Emacs Turns 50(technologyreview.com)
490 points by internet_points 22 hours ago | 210 comments
tl;dr: EMACS, the full-screen text editor born at MIT's AI Lab in 1976, turns 50 this year and remains widely used. Created by Richard Stallman, Guy Steele, and David Moon as a standardized set of macros atop the TECO editor, it spawned commercial variants from Honeywell and others—whose commercialization pushed Stallman to launch the GNU Project, with GNU Emacs as its first major application. Apple shipped GNU Emacs with Mac OS X until 2019, and macOS still retains hidden EMACS keybindings today.
HN Discussion:
  • ↑Long-time users celebrate Emacs's enduring utility and longevity across decades of use
  • ↑Emacs remains more modern and adaptable than newer competing editors
  • ~Preference for minimalist editors over Emacs's ever-growing complexity and sprawl
  • •Curiosity about recent Emacs developments like AI integration and new packages
  • ↓Criticism that the article is poorly structured and ends abruptly without depth