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Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now, and the author mentioned using even more niche apps with long history, and a lot of his challenges are with things

by eviks 3y ago

Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now, and the author mentioned using even more niche apps with long history, and a lot of his challenges are with things that have been around breaking other things that have been around, so how does he ignore the effect?

anonzzzies 3y ago
> Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now They are a lot smaller % than vs code or chrome, but compared to most other software they have a huge user base. They are popular software.
- lodovic 3y ago
  Definition nitpicking: They are only popular among a specific crowd. When less than 5% of all users use the software, I wouldn't call it popular globally.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    FF was at 6% in 2021 apparently. And emacs, because it is not spyware, unlike most competitors of it, has an unknown user base. The definition (from the Oxford dictionary) is sufficiently vague though; you put a % on it, they don’t.
    - eviks 3y ago
      Spying isn't the only method of gaining knowledge, polls exist And if the definition is vague enough to include both, you can't use it as an argument to exclude one
      - anonzzzies 3y ago
        > polls exist Yes, and they are also notoriously unreliable. With KYCd users (which won’t be the case in voting ‘best coding editor’) it is even unreliable, let alone things like reddit polls.
        eviks 3y ago
        They aren't as unreliable as to miss an elephant in the room of eternal ignorance, and you don't need to shift to "the best", a basic "have you even heard of this" is sufficient
t-3 3y ago
Firefox is definitely popular. If you stop a random person on the street and ask them "what is firefox?", they'll probably know that it's a web browser, and a good number will have used it at some point in their lives. Emacs can probably not be considered popular except maybe among the niche of programmers who use Linux or UNIX derivatives.
- eviks 3y ago
  Why would I need to resort to these idirect measures of knowledge about the past when there is direct data on actual use currently?
  - t-3 3y ago
    6% of worldwide users doesn't sound unpopular to me unless you compare to the Chrome monopoly. I'm just giving you an alternate viewpoint to show that you shouldn't get caught up on how much more popular the most popular program is when trying to determine whether something is popular. There are too many browsers to list, but most people are using Chrome/Edge/Safari or Firefox.
    - eviks 3y ago
      6% wasn't your argument, and is also wrong - that's only counting desktop, so it's missing a huge part of the market, which brings the number down to a mere 2.6%, try to spin that as popular unless "monopoly" And your last statement is true with just Chrome, so you can add any other browser there for the same effect

by eviks 3y ago

anonzzzies 3y ago

> Emacs and Firefox are not popular right now They are a lot smaller % than vs code or chrome, but compared to most other software they have a huge user base. They are popular software.

lodovic 3y ago
Definition nitpicking: They are only popular among a specific crowd. When less than 5% of all users use the software, I wouldn't call it popular globally.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  FF was at 6% in 2021 apparently. And emacs, because it is not spyware, unlike most competitors of it, has an unknown user base. The definition (from the Oxford dictionary) is sufficiently vague though; you put a % on it, they don’t.
  - eviks 3y ago
    Spying isn't the only method of gaining knowledge, polls exist And if the definition is vague enough to include both, you can't use it as an argument to exclude one
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      > polls exist Yes, and they are also notoriously unreliable. With KYCd users (which won’t be the case in voting ‘best coding editor’) it is even unreliable, let alone things like reddit polls.
      - eviks 3y ago
        They aren't as unreliable as to miss an elephant in the room of eternal ignorance, and you don't need to shift to "the best", a basic "have you even heard of this" is sufficient

t-3 3y ago

Firefox is definitely popular. If you stop a random person on the street and ask them "what is firefox?", they'll probably know that it's a web browser, and a good number will have used it at some point in their lives. Emacs can probably not be considered popular except maybe among the niche of programmers who use Linux or UNIX derivatives.

eviks 3y ago
Why would I need to resort to these idirect measures of knowledge about the past when there is direct data on actual use currently?
- t-3 3y ago
  6% of worldwide users doesn't sound unpopular to me unless you compare to the Chrome monopoly. I'm just giving you an alternate viewpoint to show that you shouldn't get caught up on how much more popular the most popular program is when trying to determine whether something is popular. There are too many browsers to list, but most people are using Chrome/Edge/Safari or Firefox.
  - eviks 3y ago
    6% wasn't your argument, and is also wrong - that's only counting desktop, so it's missing a huge part of the market, which brings the number down to a mere 2.6%, try to spin that as popular unless "monopoly" And your last statement is true with just Chrome, so you can add any other browser there for the same effect