[TxMt] snippets.el: a bow of deference?

[Alaric Snell-Pym]

On 20 Jun 2006, at 6:16 pm, Kamen Nedev wrote:

> Another topic which has been cropping up lately, and which you no
> doubt have thought about it (somewhere in the back of your brains,
> when not too busy hacking at this or that bundle) is the following:
> How can a resolutely closed-source application like TM attract such
> an open-source-like community environment? Does it have anything to
> do with software architecture (a closed framework with an open
> approach to extensibility through bundles), or with Allan's social
> skills?

No offence to Allan's social skills (although he is remarkably
pleasant on this list for such a busy man), I think it's the bundles.
In my own software development career, I've found that extensible-
plugin-architecture applications exude this almost irresistible
flexibility; you're not just looking at a fixed-purpose tool that
will become the bane of your life if you want to do something that
exceeds its "mental model" - you're looking at something that, by
being able to extend it in a Turing-complete language, really is a
modular component you can build into anything that would benefit from
it.

It's a very different mindset.

ABS