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EMACS could not have been reached by a process of careful design, because such processes arrive only at goals which are visible at the outset, and whose desirability is established on the bottom line at the outset. Neither I nor anyone else visualized an extensible editor until I had made one, nor appreciated its value until he had experienced it. EMACS exists because I felt free to make individually useful small improvements on a path whose end was not in sight.
Richard Stallman
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The development of EMACS was an organic process of experimentation rather than a structured plan.

Richard Stallman's quote reflects on the nature of innovation, particularly in technology, emphasizing that groundbreaking tools like EMACS often arise not from meticulous plans or goals, but from a willingness to explore and make incremental improvements without a fixed endpoint. This illustrates how creativity and discovery can lead to significant advancements that were not initially envisioned or deemed valuable.

Themes

EmacsInnovationExperimentationCreativityTechnology

In practice

Example use cases

In a tech conference, during a talk on software development, to highlight the importance of creativity in coding.

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If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.
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One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless.
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Proprietary software is an injustice.
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Proprietary software tends to have malicious features. The point is with a proprietary program, when the users don't have the source code, we can never tell. So you must consider every proprietary program as potential malware.
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People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.
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