Re: Emacs, oldsters, newbiness

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() Paul R <paul.r.ml@gmail.com>
() Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:31:14 +0200

   A lot GNU/Emacs active developers develop emacs for their own
   needs of emacs gurus.  Those are concentrating all their
   efforts on what bog them the most.  It's like it has become for
   them a solitary pleasure, or necessity, to hack on emacs.
   Doing so, they tend to neglect to clean up and facilitate the
   steep and hard path going from the state of total newbiness to
   emacs, to the state of being able to appreciate the work being
   done at the moment.

facilitate the hardness -- what does that really mean?
to make things more pretty dirty, or to make them more ugly clean?
mayhaps those hackers are deserving of pity,
newbie wonder absconded, they grate on the gritty,
trying to recapture the big awe of the big wall,
trying to refracture their jigged maw w/ their rigged saw.
too precise now, focused instruments thwart them;
original curiosity formless, now lost to the short zen.

harden the facility -- when is culture just overgrown moss?
does the stone monkey even remember five centuries lost?
strike out in one direction to cross monsters and rivers,
keeping in tow the untoward human that shivers,
every hair just a jump from the thousand league mountains,
yet plodding on course, burning oils, flowing fountains.
return of the fruitful, swift and unforgotten,
is wisdom the hand that clamps down, does not soften?

thi