[sshine]

I read ESR’s jargon files as a teenager and was very inspired. It wasn’t until a week ago that I learned about the original hacker’s dictionary via the Scheme community. Interestingly, the preserved copy comes with this preamble addressing ESR’s copy:

[This file, jargon.txt, was maintained on MIT-AI for many years, before being published by Guy Steele and others as the Hacker's Dictionary. Many years after the original book went out of print, Eric Raymond picked it up, updated it and republished it as the New Hacker's Dictionary. Unfortunately, in the process, he essentially destroyed what held it together, in various ways: first, by changing its emphasis from Lisp-based to UNIX-based (blithely ignoring the distinctly anti-UNIX aspects of the LISP culture celebrated in the original); second, by watering down what was otherwise the fairly undiluted record of a single cultural group through this kind of mixing; and third, by adding in all sorts of terms which are "jargon" only in the sense that they're technical. This page, however, is pretty much the original, snarfed from MIT-AI around 1988. -- jpd.]

https://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html

[Brian_K_White]

The new thing was a new thing with a new name, not even pretending to be the original thing, just including it (because the new thing is a very related concept with 90% overlap), so I don't see any great crime or 'unfortunately".

Similarly, it's new name is "dictionary" not "jargon", and so simple definitions of technical terms are perfectly consistent. It's doing what it says on the tin. And speaking of doing what it says on the tin, why in the world should a "new hackers dictionary" care about lisp and not about unix?

Basically it's like, yes, exactly, he picked up the jargon file, updated it, added a lot of unix material and deemphasised lisp, and included more simple technical terms, made it more of a new dictionary, and called it a new dictionary. These are all perfectly ok things to do.

This whole critique is like complaining that someones "new blueberry pie" isn't a cake and doesn't even have any apples.

[sshine]

You're right, when I revisit this thought, there is nothing unfortunate about it.

I've re-read https://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/revision-history.html and can say that my initial reaction was just fomo'ing over my lack of early exposure to Lisp. It seems that what ESR omitted from his Jargon File was mainly stuff that made sense if you were logged into a specific set of PDP-10 machines at MIT.

[kazinator]

At least he assured everyone that Lisp was worth knowing for some vague enlightenment it would bring ... just, you know, not worth actually using.