[HN Gopher] The Rake and its Prongs (2024)
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       The Rake and its Prongs (2024)
        
       Author : cenazoic
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2025-02-27 13:17 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (christiantietze.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (christiantietze.de)
        
       | lo_zamoyski wrote:
       | Cute, I guess, but this is the distinction between the language
       | of the model and language of the implementation (the author sort
       | of arrives at this distinction at the end). Programming involves
       | modeling in some language. The model is mental. We model and
       | simulate using a language (still mental).
       | 
       | Now, we incidentally also have these neat devices that can
       | simulate some language for us that we can target it with a
       | compiler. But the point is that while the implementation language
       | may be composed of certain constructs, we can use them to
       | simulate others.
       | 
       | So in the model language, or the user's UI language, we have
       | cursors that can exist in the in-between visually. The rake
       | exists in the implementation language, but this doesn't make it
       | any more or less real than the super-rake or whatever of the
       | model language.
        
         | cenazoic wrote:
         | I don't know, I read it as more of a meditation on 'writing out
         | of range', both literally as per language constructs, as you
         | mentioned, and metaphorically, as in 'we're in the wild blue
         | yonder of weird nowhere now.'
         | 
         | That said, I'm a newbie to Emacs, and I belatedly (after
         | posting the link here) remembered reading something about 'the
         | point' in Emacs:
         | 
         | "By default, the cursor in the selected window is drawn as a
         | solid block and appears to be on a character, but you should
         | think of point as between two characters; it is situated before
         | the character under the cursor. "[^1]
         | 
         | Which made me think maybe things are even weirder than the
         | author thinks. :)
         | 
         | [^1](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/
         | Po...)
        
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