| > More a curiosity than something practical and it's looking like it still belongs in the 70s. Emacs also belongs to the 70s. The UI basics were from TECO Emacs, mid 70s and many are still there. Stuff like the "Meta" key which no longer exists, or the buffer metaphor.
EINE/ZWEI and Multics Emacs were also developed then. Again, the basic stuff is still in GNU Emacs. Cursor handling in GNU Emacs is like it was in the 70s. > For all intents and purposes, Emacs is the 'best' freely available and most used Lisp machine we have today I don't see GNU Emacs as a "Lisp Machine", it's a mostly text-ui based development platform & environment written in C+Lisp and its usage is at the same time limited by its oldish user interface. There is a lot of useful software written in it, but the actual broader use of GNU Emacs is limited to a very nerd-like group. I've used GNU Emacs to read/write mail (for example). But that was long ago. There is a limited appeal of the text-oriented UI, which also has a hard time to adapt to devices like phones or tablets. > practicality of Emacs The practicality of GNU Emacs is also limited, because its user interface would not reach larger groups of current users. > but I barely touch it these days, as I tend to reach for Emacs Lisp instead It's also funny that many people would like to move GNU Emacs Lisp more towards Common Lisp, but they are not allowed to do so... -> see the repeated discussions (since many many years) on the developer mailing list... |