Re: Emacs rewrite in a maintainable language

[Rustom Mody]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> I don't think we should rewrite Emacs into anything other than C.
> It would not be an improvement.
>
> Some parts of the Emacs C code could use rewriting -- for instance,
> the parts that deal with management of X windows.  But there is no need
> to change to a different language.
>

When the rewrite bug is going round this is required reading
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

On a personal note (its about 1989 so my memory is foggy...):

The FSF tape carrying gcc etc had just arrived and a colleague was struggling to
compile it on a local C compiler
I wrote to RIchard something to the effect:

  How could someone intelligent enough to write emacs (in lisp) write
gcc (in C)?


Note 1: Since my memory of these near 3-decade old things are so foggy, I'm sure
Richard does not remember
Note 2: Wisdom being directly proportional to age, I dont have that question now