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0 pointsamszmidt1y ago0 comments

> Compare with GNU Emacs, where Emacs Lisp lacks this feature. Wouldn't you want an mail thread not block the rest of Lisp code? Some Lisp action in the REPL not to block the rest of Lisp code?

Emacs Lisp does have threads; https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Th...

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medstrom1y ago

Even more simply, `while-no-input` has existed since 2007. And start-process since 1985. It has always been possible to make a mail "thread".

If the developer didn't use the old tricks, it doesn't seem likely they will use the thread trick either.

amszmidtOP1y ago

ZMail on the Lisp Machine would stall the ZMail thread when fetching mail. So you wouldn't be able to compose an email if you'd be fetching 10MiB of mbox.

But it isn't so much about tricks, sometimes it is nice if software just works reliably, GNU Emacs has a great track record on that.

lispm1y ago

These "tricks" still don't make two GNU Emacs Lisp REPLs in the same GNU Emacs execute arbitrary Lisp code concurrently.

medstrom1y ago

But why does that matter? Help me understand.

To be fair I haven't used an elisp REPL, unless it counts that I use commands. Any command used in Emacs is an eval step in a REPL.

But you mean a REPL as in a console-style interaction, right? It seems an impoverished interaction model, only necessary with other languages since they are not also the editor process.

Ok I can't have multiple REPLs but neither can I type on multiple keyboards at the same time. So it seems to only matter when you are going to spin up some noticeable chunk of work to be done in the background, while the user interacts with the editor. And that is totally doable with `while-no-input`.

In what situation are you running two or more noticeably slow call stacks that need to happen inside the editor process?

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medstrom1y ago

Even more simply, `while-no-input` has existed since 2007. And start-process since 1985. It has always been possible to make a mail "thread".

If the developer didn't use the old tricks, it doesn't seem likely they will use the thread trick either.

amszmidtOP1y ago

ZMail on the Lisp Machine would stall the ZMail thread when fetching mail. So you wouldn't be able to compose an email if you'd be fetching 10MiB of mbox.

But it isn't so much about tricks, sometimes it is nice if software just works reliably, GNU Emacs has a great track record on that.

lispm1y ago

These "tricks" still don't make two GNU Emacs Lisp REPLs in the same GNU Emacs execute arbitrary Lisp code concurrently.

medstrom1y ago

But why does that matter? Help me understand.

To be fair I haven't used an elisp REPL, unless it counts that I use commands. Any command used in Emacs is an eval step in a REPL.

But you mean a REPL as in a console-style interaction, right? It seems an impoverished interaction model, only necessary with other languages since they are not also the editor process.

In what situation are you running two or more noticeably slow call stacks that need to happen inside the editor process?

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse