I hadn't seen an image of James Gosling with white hair. Felt the sudden weight of the years. Then when he mentioned he worked on the Pascal compiler, and I realized that he was just a student when Nicklaus Wirth was already a legendary computer scientist.
“[…] a friend of mine told me that because of his work in early development of Gosling Emacs, he had permission from Gosling in a message he had been sent to distribute his version of that. Gosling originally had set up his Emacs and distributed it free and gotten many people to help develop it, under the expectation based on Gosling’s own words in his own manual that he was going to follow the same spirit that I started with the original Emacs. Then he stabbed everyone in the back by putting copyrights on it, making people promise not to redistribute it and then selling it to a software-house. My later dealings with him personally showed that he was every bit as cowardly and despicable as you would expect from that history.”
— Richard Stallman, lecture at KTH (Sweden), 30 October 1986
James Gosling has contributed more to humanity than the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived. I think he deserves better than this narrow, one-sided libel.
> James Gosling has contributed more to humanity than the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived.
Not more than stallman though. Nowhere close to stallman.
> I think he deserves better than this narrow, one-sided libel.
Richard Stallman has contributed more to humanity than the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived - including gosling. I think he deserves better than this narrow, one-sided libel. See how that goes. Or how about we let people have their say? Regardless of how much they contributed to humanity.
RMS is very critical of things and as much as I have great respect for him I cant just take his side without all the facts. I dont even know a single person paying for emacs today either way. Seems like an old beef thats dead as dead can be considering GNU Emacs seems to have won out. Unless you are Walter Bright, you do you sir, you are awesome! I guess same with Linus who uses Micro Emacs if I remember correctly.
I always wanted to get more into emacs but I spend more time fighting the setup to bother anymore. I love Spacemacs but I am leaning more towards Neovim + Spacevim since its pretty damn nice.
>Is the host going to a funeral after recording the podcast with no time to change?
I've seen your comment go from heavily downvoted (I didn't downvote it) -- to upvoted.
To me, your comment seems mean-spirited and detracts from anything else positive that can be said about the actual content of the interview.
Personally, it didn't occur to me to be bothered by the business suit. For others that agree with gp's funeral comment and upvoted it, can you explain what bugs you about the outfit?
Is the attire signaling pretension?!? If you weren't aware, some of his other videos show how insecure he is with his place in life and how his accomplishments don't compare to those he admires. He's not a pretentious guy. The business suit just seems like a consistent "visual identity" since he goes on the road for interviews. He doesn't have a full studio and the "star power" to attract guests to his home location.
EDIT to reply: "> I was always taught it was disrespectful to wear a black tie because it's reserved for people grieving."
Interesting. I've been to several Catholic/Protestant/Jewish funerals and have never heard of that etiquette rule. I've also seen non-grieving people wear black colored ties to business meetings and formal dinners. Some like the "Men in Black" look.
Not the suit - the tie. I was always taught it was disrespectful to wear a black tie because it's reserved for people grieving. Different communities are different though I guess. And maybe he's grieving in some regard, I suppose.
clearly the talk show format of 10 minutes with a guest with a few commercials interspersed in is very far from ideal, but just as far from ideal is 1h51m with a guest.
Has someone posted a shorted edited version of this yet?
I listend to the interview as a podcast. It could have gone on for another hour if you ask me.
I really like the long form interviews. It allows the guest to not just make there point but to tell the story how they came to that conclusion. That way its easier, at least for me, to internalise that knowledge.
There is a podcast run by the german newspaper "Die Zeit" [1] where the concept is that the interview goes on until the guest thinks everything is said. The episodes usually last between 4 and 8 hours. The longest taking 9h 40 minutes.
There is one episode with Ian McEwan that is recoded in english if someone that doesn't speak german is interested. That one just takes 2h so its not really a good example.
It’s not a medium with much popularity potential (very few people have >1 hour to spare on something as leisurely as an interview). But for the few people who would care for it, I think it’s super valuable that these things exist.
It’s kind of like the “Slow TV” idea, except instead of touring Norway’s mountains and rivers, you’re touring the landscape of somebody’s thoughts. Very brave on the subject’s behalf. Many people, even public personalities, wouldn’t enjoy such scrutiny.
I just turned it on while doing housework and paused to listen more carefully to the interesting bits. Sometimes it's nice to listen to a person's own words on their own terms, rather than having those words filtered through the lens of someone else's perspectives.
Granted, this one is a bit special to me. I attended the same university as Gosling (decades later) so I could visualize the places and experiences he was talking about, while digging through old memories of my own. It's strange to think that a PDP that I saw in a trash heap may have been the machine he programmed on, and a prof that was teaching PDP assembly in the late-1990's may have been someone he learnt from.
> clearly the talk show format of 10 minutes with a guest with a few commercials interspersed in is very far from ideal,
Why is this clearly not ideal? I think you're being overly critical of the production. If the format isn't ideal for your consumption, you don't have to watch it.
Readit News
“[…] a friend of mine told me that because of his work in early development of Gosling Emacs, he had permission from Gosling in a message he had been sent to distribute his version of that. Gosling originally had set up his Emacs and distributed it free and gotten many people to help develop it, under the expectation based on Gosling’s own words in his own manual that he was going to follow the same spirit that I started with the original Emacs. Then he stabbed everyone in the back by putting copyrights on it, making people promise not to redistribute it and then selling it to a software-house. My later dealings with him personally showed that he was every bit as cowardly and despicable as you would expect from that history.”
— Richard Stallman, lecture at KTH (Sweden), 30 October 1986
Not more than stallman though. Nowhere close to stallman.
> I think he deserves better than this narrow, one-sided libel.
Richard Stallman has contributed more to humanity than the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived - including gosling. I think he deserves better than this narrow, one-sided libel. See how that goes. Or how about we let people have their say? Regardless of how much they contributed to humanity.
And a transcript if you don't like video: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... The Stallman stuff starts on page 30.
I always wanted to get more into emacs but I spend more time fighting the setup to bother anymore. I love Spacemacs but I am leaning more towards Neovim + Spacevim since its pretty damn nice.
Fen Labalme message: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/Vxp_Is2A5Cs/l6AmKi...
Unipress message about the "portions of the GNU Emacs program are most definitely not public domain" https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/net.emacs/ZmwEvkr9Jfs/...
RMS explaining what code he used: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/eyFgYVrEe0Q/Avxp17...
and then some more discussions: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/DRVCmoISBEU/efLdK-...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/PXHNtn7v4Rc/OFi1Ef...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/-2IaisY2N0Q/r4Fd9N...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/dytp5TT-02I/zUI4Ul...
and one from GvR https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/HJOjV7_2cyY/Bm6oUm...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.emacs/ilF9KtBimCk/WwO5NS... has the cost of getting an EMACS tape from RMS "GNU Emacs can be obtained from anyone who has a copy or by sending $150 payable to me"
On old emacs source code: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Whose — Gosling's, or RMS's?
I've seen your comment go from heavily downvoted (I didn't downvote it) -- to upvoted.
To me, your comment seems mean-spirited and detracts from anything else positive that can be said about the actual content of the interview.
Personally, it didn't occur to me to be bothered by the business suit. For others that agree with gp's funeral comment and upvoted it, can you explain what bugs you about the outfit?
Is the attire signaling pretension?!? If you weren't aware, some of his other videos show how insecure he is with his place in life and how his accomplishments don't compare to those he admires. He's not a pretentious guy. The business suit just seems like a consistent "visual identity" since he goes on the road for interviews. He doesn't have a full studio and the "star power" to attract guests to his home location.
EDIT to reply: "> I was always taught it was disrespectful to wear a black tie because it's reserved for people grieving."
Interesting. I've been to several Catholic/Protestant/Jewish funerals and have never heard of that etiquette rule. I've also seen non-grieving people wear black colored ties to business meetings and formal dinners. Some like the "Men in Black" look.
Has someone posted a shorted edited version of this yet?
There is a podcast run by the german newspaper "Die Zeit" [1] where the concept is that the interview goes on until the guest thinks everything is said. The episodes usually last between 4 and 8 hours. The longest taking 9h 40 minutes.
There is one episode with Ian McEwan that is recoded in english if someone that doesn't speak german is interested. That one just takes 2h so its not really a good example.
[1]https://www.zeit.de/serie/alles-gesagt [2]https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2019-12/ian-mcewan-intervie...
It’s not a medium with much popularity potential (very few people have >1 hour to spare on something as leisurely as an interview). But for the few people who would care for it, I think it’s super valuable that these things exist.
It’s kind of like the “Slow TV” idea, except instead of touring Norway’s mountains and rivers, you’re touring the landscape of somebody’s thoughts. Very brave on the subject’s behalf. Many people, even public personalities, wouldn’t enjoy such scrutiny.
Granted, this one is a bit special to me. I attended the same university as Gosling (decades later) so I could visualize the places and experiences he was talking about, while digging through old memories of my own. It's strange to think that a PDP that I saw in a trash heap may have been the machine he programmed on, and a prof that was teaching PDP assembly in the late-1990's may have been someone he learnt from.
I certainly hope you don't mean a literal trash heap.
Here is the 9 minutes part on Emacs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA7aB-oxjVc
More are to come.
Why is this clearly not ideal? I think you're being overly critical of the production. If the format isn't ideal for your consumption, you don't have to watch it.