Bob Chassell has died | Hacker News Reader

Bob Chassell has died

fsf.org

112 pointssillysaurus313 comments

Here's a link to Bob's book, "An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp": https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html

You can buy it here for $25 from the FSF: https://shop.fsf.org/books/signed-introduction-programming-e...

This has been a valuable resource on my own road toward learning elisp, and I'm very grateful he wrote it and made it freely available.

It's preferable to purchase GNU books and documentation through the FSF rather than Amazon:

https://shop.fsf.org/books/signed-introduction-programming-e...

Thank you! I'll update my comment.

The introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp was my first contact with Lisp. And the reason I took it up - the excuse I used to cover up my insatiable curiosity - was that I was writing my diary using emacs, and since emacs was all about customization, it should be possible to create a keyboard shortcut to insert the current date and time of day.

And down the rabbit hole I went. So, in a way, Bob Chassell contributed to me becoming a programmer.

One line that made an impression on me when I read this book a few years ago:

"Having GNU Emacs is like having a dragon's cave of treasures"

Meanwhile, the best I can muster about most tools I'm required to work with on a daily basis is:

"This mostly works, I guess"

RIP, Bob

Oh wow. I've been out of touch with Bob for decades. For a little while there we were both active in the Loglan community (this was before Lojban). I remember once riding my bike from Belmont, MA to meet Bob at some little airfield, where we tossed the bike in the back of his two-seater Cessna and took off for a Loglan meeting somewhere north of there (New Hampshire?).

RIP, Bob.

Some words from and about Bob at the end of this chapter:

http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch07.html

His opinion on the GPL:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/vaccination.en.html

Thanks for this. This is the perfect page to link to the next time someone tells me that the GPL is "viral".

His theft analogy seems to apply better to the LGPL and MPL than the GPL. The LGPL and MPL make sure that your work stays free. The GPL forces work that uses yours (in certain ways) to be held under the same standard, regardless of how it treats your work.

Another book: http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/*checkout*/softfree/softf...

I remember reading this article long back: http://www.free-soft.org/FSM/english/issue01/bob.html

Aw, man, not a day goes by that someone doesn't recommend or discuss the elisp intro in #emacs. It's sad to hear that we lost the original author.

RIP Bob. I only knew you through your writing and your contributions to software freedom.

RIP :-(

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