Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 13:28:21 +0100 From: Hans-Bernhard Broeker Message-Id: <199912021228.NAA12108@acp3bf.physik.rwth-aachen.de> To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: emcAsc Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Organization: RWTH Aachen, III. physikalisches Institut B X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com In article <199912020150 DOT UAA16655 AT delorie DOT com> you wrote: > was just wondering how the fact that Emacs was coded in lisp interpreter > affects the speed of launching emacs and its ram needs? (as compared to vim > for example) in particular with regards to old systems like 486 sx with > about 4 meg ram? Why wonder about that? It's a fact of life that Emacs *is* coded in Lisp, to a large portion. So even if that were the reason for it to be too slow to be useful, on that small machine, you'ld not be able to do anything about it, anyway. You *don't* want to re-implement Emacs in raw C, trust me. Others have tried, sort of (MicroEmacs, Jove, Jed), and they all fall short of the goal. Actually, Lisp is conceptually a better language for a program like Emacs, than C can ever be. Lisp lives for string operations, which are a persistent pain in C, if you have to do many of them. The real reason that emacs is so slow on startup is its absolute size. It simply won't fit into 4MB RAM, without much squeezing, and as soon as you start compilations from inside Emacs, it'll die. -- Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker AT physik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de) Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.