abstractstuff: Ecmacs?

William Bland (

abstractstuff) wrote,
@ 2007-12-07 13:19:00

Entry tags:

computers, lisp

Ecmacs?
Steve Yegge posted a status update about his recent work at Google.

For me the most interesting thing was a project that would allow people to write Emacs extensions in javascript.

Of course, attempts to replace elisp have a long and unfruitful history, but surely it has to happen one day. If it's not going to be a real Lisp (e.g. Scheme or Common Lisp), then javascript seems like a good alternative.

(Post a new comment)

	(Anonymous) 2007-12-08 02:17 am UTC (link)
	even though elisp is inferior to cl or scheme, it is still way better than javascript because of macros! i dont understand why you would prefer js over elisp to write extension for emacs (except js is more popular) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	abstractstuff 2007-12-08 04:48 am UTC (link)
	js certainly loses on syntax and defmacro. But in every other respect I can think of, it wins over elisp. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2007-12-08 03:08 am UTC (link)
	> If it's not going to be a real Lisp (e.g. Scheme or Common Lisp), then javascript seems like a good alternative. js would be at most a bearable alternative. imho. - attila (Reply to this)

	Secure,extensions http://arcanes.fr.eu.org/~pierre/openid/ 2007-12-08 09:49 am UTC (link)
	And with Javascript, you have extension written in Caja, an object capabilities subset of JS. That would give you extensions that you could run blindly, without any concern on security, even if it's code you got on the wild Net... http://code.google.com/p/google-caja/ (Reply to this)

(Anonymous)
2007-12-08 12:02 pm UTC (link)

I've read overview of the new ecmascript version, referenced from the Steve Yegge's post. Generic functions, tail recursion, destructuring binding, generators... It is even more lispy than current javascript. And even terminology in the document resembles CLHS ("lexical environment", "form").

But I'm concerned about the complexity. It supports three kinds of OOP: old prototype based, java-like and common lisp like.

-Anton

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2007-12-09 04:18 am UTC (link)
	I've also downloaded reference implementation of ECMAScript 4 with source code. The source code is in ML! > I've read overview of the new ecmascript version, > referenced from the Steve Yegge's post. Here is the link: http://www.ecmascript.org/ -Anton (Reply to this)(Parent)

Wrong way?
(Anonymous)
2007-12-09 01:28 am UTC (link)

This seems anti-interesting. The only reason Emacs is still big today is *because* it used Lisp. What would be interesting is the opposite: a way to write editor extensions in Lisp for other editors, like Eclipse (or whatever's popular these days). Of course, that would probably be just a band-aid to let one use paren-syntax; without Lisp-all-the-way-down, you lose out on a lot of benefits.

Hmm ... GNU picked Scheme as their extension language a few years back. An Emacs using Scheme would be pretty sweet. The reason RMS passed on Scheme for Emacs back then is because Scheme was new, its performance was abysmal, and machines were tiny (remember when "Eight Megabytes" was an insult?). It wouldn't feel as comfortable to me as CL, but I think it's probably a better text editor extension language. I wonder how much work it'd be...

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Wrong way?
(Anonymous)
2007-12-09 01:41 am UTC (link)

OK, I actually read the post, and his primary goal is "create a world-class JavaScript IDE for Emacs". That sounds like a more reasonable goal, somehow.

He does say he thinks that "JavaScript turns out to be a better language, now that I know them both in excruciating detail". I keep hearing people say that JS is a cool language, but never why, or rather, never from somebody who knows Lisp. Yeah, Elisp is like the lamest Lisp ever, but that's still better than just about anything else. Besides the fact that JS syntax keeps getting more and more baroque (it looks as hard as Perl to me now), why would you even consider a nonhomoiconic language if you care about power? JS is a flash in the pan (so far).

So good luck with this project. Maybe it'll encourage more people to try Emacs because they think JS will make it easier, and then discover that Lisp would give them more power. Any weird path that gets people to Lisp can't be all bad. :-)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Wrong way? (Anonymous) 2007-12-09 03:47 am UTC (link)
	Amen! -Anton (Reply to this)(Parent)

Mini Sitemap:

Username:		Create an Account Forgot your login? Login w/ OpenID
Password:
	Remember Me
	English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…