-telling-stories-20200416/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knu... and in the 2008 interview with Binstock (https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/other/knuth-interview.pdf https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/other/knuth-interview.pdf = https://web.archive.org/web/20250408034153/http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856 https://web.archive.org/web/20250408034153/http://www.inform...) he mentioned the set of tools he uses, which includes even “in rare cases, on a Mac with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator”. Overall he is very comfortable with his computer. > I designed my own bitmap font for use with Emacs, because I hate the way the ASCII apostrophe and the left open quote […] I prefer rxvt to xterm for terminal input. Since last December, I’ve been using a file backup system called backupfs, which meets my need beautifully […] Incidentally, with Linux I much prefer the keyboard focus that I can get with classic FVWM to the GNOME and KDE environments that other people seem to like better. To each their own.
anthk 11mo ago
FVWM setups can be really complex. Ditto with (c)twm. Once you are free to choose your windows geometry and keybindings, everything it's just either bloat or severely restricted.

venturecruelty 11mo ago

I don't know why people take him so seriously. He said some decent things about software freedom, and the rest of his entire existence seems to be him being deliberately obtuse and generally off-putting. I find it bizarre that there's this strange carve-out here for him, especially considering that he would absolutely loathe 99% of the software that gets discussed here.

munificent 11mo ago
> He said some decent things about software freedom Well, he also created GCC and GNU Emacs. Linux and the idea that developer tools should be free wouldn't exist without him.
GuB-42 11mo ago
RMS is an extremist, and not the kind of person I tend to agree with, he seems to be a bit of an asshole too... But that's also the kind of people we need. Companies are not going to compromise on their profits, we need someone to balance that and not compromise on software freedom. With these two extremes we can take an balanced position and that's how we got Linux and distros like Debian: it is free software, but it is also pragmatic. If we only had pure GNU (HURD), we wouldn't get far, but if we didn't have GNU at all, it would be even worse. Richard Stallman didn't just talk. He actually wrote code, famously Emacs, and started the whole GNU project. I am not aware of recent technical contributions though.
- mcny 11mo ago
  This is very well put. I appreciate him because I can't or rather I won't be like him. We need people like him and I will be the first to say "not it".
- hombre_fatal 11mo ago
  I lived a year in a great hostel run by a German girl in Mexico. She was always planning social events, hyping the place so that it was full of interesting people, and more. It was the most social part of my life even though I was 30. But she also was frantic and obsessive and short tempered which was off putting. Other guests would often complain about her, and they would phrase it as if she’d be cool if only she could turn down that one aspect about her. I had the same reaction at first too. But eventually it became painfully obvious to me that that’s not how people work. Because the quirk you’re complaining about is the same quirk that got her to start a successful hostel across the world that we’re all enjoying. We aren’t a bunch of independent levers that we get to adjust. Yet for some reason we pretend like that’s the case.

adalacelove 11mo ago

Most screenshots for these well known guys are quite boring. Coincidence? I think if you want to be good at something you need focus.

agumonkey 11mo ago
Maybe what we need is a screenshot of their brain thinking
anthk 11mo ago
The more 'h4ck3r' screenshot you have with useless toys at /r/unixporn in Reddit, the less you actually know about computers. Most i3 setups there are for showoff; cwm has better defaults and conmuting between tags it's far more manageable than fighting with tiles where often the window resolutions are either useless or scramble your content. Also most fluxbox or *box users will have far better setups than i3 ones because they use their actual setups to do actual stuff instead of posting screenshots.
- opan 11mo ago
  Hard disagree. The fact that they have customized their system to such a degree shows they do know how to use computers. I think you're trying to conflate that with other things like programming ability, which are orthogonal.
  - sph 11mo ago
    Wrong. Knowing to customize a theme != knowing to use a computer != knowing how computers work. I can say I know computers and how they work pretty well, but these days I have much better things to do to learn the best way to themes my shell so that it matches my waybar, and that both switch colourscheme when dark mode activates. I could learn if I wanted, but I’m not a teenager anymore; I don’t care. Incidentally, when I had the time concern myself with GTK themes and wallpapers and Compiz, my knowledge in computers was a tenth of what it is now. It would be like saying a car decorator is the most expert of mechanics.

Boxxed 11mo ago

I once asked a YC alum, "Got any good Paul Graham stories?" And he had a couple; apparently the dude would often ask for help with basic tech things like setting up his wireless. Same kind of thing, I guess.

anthk 11mo ago
TBH with everchaning ifconfig/ip/systemd under GNU/Linux you almost forget that over years when your focused on Lisp or similar. Under OpenBSD as the settngs are pretty much the same over releases, you can use ifconfig and /etc/hostname.if almost forever. That's it, upgrade and forget.

HeadlessChild 11mo ago

An engineer at my work literally designed the processor architecture that lives in our products but he is more or less computer illiterate.

epolanski 10mo ago

I write software and use computers from ages, but put me in front of any app I haven't authored and I have no clue how to do things. Often I find that apps have features only because I see others using the application. Make me do anything on applications banking/government/delivery-related and I have to ask family members.

bdangubic 10mo ago
haven’t authored or just don’t use? I would assume that tools that you use you know inside and out (e.g. Code or IntelliJ)
- epolanski 10mo ago
  You might be onto something, because interestingly I don't think there's any software at all I know inside out or have ever mastered. I've used everything from DAWs, image editors, IDEs, terminal emulators, operating systems, dev tools, spreadsheets and I'm quite sure I've never went much in depth in any of them. I'm not like that on the abstract level. I know the ins and outs of functional programming concepts and their mathematical definitions, many deep details of programming languages or their compilers and many other things but I suck at tooling. It's not just IT-related. I can explain thoroughly the chemistry of dough making (which is far from simple), but I never got very good at making it, so friends of mine that know nothing about how it works still make better bread or pizza than I do.
  - bdangubic 10mo ago
    fascinating!