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Who cares if new people use it or if it looks modern? It’s working well for the people who want it. Not every piece of software has to be everything to everyone

Who cares if new people use it or if it looks modern? It’s working well for the people who want it. Not every piece of software has to be everything to everyone.

stingraycharles 6y ago
It’s not that black and white. A simple hint when installing or downloading, “hey did you know that there are these starter packs?” would already do wonders. It’s not that people are suggesting emacs tries to be everything to everyone; heck, by pure virtue of its extensibility, emacs is actually the one editor that could potentially be everything to everyone. But a simple startup screen, “hey, it looks like this is your first time using emacs. what kind of defaults would you like?” would do wonders and existing users would be entirely unaffected.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  > A simple hint when installing or downloading, “hey did you know that there are these starter packs?” would already do wonders. Automating the Starter-Pack-Installation at virgin start and adding one or two out of the box would be better. Many people are not downloading emacs directly. On Linux you go through your destribution.
aldanor 6y ago
If new people don't use it, both its user base and developer list will monotonically decrease until both reach zero which may happen sooner than it could've been otherwise.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  I think that's okay. I see that many younger colleagues and friends no longer use Emacs or Vim, preferring editors with Textmate heritage (sublime, vs code and so on). I think the middle ground during the transition would be the worst of both worlds and there is no shame to no longer be on the top if the times change.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zarkov99 6y ago
Well I care, and so should anyone who would like to see Emacs live on for another 40 years. There will be major new areas of innovation, that will require massive amounts of work, and without an energetic and large community Emacs will not be able to adapt.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  > There will be major new areas of innovation I’m really curious what you mean by that, and how you see the world evolving such that Emacs, as is, won’t be able to come along with it.
  - Dangeranger 6y ago
    Imagine a world where your terminal isn’t emulating a TTY from fifty years ago. Gary Bernhardt gave a talk about this in 2012[0]. [0] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world
    - tonyarkles 6y ago
      Pretty cool talk! I love some of the features he's added! https://imgur.com/Gtytll1 https://imgur.com/Gtytll1 An interesting thing that often gets forgotten or missed is that Emacs doesn't depend on a conventional TTY to run. It's already capable of displaying images either in separate buffers or inline. From Gary's talk there, my thoughts would be that a number of the features he's put in there would: a) be potentially better-served as CLI tools instead of baked directly into the IDE, with well-defined inputs and outputs. I have no problem imagining use cases for e.g. the crash navigation stuff outside of an editor (perhaps as part of an error-handling dashboard). b) likely already be possible to build in non-terminal versions of Emacs, without having to design your own terminal and editor from scratch. By no means do I think Emacs is a perfect editor, but I'm also very cautious when pondering "do we rebuild from scratch"-type questions. I'm always keeping my eye on other editors and IDEs, and with varying levels of difficulty, I haven't really come across too many useful things that wouldn't be possible to do within the current Emacs/Elisp environment. Awkward, maybe.

Who cares if new people use it or if it looks modern? It’s working well for the people who want it. Not every piece of software has to be everything to everyone.

stingraycharles 6y ago

It’s not that black and white. A simple hint when installing or downloading, “hey did you know that there are these starter packs?” would already do wonders. It’s not that people are suggesting emacs tries to be everything to everyone; heck, by pure virtue of its extensibility, emacs is actually the one editor that could potentially be everything to everyone. But a simple startup screen, “hey, it looks like this is your first time using emacs. what kind of defaults would you like?” would do wonders and existing users would be entirely unaffected.

slightwinder 6y ago
> A simple hint when installing or downloading, “hey did you know that there are these starter packs?” would already do wonders. Automating the Starter-Pack-Installation at virgin start and adding one or two out of the box would be better. Many people are not downloading emacs directly. On Linux you go through your destribution.

aldanor 6y ago

If new people don't use it, both its user base and developer list will monotonically decrease until both reach zero which may happen sooner than it could've been otherwise.

yoz-y 6y ago
I think that's okay. I see that many younger colleagues and friends no longer use Emacs or Vim, preferring editors with Textmate heritage (sublime, vs code and so on). I think the middle ground during the transition would be the worst of both worlds and there is no shame to no longer be on the top if the times change.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zarkov99 6y ago

Well I care, and so should anyone who would like to see Emacs live on for another 40 years. There will be major new areas of innovation, that will require massive amounts of work, and without an energetic and large community Emacs will not be able to adapt.

tonyarkles 6y ago
> There will be major new areas of innovation I’m really curious what you mean by that, and how you see the world evolving such that Emacs, as is, won’t be able to come along with it.
- Dangeranger 6y ago
  Imagine a world where your terminal isn’t emulating a TTY from fifty years ago. Gary Bernhardt gave a talk about this in 2012[0]. [0] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world
  - tonyarkles 6y ago
    Pretty cool talk! I love some of the features he's added! https://imgur.com/Gtytll1 https://imgur.com/Gtytll1 An interesting thing that often gets forgotten or missed is that Emacs doesn't depend on a conventional TTY to run. It's already capable of displaying images either in separate buffers or inline. From Gary's talk there, my thoughts would be that a number of the features he's put in there would: a) be potentially better-served as CLI tools instead of baked directly into the IDE, with well-defined inputs and outputs. I have no problem imagining use cases for e.g. the crash navigation stuff outside of an editor (perhaps as part of an error-handling dashboard). b) likely already be possible to build in non-terminal versions of Emacs, without having to design your own terminal and editor from scratch. By no means do I think Emacs is a perfect editor, but I'm also very cautious when pondering "do we rebuild from scratch"-type questions. I'm always keeping my eye on other editors and IDEs, and with varying levels of difficulty, I haven't really come across too many useful things that wouldn't be possible to do within the current Emacs/Elisp environment. Awkward, maybe.