worlds of classic objects [was Re: DEDICATED HOBBYIST ALERT: IBM AS/400 9406-F2 for cheap sale in Germany]

On Wed, Jan 06, 2021 at 02:01:17PM +0100, Patrik Schindler via cctalk wrote: And it is a pleasure to have a conversation with you, too. Perhaps because this place is full of goodwilling strangers. [...] Man, I do have both patience and motivation (at least when I am not asleep). Otherwise, how could I play a game over and over for more than twenty years? Well, of course when I make a break and do not play it for a year, I forget details and it makes sense to start again. And those emotions. It is a bit like going to the bar where locals demanded to beat me, but I ran away so there was no conclusion, then after a year I come again... (In case this not quite obvious, I am making jokes of myself. I need more practice, because I am rather lousy satorist...) [...] Nah. It would not be heroic if I started calling for help. [...] Myself, I now feel the inexplicable pull towards the world of CP/M. Really, I have to play with it and be done with it. But, yes, if time permits. [...] I kind of understand their attitude. And I think I will always admire it when someone can resuscitate the original and make it shine. And I can learn plenty of interesting things by reading about old ways. But, I think that just as I was looking at classic computers, something in the back of my head was asking, if this object could be used by me in some practical way. And usually there is plenty of uses for a new object like this, but they no longer make them new. So for practical uses, the only resonable choice seems to be making franken-objects, connecting new parts with old soft, yes, this means emulation but also extension. Otherwise, the originals will fade away - sooner or later they will - and there would be no trace of whatever valuable lessons the past had. [...] For such things I use org-mode, a kind of modular extension in Emacs-the-editor. Actually, it is a code in elisp and Emacs just interprets it and shows specially formatted text as tree-like structure, which can be treated as knowledge base, or notes, a book one is writing, a blog which is then converted and exported to the server (I never saw it, but some claim they do this) or whatever one wants - one can also make use of pim/diary/todos, insert and run code snippets in huge number of languages, and make small spreadsheets inside the org-file. I find it very handy. Not perfect but more than "good enough". Of course the tree-like structure can be edited inside Emacs. This is just a text file, so it can also be processed by standard unix tools, or whatever other tools or scripts one prefers for text processing. There are/were some movies on y-t, I watched them first to have an idea of what to expect from it. The world of Emacs was so cool that I actually spent some time and learnt enough to use for my various purposes. It took few years of lazy learning, but right now I am on the level of writing my own functions which serve as shortcuts (doing something "my way"), or, for example, allow me to write text in Polish even when I do not have proper kb mappings (transform, say, "za/.z/'o//l/'c g/,e/'sl/,a ja/'z/'n" into unicoded "za???? g??l? ja??"). This is a kind of "classic" which greatly appeals to me. Emacs was first written fourty or so years ago, and when I read elisp files from install dir I quite often stumble upon code written in the 1980-ties or 1990-ties. But the thing is alive and kicking. If one had to learn only one thing of all the old things still available to us, then I think Emacs should be the choice. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **