Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?"

[Emanuel Berg]

Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> The very first program I wrote was a BASIC program that was just
> a bunch of PRINT statements, to make some simple ASCII art (it
> was the command insignia from ST:TOS).  Was I not programming,
> just because it was a simple, linear set of statements? I
> "taught" the computer to do something it couldn't previously do.

*Laughter*! Cool! I hope you still have that program.

No, I think *that* was programming, for the reason you tell, but
also because there were several statements, and collectively they
form a program that does something.

> I think that almost anything that tells the computer to perform
> a set of operations can be considered programming.

Well, at least if that is done non-interactively. If you use a
program - a spreadsheet, or a paint program (do to pixel GFX), and
you just use the features of that program - sum a column, draw a
square, etc. - with the tools of that program - I don't consider
that programming.

I wrote some more on this, here:

http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/53842/13136

-- 
Emanuel Berg - programmer (hire me! CV below)
computer projects: http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
internet activity: http://home.student.uu.se/embe8573