Tool recursion

Literature about Lisp rarely resists that narcissistic pleasure of describing Lisp in Lisp." - Christian Queinnec, Lisp in Small Pieces

Applying software development tools to themselves has a dark side and a light side.

There's a danger of becoming obsessed with one's tools and never getting around to using them. If it's your job to cut down a tree, there's some benefit to sharpening your ax, but you can't only sharpen your ax. At some point you hit diminishing return and it's time to start chopping.

But there are benefits to self-referential systems, such as macros that use Lisp to generate Lisp, or writing a C compiler in C, or using Emacs to tweak Emacs. There's a kind of consistency that results, and there can be a compound return on effort. But as with writing a recursive procedure, there has to be a base case, a point at which you stop recursing. Otherwise you go down the black hole of becoming absorbed in your tool and never using it for work.

Even though I've used Emacs for a long time, I've never understood the recursive fascination some people have with it. For example, part of the elevator pitch for Emacs is that it's self-documenting. You can pull up help on Emacs from inside Emacs. But you can also type your questions into a search engine without having to learn an arcane help API. What's the advantage to the former?

For one thing, using Emacs help inside Emacs works without a network connection. For another, you avoid the risk of being distracted by something you see when you're using your web browser. But the most subtle benefit is the compound effect of self-reference. You can use the same navigation commands in the help system that you can when editing text, you can execute code snippets in place, etc.

When I hear Isn't it cool that you can do X in X?" my first thought is Yeah, that sounds cool" but my second thought is But why would you want to do that? Sounds like it could be really hard." I'm starting to appreciate that there are sometimes long-term benefits to these sort of recursive tool uses even if they're not optimal in the short run.

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