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Emacs is very idiosyncratic for beginners. Things like confusing terminology and lack of conformance with CUA (aka Windows 98-style shortcuts for navigation, co

Emacs is very idiosyncratic for beginners. Things like confusing terminology and lack of conformance with CUA (aka Windows 98-style shortcuts for navigation, copy and paste) make for an extremely steep learning curve when all I want to use it for is a very fancy organizer tool. I'm not willing to spend this much effort at this stage.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
So don't :). It's not a competition. "Confusing terminology and lack of conformance with CUA" (aka. being older than both CUA and modern terminology) is perhaps a stumbling block for some, but arguably not that big once a wannabe-user decides to extend their attention span beyond 30 seconds.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  If the Emacs keybindings and terminology could be mastered in not much more than 30 seconds, they wouldn't pose a problem in the first place. There is value in standardisation, and it's unlikely that the current starter Emacs layout provides any unique value other than letting 40+ year old industry veterans keep their muscle memory, while alienating basically everyone born after the age of the monochrome glass TTY. While I understand that using or not using Emacs is not a competition, it almost appears that Emacs tries to be different for the sake of being different. Just like Mac OS uses the Ctrl+PgDn/Up/Arrow shortcuts in a way that contradicts what virtually every other platform does (including Windows and Linux). Edit: do not misunderstand my point, I am not saying that Emacs is trying to be different for the sake of being different. I am saying that remaining the way it is, on purpose, when the majority of the world expressed a preference for a different convention that comes with no clear downsides, makes it look as if that were the case. Or makes Emacs look recalcitrant, if you prefer.
  - least 5y ago
    > it almost appears that Emacs tries to be different for the sake of being different. Emacs conventions existed long before CUA became the standard and to adapt to CUA would require Emacs to change some very basic and critical conventions. There were plenty of word processors like Word Star that also featured its own conventions, just Word Star has mostly become an esoteric word processor while Emacs and Vim remain prevalent to this day (I mean... they're still esoteric but not that esoteric). MacOS also has its own conventions that don't comply with the "standard" which of course, again, came after MacOS established its own standards and of which are superior to Windows, anyway, since it doesn't break compatibility with the unix terminal. Maybe the real issue is Windows and Linux that decided to adopt the inferior conventions of the dominant OS?
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      Just because a control convention existed before other implementations, it doesn't automatically make it good. Plenty of older shooter games have a control scheme that besides being unfamiliar, is simply not ergonomic enough. E. g. Wolfenstein's control scheme that uses the mouse to rotate the camera, but also to move the player forwards and backwards.
      - least 5y ago
        > Just because a control convention existed before other implementations, it doesn't automatically make it good. Conversely, just because CUA became the de facto standard in Windows and Linux doesn't make it good, either. They became standardized as a consequence of Windows becoming the most popular operating system and the only reason you're advocating for it is because it's what you are comfortable with, not because it has any meaningful advantages over other keyboard shortcut paradigms.
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        Yes. My point is, Emacs convention and CUA are basically equivalent. In which case there is little excuse to go with the less popular one if you want to attract young blood without creating an obstacle course they must pass first. If you don't have young blood coming in occasionally, your editor will remain stagnant after a while.
        medstrom 5y ago
        I agree it wouldn't hurt to redesign for CUA, but I'm not sure how much young blood it would actually invite. Hotkeys are just the first thing on a long list of things to learn, and if that first thing puts them off, maybe they wouldn't have stuck with it anyway.
  - cyberbanjo 5y ago
    If you use something like which-key* you will see all available key combos as you hit them, I first saw this in spacemacs. This means even when I am unfamiliar with the key commands I have a very low friction way of seeing what's available, under thirty seconds. * https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/which-key.html https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/which-key.html
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > If the Emacs keybindings and terminology could be mastered in not much more than 30 seconds, they wouldn't pose a problem in the first place. Try 5 minutes then :). No, I'm not joking with this, nor am I trying to be snarky. I've just seen the way people approach new tools, and I also know myself. Most of the time, people can barely give 30 second of serious effort before judging something as "okay" or "too complicated" - at least as long as they view the new thing as something they already know. "It's a text editor, I know text editors, I shouldn't need to learn anything new here". Once you drop the assumption that you already know Emacs because you know the product category it's purportedly in, it turns out the conventions and keybindings aren't really that hard. The manual and the tutorial do a good job explaining them, and there's always CUA mode to be used as training wheels :). (For me, the biggest hurdle I faced when learning Emacs was to unlearn using arrow keys for navigation - which really has nothing to do with Emacs per se; you need to do that for any editor in order to use it efficiently.) As a point of comparison, imagine approaching Emacs like you'd approach Blender or 3DS Max. In my experience, there's less complaints about weird conventions there, because newcomers to 3D graphics don't assume they know the whole tooling space just because they tinkered in Sketchup in the past. (And that's not to say Emacs isn't full of legacy cruft. It's just that the legacy cruft that's really holding it down is not the things newcomers complain about.)
    - ubermonkey 5y ago
      Emacs takes serious, concerted, and prolonged effort to make headway in. Nothing a new user knows about other software is helpful in working in emacs, so yeah, it's a really daunting and offputting barrier in 2021 when the overwhelming RULE is that tools honor conventions and work similarly. This is why emacs is a niche application in a niche world, and is likely to remain so. It's crazy powerful, and I have made OrgMode my organizational home for a long time, but I don't pretend it's a good fit for people who aren't already very nerdy. (Honestly, at this point, if a person with no development background expresses curiosity, I send them to Obsidian.)
cyberbanjo 5y ago
Vanilla emacs comes with cua-mode so you can more easily feel at home
- exikyut 5y ago
  Facepalms in https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/
brabel 5y ago
If you're on Mac, Cmd+C Cmd+V and Cmd+Z do the same as in other apps, and so will Option+Left/Right for example, I guess the problem is on Windows where those shortcuts use Ctrl and emacs uses Ctrl for all its other shortcuts? In which case you can try cua-mode but then you might have trouble with other useful shortcuts commonly used being bound to unusual keys.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

So don't :). It's not a competition. "Confusing terminology and lack of conformance with CUA" (aka. being older than both CUA and modern terminology) is perhaps a stumbling block for some, but arguably not that big once a wannabe-user decides to extend their attention span beyond 30 seconds.

selfhoster11 5y ago
If the Emacs keybindings and terminology could be mastered in not much more than 30 seconds, they wouldn't pose a problem in the first place. There is value in standardisation, and it's unlikely that the current starter Emacs layout provides any unique value other than letting 40+ year old industry veterans keep their muscle memory, while alienating basically everyone born after the age of the monochrome glass TTY. While I understand that using or not using Emacs is not a competition, it almost appears that Emacs tries to be different for the sake of being different. Just like Mac OS uses the Ctrl+PgDn/Up/Arrow shortcuts in a way that contradicts what virtually every other platform does (including Windows and Linux). Edit: do not misunderstand my point, I am not saying that Emacs is trying to be different for the sake of being different. I am saying that remaining the way it is, on purpose, when the majority of the world expressed a preference for a different convention that comes with no clear downsides, makes it look as if that were the case. Or makes Emacs look recalcitrant, if you prefer.
- least 5y ago
  > it almost appears that Emacs tries to be different for the sake of being different. Emacs conventions existed long before CUA became the standard and to adapt to CUA would require Emacs to change some very basic and critical conventions. There were plenty of word processors like Word Star that also featured its own conventions, just Word Star has mostly become an esoteric word processor while Emacs and Vim remain prevalent to this day (I mean... they're still esoteric but not that esoteric). MacOS also has its own conventions that don't comply with the "standard" which of course, again, came after MacOS established its own standards and of which are superior to Windows, anyway, since it doesn't break compatibility with the unix terminal. Maybe the real issue is Windows and Linux that decided to adopt the inferior conventions of the dominant OS?
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Just because a control convention existed before other implementations, it doesn't automatically make it good. Plenty of older shooter games have a control scheme that besides being unfamiliar, is simply not ergonomic enough. E. g. Wolfenstein's control scheme that uses the mouse to rotate the camera, but also to move the player forwards and backwards.
    - least 5y ago
      > Just because a control convention existed before other implementations, it doesn't automatically make it good. Conversely, just because CUA became the de facto standard in Windows and Linux doesn't make it good, either. They became standardized as a consequence of Windows becoming the most popular operating system and the only reason you're advocating for it is because it's what you are comfortable with, not because it has any meaningful advantages over other keyboard shortcut paradigms.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        Yes. My point is, Emacs convention and CUA are basically equivalent. In which case there is little excuse to go with the less popular one if you want to attract young blood without creating an obstacle course they must pass first. If you don't have young blood coming in occasionally, your editor will remain stagnant after a while.
        medstrom 5y ago
        I agree it wouldn't hurt to redesign for CUA, but I'm not sure how much young blood it would actually invite. Hotkeys are just the first thing on a long list of things to learn, and if that first thing puts them off, maybe they wouldn't have stuck with it anyway.
- cyberbanjo 5y ago
  If you use something like which-key* you will see all available key combos as you hit them, I first saw this in spacemacs. This means even when I am unfamiliar with the key commands I have a very low friction way of seeing what's available, under thirty seconds. * https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/which-key.html https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/which-key.html
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > If the Emacs keybindings and terminology could be mastered in not much more than 30 seconds, they wouldn't pose a problem in the first place. Try 5 minutes then :). No, I'm not joking with this, nor am I trying to be snarky. I've just seen the way people approach new tools, and I also know myself. Most of the time, people can barely give 30 second of serious effort before judging something as "okay" or "too complicated" - at least as long as they view the new thing as something they already know. "It's a text editor, I know text editors, I shouldn't need to learn anything new here". Once you drop the assumption that you already know Emacs because you know the product category it's purportedly in, it turns out the conventions and keybindings aren't really that hard. The manual and the tutorial do a good job explaining them, and there's always CUA mode to be used as training wheels :). (For me, the biggest hurdle I faced when learning Emacs was to unlearn using arrow keys for navigation - which really has nothing to do with Emacs per se; you need to do that for any editor in order to use it efficiently.) As a point of comparison, imagine approaching Emacs like you'd approach Blender or 3DS Max. In my experience, there's less complaints about weird conventions there, because newcomers to 3D graphics don't assume they know the whole tooling space just because they tinkered in Sketchup in the past. (And that's not to say Emacs isn't full of legacy cruft. It's just that the legacy cruft that's really holding it down is not the things newcomers complain about.)
  - ubermonkey 5y ago
    Emacs takes serious, concerted, and prolonged effort to make headway in. Nothing a new user knows about other software is helpful in working in emacs, so yeah, it's a really daunting and offputting barrier in 2021 when the overwhelming RULE is that tools honor conventions and work similarly. This is why emacs is a niche application in a niche world, and is likely to remain so. It's crazy powerful, and I have made OrgMode my organizational home for a long time, but I don't pretend it's a good fit for people who aren't already very nerdy. (Honestly, at this point, if a person with no development background expresses curiosity, I send them to Obsidian.)

cyberbanjo 5y ago

Vanilla emacs comes with cua-mode so you can more easily feel at home

exikyut 5y ago
Facepalms in https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/

brabel 5y ago

If you're on Mac, Cmd+C Cmd+V and Cmd+Z do the same as in other apps, and so will Option+Left/Right for example, I guess the problem is on Windows where those shortcuts use Ctrl and emacs uses Ctrl for all its other shortcuts? In which case you can try cua-mode but then you might have trouble with other useful shortcuts commonly used being bound to unusual keys.