Re: What is the most useful potential feature which Emacs lacks?

[Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>]

On 13 May 2020, Christopher Lemmer Webber wrote:
>Hi Karl, nice to hear you reply to me :)

I don't (can't) read every post to this list, but I always read yours :-).

>I agree with a lot of your assessments, that the highest value in Emacs
>is the willingness to invest in it.  A well customized emacs conforms to
>the shape of one's body and mind.  And I agree then that this is a
>selling point to advertise.
>
>I still don't think that's in contradiction to the "conventional editor
>starter pack" goal though.  I know people who are tantalized by the
>*idea* of learning Emacs, but get an enormous amount of imposter
>syndrome and feeling of being overwhelmed when dipping their toes in the
>water... some have tried dipping their toes in the water a few times.
>
>Me personally, once I decided to learn emacs I just jumped straight into
>the deep end.  But that's not for everyone.  Sometimes it can be nice to
>have a wading area in the swimming pool for some folks.

I believe those goals *are* somewhat in tension, though.  I've taught Emacs to a fair number of people, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.  One thing that I recall every newcomer experiencing is, at least initially, the feeling that Emacs was constantly biting them -- constantly surprising them with unexpected and confusing behaviors that jump out from accidental keystrokes.  Two of the first things I always have to teach newcomers are `C-g' and `C-h l' :-).

Here's a concrete example I've seen over and over:

User does `C-x C-f' to find a file, but they hit Return at the wrong moment while typing the file path, causing a Dired buffer comes up visiting the file's directory.  The user is, of course, totally baffled by this result.  And yet it's obvious why this is a good default behavior for `find-file' -- for people who understand what's going on.

If the proposed starter pack is going to mitigate effects like that for newcomers, it can only do so by making the keybound functionality space sparser -- which of course then lowers the reward-for-investment rate as the user gains expertise.  How do you propose solving that?  Do we make an explicit "I'm ready to leave newcomer mode now" command?  But that requires the user to make a guess about the moment of their graduation from newcomer to non-newcomer -- and this moment is mythical, since the learning is a continuous process with no discrete boundary.

Changes that make Emacs better for newcomers *without* reducing the reward-for-investment rate are great, and I'm in favor of them like everyone else is.  No one would object to them; therefore they are not the subject of any disagreement.  I do think those changes are harder to find than you think they are.

Really I'm just suggesting a general framework for thinking about what Emacs's goals should be.  If we just say "Emacs should be easier for newcomers to learn", that's not a useful rallying cry IMHO.  If we say instead "Emacs should try to attract newcomers who have a higher-than-average probability of becoming high-investment users, and should explain early on to those newcomers what the road ahead looks like", *then* we have a high-level guiding principle we can actually use.

Best regards,
-Karl