Emacs: Creeping Featurism as a Strength

Emacs can be a rather polarizing subject, as most people either love or hate it. This chapter put forth the architecture of emacs as a good way to support add-ons. The following questions and answers address this architecture.

1. Is it possible for a system like Emacs to be created in a non-open 
source way?

Yes. The key strength of emacs is the ease of creating add-ons. It is quite possible to design such
a system in a commercial setting. The key is documenting how to create the add-ons and making
the extra features as easy as possible to create.

2. What are some of the disadvantages of a system like Emacs?
Finding what you want. When the base feature set is limited, everything is available as add-ons.
This can make finding certain features difficult as they may not be accessed in the most intuitive
way.


3. What architecture decisions have allowed Emacs to grow like it 
has?
The ease of adding new features. When developers don't have to worry about display and other
subsystems that are ancillary to what they want to do, it makes it simple to work on.

4. When is avoiding complexity a good/bad argument for 
implementation?
The only time I can think of when it would be bad is when something such as performance has a
higher priority than maintainability.

5. Do you think Firefox will replace Emacs?
No. =) The world will probably end first.