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Namespaces is an odd one. In general, I've seen more woes from junior programmers over optimizing for "private visibility" than I have noticed the benefits. I can't claim there have been no benefits, so I cede it could be confirmation bias on my part.

Still, I don't want to just turn to nitpicking the examples. I asked, you gave. I'll think on those some.

I stand by my assertion that the abstractions are good for what emacs needs. As evidenced by how well it does keep up, all told. Does it do as well as a staffed resource to build some resources? Probably not. More, it is unlikely to ever be able to make a feature that nothing else can do. By virtue of it being open. If something is amazing from it, others can emulate it.

But, the amount of synergy between modules speaks volumes. Tramp alone is quite amazing at how many modes "just work" with it. With no prior planning on having to expose internals or special methods.

I also confess I expected threading to be mentioned. Another thing which I have seen cause as many errors as it typically helps. Effectively the "goto" of application development. Often best avoided, but also often required.




I'm not up to date what GNU Emacs does with by default concurrent threads of Lisp code on multiple cores. What is the story there?

I would think that each Zmacs instance from 40 years ago already ran in its own thread.


My impression has been that emacs itself does fine with multiple processes. As seen by the compilation buffer being fine. So, if you setup a sentinel and do the process buffer technique, things can be done. Most people lament the lack of threads, though. More, I think most people do not want to build the necessary stuff for a process buffer to help.

Happy to know where I'm mistaken there. And I've certainly seen places where a blocking call can be annoying. Usually creeps up into a place that was fine at first. Org mode source execution is a good one. For the vast majority of stuff I do in those, I'm fine that it blocks while it gives me the results. Then I'll kick off one block that I should have added the async flag to, but just didn't.


If I start a long running Emacs Lisp function in IELM (the GNU Emacs repl), then GNU Emacs is completely unresponsive.

My Lisp Machine emulator for Symbolics Genera is still responsive for the same code snippet, entered in a Listener window.


Right. I know if you don't do the process buffer code, you can freeze things. And I can fully cede that doing that for elisp is weird. Same idea in a sly buffer, though, is fine.

Edit: For amusement, I was trying to see how bad it could be, so I made a loop to get the 90000th fib. Which, wasn't enough to see here. Hard to really appreciate how fast computers have become.


sly is easier, there the computation is done by a remote Common Lisp. But the danger may be long running output operations, unless they explicitly give up control for other (possibly green) threads.

But in a Lisp application to not be responsive at all is kind of rare. Most Lisp application runtimes will be able to process interrupts and/or switch "green threads" or "native threads".




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