4 ms·

I second to have choose Emacs as a main computing environment and since I often here the question "how much time ..." well... I'd like to add a note: time can'

by xte 8y ago

I second to have choose Emacs as a main computing environment and since I often here the question "how much time ..." well... I'd like to add a note: time can't be only measured in hours, days, etc. To learn Emacs enough to decide that's the way I'd like to interact and use my desktop it take a very little time, in around three month I start using Emacs as WM (EXWM), MUA (notmuch-emacs) in around two months with a "false start" on Mu4e, main docs solution, tramp, personal finance (ledger) etc But the real point is: I do it when I like to do, as much as I like, in my free time. In other words I can start easily and grow as I wont and need, and this knowledge will survive for decades to came. With commercial software you need to invest time (and money) before start, and after having reached a certain amount of knowledge you can't go further, you have to keep yourself up to date following upstream changes and you new knowledge have a very little value in the long run. That distinction is important because too many people say "hey it took too much time to proficiently use FOSS" completely ignoring the big picture. Good time to learn FOSS is at school, when you have plenty of time and (in theory) you are willing to learn, after you get the benefit for the lifetime. Another good time is when you feel the need, in free time. You do not have to pay something in advance, you do not have "training", "diplomas" etc, you grow at your speed and desire, limitless. That's the real matter, not how many hours.

badpun 8y ago
> With commercial software you need to invest time (and money) before start, and after having reached a certain amount of knowledge you can't go further, you have to keep yourself up to date following upstream changes and you new knowledge have a very little value in the long run. How's that different from learning to how use FOSS? Except the money investment part.
- xte 8y ago
  That commercial software is build normally to lock you in and lock out any possible evolution path, the learning curve is fixed: when you learnt a certain number of things "you are productive" and there is no more, no future. On FOSS normally software offer many evolution paths, which means you have to learn few thing and you can start, using the software issue or desire arise and you learn new things in an ever grown knowledge that regularly pay off. Also standard terminology is normally used, for instance you never find FOSS project to invent terms like "BIA" (Cisco name for MAC address of a nic, "burn-in address") or "Enable mode", "write terminal" and things like that.
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    In the context of emacs, you only ever need to learn terminology like - major and minor modes, - special, regular, mini and read-only buffers, - frames, - backup files, - dired, - mark and kill rings, - hooks, - the difference between C-x and M-x, - mode line, - registers - and whatever else there is in emacs' configs, packages etc. I dunno. Perhaps in emacs lingo "standard" means "no one uses these terms anymore"?
    - xte 8y ago
      That's not a real problem, if you call it "advanced statusbar" instead if minibuffer, split instead of windows, contents instead of buffer it's only a matter of name. And most of them are pretty intuitive. Consider a thing: commercial always say "start with us is quick", and they do their best for that. Unfortunately they omit an important fact: start it's quick, if you already came from commercial environment witch is the most common case right now, but all the rest is a pain. And we normally start once in our life, but we have the entire life to live... "no one but few do something" for me is not a bad thing per se, consider how many dictatorship exists around the world or in witch conditions most human live around the Earth: do you prefer being in the center of Gaussian which means being a poor man fighting for some bad food just to keep up in some dictatorship or you prefer western welfare and the least bit of democracy we have?
      - dmitriid 8y ago
        > That's not a real problem, if you call it "advanced statusbar" instead if minibuffer, split instead of windows, contents instead of buffer it's only a matter of name. And most of them are pretty intuitive. vs. > Also standard terminology is normally used, for instance you never find FOSS project to invent terms like "BIA" (Cisco name for MAC address of a nic, "burn-in address") or "Enable mode", "write terminal" and things like that. This is called hipocrisy. There's nothing "intuitive" about emacs terminology.
        xte 8y ago
        > This is called hipocrisy. IMO it's simply a way to lock users in, like Cisco, like Oracle, like OpenBravo, like any other vendor try to do. Emacs simply was born many years ago, and kept going since that, why change terminology just to ease the newcomers make unhappy actual users? > There's nothing "intuitive" about emacs terminology. And so what? Emacs is an OS not a small single-purpose apps, did you expect to being able to learn it an a day clicking around? In my personal experience, as a hardcore vimmer for more than a decade, as someone who have used different OSes (casually born on Irix thanks to a present by a family friend, evolved on FreeBSD, RH/Fedora/Debian/Gentoo, Solaris, OpenSolaris, Ubuntu/NixOS) I have seen anywhere "non intuitive" terminology, and I'm still there... What about slices instead of partition? What about /dev/ notation in various unices? What about pfexec vs su vs sudo vs pkexec vs ...?
- leoc 8y ago
  Chad Fowler's "professional services barrier" label https://books.google.ie/books?id=ig9QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT48&lpg=PT48&dq=%22the+professional+services+barrier%22&source=bl&ots=upS7baIPe5&sig=YoLMgQr0X_ieSaNZI3hNX_bgrRQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiG3Zrl7YbfAhWLSRUIHUH5AhYQ6AEwAHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20professional%20services%20barrier%22&f=false https://books.google.ie/books?id=ig9QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT48&lpg=PT... is a fair stab at explaining some of the difference. Which isn't to say that the distinction is really black and white, especially for non-programmers or people who don't have a lot of time to invest in a particular kind of tool.

by xte 8y ago

badpun 8y ago

> With commercial software you need to invest time (and money) before start, and after having reached a certain amount of knowledge you can't go further, you have to keep yourself up to date following upstream changes and you new knowledge have a very little value in the long run. How's that different from learning to how use FOSS? Except the money investment part.

xte 8y ago
That commercial software is build normally to lock you in and lock out any possible evolution path, the learning curve is fixed: when you learnt a certain number of things "you are productive" and there is no more, no future. On FOSS normally software offer many evolution paths, which means you have to learn few thing and you can start, using the software issue or desire arise and you learn new things in an ever grown knowledge that regularly pay off. Also standard terminology is normally used, for instance you never find FOSS project to invent terms like "BIA" (Cisco name for MAC address of a nic, "burn-in address") or "Enable mode", "write terminal" and things like that.
- dmitriid 8y ago
  In the context of emacs, you only ever need to learn terminology like - major and minor modes, - special, regular, mini and read-only buffers, - frames, - backup files, - dired, - mark and kill rings, - hooks, - the difference between C-x and M-x, - mode line, - registers - and whatever else there is in emacs' configs, packages etc. I dunno. Perhaps in emacs lingo "standard" means "no one uses these terms anymore"?
  - xte 8y ago
    That's not a real problem, if you call it "advanced statusbar" instead if minibuffer, split instead of windows, contents instead of buffer it's only a matter of name. And most of them are pretty intuitive. Consider a thing: commercial always say "start with us is quick", and they do their best for that. Unfortunately they omit an important fact: start it's quick, if you already came from commercial environment witch is the most common case right now, but all the rest is a pain. And we normally start once in our life, but we have the entire life to live... "no one but few do something" for me is not a bad thing per se, consider how many dictatorship exists around the world or in witch conditions most human live around the Earth: do you prefer being in the center of Gaussian which means being a poor man fighting for some bad food just to keep up in some dictatorship or you prefer western welfare and the least bit of democracy we have?
    - dmitriid 8y ago
      > That's not a real problem, if you call it "advanced statusbar" instead if minibuffer, split instead of windows, contents instead of buffer it's only a matter of name. And most of them are pretty intuitive. vs. > Also standard terminology is normally used, for instance you never find FOSS project to invent terms like "BIA" (Cisco name for MAC address of a nic, "burn-in address") or "Enable mode", "write terminal" and things like that. This is called hipocrisy. There's nothing "intuitive" about emacs terminology.
      - xte 8y ago
        > This is called hipocrisy. IMO it's simply a way to lock users in, like Cisco, like Oracle, like OpenBravo, like any other vendor try to do. Emacs simply was born many years ago, and kept going since that, why change terminology just to ease the newcomers make unhappy actual users? > There's nothing "intuitive" about emacs terminology. And so what? Emacs is an OS not a small single-purpose apps, did you expect to being able to learn it an a day clicking around? In my personal experience, as a hardcore vimmer for more than a decade, as someone who have used different OSes (casually born on Irix thanks to a present by a family friend, evolved on FreeBSD, RH/Fedora/Debian/Gentoo, Solaris, OpenSolaris, Ubuntu/NixOS) I have seen anywhere "non intuitive" terminology, and I'm still there... What about slices instead of partition? What about /dev/ notation in various unices? What about pfexec vs su vs sudo vs pkexec vs ...?
leoc 8y ago
Chad Fowler's "professional services barrier" label https://books.google.ie/books?id=ig9QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT48&lpg=PT48&dq=%22the+professional+services+barrier%22&source=bl&ots=upS7baIPe5&sig=YoLMgQr0X_ieSaNZI3hNX_bgrRQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiG3Zrl7YbfAhWLSRUIHUH5AhYQ6AEwAHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20professional%20services%20barrier%22&f=false https://books.google.ie/books?id=ig9QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT48&lpg=PT... is a fair stab at explaining some of the difference. Which isn't to say that the distinction is really black and white, especially for non-programmers or people who don't have a lot of time to invest in a particular kind of tool.