Re: Emacs for new users

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:
>
> Maybe. (How do they know what they want or need wrt _learning Emacs_?)
>
> But is that what we want for them? Who is in a better position to design Emacs
> to help new users, new users themselves or people familiar with Emacs (and with
> new-user reports)?
>
> Someone with no experience of Emacs might have certain expectations and a
> certain idea of text editing. But those expectations and that idea do not
> necessarily correspond to what Emacs is or to how best to use Emacs.


We discussed this at length some years ago. My point is that it is
much easier to learn something if the complexity is not to high at the
moment. (It should not be too low either.)

Compare games like Brain Workshop for example. You actually seem to
train your brain into a better mode with it. Some people get
incredible results (at least to my standards) and I believe that comes
from that the complexity is just a little bit more than they can do.
Not more. Not less.

Is not Emacs after all meant to be a brain exercise? ;-)