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by nonfamous 5 days ago
I learned “real” programming in the early 90’s by learning Elisp to customize Emacs. (Before that the only languages I’d written in by choice were C64 Basic and Assembler.) Like the OP, I used Elisp for everything - scripts to bulk-edit files, manage the file system, format posts, etc. etc.

Unlike the OP I hated the scratch buffer for running Elisp, so I created a REPL for Elisp that behaved more (in my naive eyes) as a real language. I was very excited when RMS emailed me to ask to include it in Emacs. Last I checked (a few years ago now) it was still there as M-x ielm (Inferior Emacs Lisp Mode).

1 comments

Very cool story thank you. I still use ielm regularly.