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From: fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted,comp.editors,comp.emacs
Subject: Re: SUMMARY: Super-simple UNIX editor
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.032655.5418@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 20 Jun 91 03:26:55 GMT
References: <1991Jun18.065340.25187@yenta.alb.nm.us> <17174@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <1991Jun19.013030.23227@cbfsb.att.com> <1991Jun19.192526.21975@chinet.chi.il.us>
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Organization: AIR, Stanford University, CA 94305 USA
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In article <1991Jun19.192526.21975@chinet.chi.il.us>, les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
|> In article <1991Jun19.013030.23227@cbfsb.att.com> Dan_Jacobson@ihlpz.ATT.COM writes:
|> 
|> >What impressed my a lot as a beginner was that nobody could take away
|> >all those megabytes of source code from me---so I knew I could take my
|> >GNU Emacs knowledge around with me and not worry too much about that
|> >big investment in learning going to waste... I'd just recompile on the
|> >next machine... anyway, this is one deep down long-term motivation...
|> >protecting ones' personal learning investment.
|> 
|> OK, nobody is going to argue that GNU Emacs is a poor choice for a
|> computer professional.  But.... If you ever had to work on a PC
|> or a machine as slow as the early 3B2's, or one that didn't have
|> a compiler and many megs of disk space available, even you might
|> reconsider.
|> 
Sigh... That's not it.  Before I came back school for this silly grad degree,
I was a aerospace engineer for five years and I worked first at  Bell Helicopter
and later North American Avaiation, Rockwell International.  Both are primier
aviation companies.  

At both places, MIS/technical computing control everything, even workstaions
owned by my group (bought using group's budget).  No one can be a root unless you 
are from MIS/technical computing dept.  So this "carrying my learning investment"
can be only realized in certain fields.  Absolutely NOT possible at many many 
places :-(

Per my colleague at Rockwell International, only until one month ago, my group's 
6Mhz IBM PC/AT with 30 Megs HD was replaced by a stupid IBM PS/2 55SX.  Now
this is the company which designed/made the space shuttle main engine and the
star war satellite killer missles.  And my group was heavily involved in both. 
Now if anyone tells me to build GNU emacs on a PS/2 55 SX, I may burst in 
uncontrollable laugh....:-(

As a student UNIX SA now, with Giga bytes at my disposal, I do routinely build
monster pkgs.  But people, this is, in my opinion, an exception rather than rules.

Conclusions:  Don't depend anything big and requires root privilage to install.
              => super simplity/smallness is MUST => NO FSF GNU emacs.
                                ^^^^^^^^^

I do use emacs/vi/crisp/ed/xedit/textedit/..... just to prepare the day when
I am no longer a super user :-(

Sincerely,

Chin Fang
Mechanical Engineering Department
Stanford University
fangchin@leland.stanford.edu