I used to work with Steve. He’s a good story teller. But a story teller tells good stories by having a fairly casual relationship with facts and the truth.
For example, emacs lisp suffers from bitrot. Some core things haven’t changed in forever but also you can’t pick up elisp config from 15 years ago and it’s fine today.
All live systems evolve and change. In this case emacs is just so slow that Steve thinks that it doesn’t.
My elisp config file dates back to 1986. It's almost entirely unchanged. It still works. I have never had to remove anything because it stopped working. I just occasionally add stuff to it every few years.
I don't know why people are downvoting you. I think you're right. I agree with his general point (I expanded a bit on that here [1]), and I also agree that people often overlook that general point since it is so convenient to do so. But otherwise, the specific examples he wrote (and the other assertions he made) seem to me to be incorrect.
But, as you said, he is a good story teller. Like Taleb. Getting the moral across is more important, even if sometimes the wolf eats little red riding hood in malformed renderings.
For example, emacs lisp suffers from bitrot. Some core things haven’t changed in forever but also you can’t pick up elisp config from 15 years ago and it’s fine today.
All live systems evolve and change. In this case emacs is just so slow that Steve thinks that it doesn’t.