3 ms·

I'm sorry, how is emacs easy to use (as per manifesto)?

• goatlover 7y ago
  There is a bit of a learning curve. I guess Hypercard and Lotus Notes would have be the easiest to learn. Maybe throw Excel in also since it can be used (or abused) for a lot of things.
  • scroot 7y ago
    Emacs never really got the "popular test" that something like Hypercard did at a very important time in the adoption of personal computing, probably because most normal personal computer users didn't have access to it. But what we do see from the Hypercard days is a completely different -- even opposite -- relationship of average people to their computing media than we have today. It's both a compelling demonstration of what's possible and what's been lost
• carapace 7y ago
  Secretaries were extending emacs using lisp in the 70's. No one told them it was programming so they just read the manual and did it.
• iLemming 7y ago
  There's a difference between "easy" and "simple." Emacs is not easy to use, but learning it may lead to simplicity. Have you ever noticed, there's a correlation between something hard to learn and simplicity and vice-versa? i.e., something that is easy to pick up, very often over time, becomes hard to extend and not so simple to use anymore. Experts use tools that are not easy to learn. But learning them simplifies things for them later. Can you imagine if someone tries to re-design a cockpit of a commercial airliner and replace all the instruments with a single touch-based display, a la Tesla, because that's more intuitive and easy?