Re: Changes for emacs 28

[chad <yandros@gmail.com>]

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On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 3:31 AM <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

> But the argument "it's more popular, so it must be better" is too naive, I
> think.
>

As conversations progress, details get dropped because context builds up.
That said, I think it's important to realize that "it's more popular, so it
must be better" isn't the argument that brought up this (current wave of
this periodically-recurring) discussion; rather, the argument is "people
try emacs but go (back) to VSCode, because ...". Usually, that sentence
ends in some form of "it's much easier/more intuitive to get started" or
"it's quick/easy/obvious how to get it to 'it just-works'".

In other words, the popularity is a symptom, not a cause. It's worthwhile
to remind ourselves of this now and then, but it's not the central thrust
of the original argument (even if it is sometimes used as evidence for
subsequent points).

Similarly, this point:

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 3:59 AM Göktuğ Kayaalp <self@gkayaalp.com> wrote:

> We’re asking "why people aren’t coming to Emacs in hordes" too much,
> when "why are people using Emacs in the first place" is the more
> important one.


The argument that started (this wave) is more about how and why people
`bounce off of Emacs' so often. While there are always new people with
unique viewpoints, I have personally seen many, _many_ potential emacs
users (including programmers, scientists, and other professionals who very
much understand the concept of investing time in mastering tools) try
emacs, and give up, often very quickly. This has been happening for decades
-- For example, way back when I was an undergrad, I used to work user
support for students, faculty, and staff. Emacs was the default text
editor, and still we saw lots of people try emacs and give it up for other
choices, even when those options were known to be less powerful, buggier,
and not officially supported.

My point here is not to call anyone out in the discussion, but to remind
(reassert?) that Emacs' "approachability" has always been a concern, and
that issue has gotten more intense as the baseline of computer familiarity
and competence has increased dramatically. This issue doesn't concern
"market share" or "general popularity", although that has some obvious
upsides -- it's about the large numbers of people who understand that Emacs
should be especially interesting to them, and invest some effort into
trying it, and don't get very far. In addition to the fringe benefits of
network effects, there are a bunch of potential hackers, maintainers,
porters, documentation writers, editors, and the like that bounce off of
emacs. I think it's clear that it would be very helpful to the project to
have more of those people bounce off less quickly, at least.

Hope that helps,
~Chad

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