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Somewhy many conversations about emacs go like this: A: emacs is awesome, you should use it. B: I can't use it since it misses this one feature i like. A: it
by chr1 10y ago
Somewhy many conversations about emacs go like this:
A: emacs is awesome, you should use it.
B: I can't use it since it misses this one feature i like.
A: it is a stupid feature, but there are plugins doing half of what you like, and you can create another plugin.
B: it is too much work, i don't have time to do that.
A: people have created plugins that required even more work...
Emacs is a great editor, and for people who get used to its ui limitations, it is often the best editor, but for new users the ancient ui is a huge roadblock, and most users never will get past it.
Not implementing modern ui and not being interested in what new users like is a perfectly valid choice for emacs developers, but then saying emacs is great and not liking it is the users fault is illogical.
- zeveb 10y ago> for new users the ancient ui is a huge roadblock, and most users never will get past it. Reading & writing is a huge roadblock, but most people do get past it — and the UI of emacs is far easier than learning to read & write. > then saying emacs is great and not liking it is the users fault is illogical. No, emacs is great and users should be humble enough to try to learn it, rather than arrogant enough to think they can do better. It's like a kid who says, 'I don't want to read; my parents can read to me.' That's no way to go through life — and neither is using an inferior computer interface.
- chr1 10y agoThe difference is the reward one gets after passing the roadblock. Without reading people can't do anything, without emacs most developers manage to work happily. I do agree that emacs is great, but many aspects of its behavior are dictated by limitations of old machines and can be improved.
- zeveb 10y ago> Without reading people can't do anything, without emacs most developers manage to work happily. Illiterate children are quite happy, too — they have no idea of the worlds which open up before them when they can read. They literally don't know what they are missing. So too for people not using a powerful editor.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Without reading people can't do anything People could do lots of things before written language was developed, so I'm pretty sure that's far from the truth.
- chr1 10y agoI hoped the meaning would be clear from context, but i see i should have been more careful in writing the comment. Things that a human (who is living now) misses by not learning to read, far outnumber things a programmer misses by not learning emacs. There are very few jobs someone illiterate can perform. But non emacs user can do almost anything that emacs user does, almost as good. So my argument that benefits from learning reading and learning emacs are not comparable, is not far from the truth.