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Why do you care what people name their Emacs config? One advantage right of the bat with a unique name is for referencing a configuration to new users to get up

Why do you care what people name their Emacs config? One advantage right of the bat with a unique name is for referencing a configuration to new users to get up and running on Emacs quickly, instead of: 1: "Hey try this configuration until you're up to writing your own." 2: "Which one?" 1: "my .emacs" Rather than being able to Google: "Emacs Prelude" or "Emacs Starter Kit". As for educating new users, most people simply don't have the time or regard to build an Emacs configuration that they can be productive with right away from day 1. There's just too much to know all at once. Emacs configurations such as the Emacs Starter Kit and Prelude provide a centralized place for new users to learn. I see how configurations can do anything to increase the confusion they already have. They either don't care and just like how it works better than without the configuration, or they're interested and use THE manual by doing the C-h's, or browsing the configurations files learning new things incrementally, when they feel like it.

jrockway 15y ago
I care because I think it's a stupid idea and it's confusing to new users. Yes, anything Emacs is going to be confusing to new users. But having to debug some third-party "prelude" or "starter kit" that they read about on Reddit is just going to complicate learning Emacs. They will spend their time fighting with colors and keybindings instead of learning how to explore Emacs. It trains users to depend on other people to set their preferences, when the whole point of Emacs is that everything is discoverable and customizable. (I don't mind including non-core modes like auctex or haskell-mode, but would prefer that they were bundled and maintained in core.) Ultimately, life-long Emacs users have their own set of defaults that they have learned to like over the years. This is due to muscle memory and habit rather than any objective good. I recently killed two thirds of my own .emacs and it removed many long-standing annoyances. Emacs improves, hacks on top of hacks called config files don't. If all sets of possible configurations are equally bad, why not stick to the config file that doesn't require an actual file, and then let users M-x customize as appropriate? You may not like customize, but it's pretty nice for people that are new to Emacs. (And, actually, I try to do everything via customize because I'd rather let the computer maintain my config file.)

jrockway 15y ago

I care because I think it's a stupid idea and it's confusing to new users. Yes, anything Emacs is going to be confusing to new users. But having to debug some third-party "prelude" or "starter kit" that they read about on Reddit is just going to complicate learning Emacs. They will spend their time fighting with colors and keybindings instead of learning how to explore Emacs. It trains users to depend on other people to set their preferences, when the whole point of Emacs is that everything is discoverable and customizable. (I don't mind including non-core modes like auctex or haskell-mode, but would prefer that they were bundled and maintained in core.) Ultimately, life-long Emacs users have their own set of defaults that they have learned to like over the years. This is due to muscle memory and habit rather than any objective good. I recently killed two thirds of my own .emacs and it removed many long-standing annoyances. Emacs improves, hacks on top of hacks called config files don't. If all sets of possible configurations are equally bad, why not stick to the config file that doesn't require an actual file, and then let users M-x customize as appropriate? You may not like customize, but it's pretty nice for people that are new to Emacs. (And, actually, I try to do everything via customize because I'd rather let the computer maintain my config file.)