From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: wgreenhouse@riseup.net (W. Greenhouse) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: What's an even easier explanation how to setup gnus ... Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:44:40 +0000 Message-ID: <874na1etxj.fsf@motoko.kusanagi> References: <5i61va9u7p.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87wqmzjvly.fsf@gmail.com> <985927b0-0d56-47f7-bfdb-ae1b1670d4b0@googlegroups.com> <23b442cf-1a6d-4a58-8966-a880be2ddf10@googlegroups.com> <8jfvtmdqrn.fsf@news.eternal-september.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1378226739 19645 80.91.229.3 (3 Sep 2013 16:45:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2013 16:45:39 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Sep 03 18:45:42 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VGtjZ-0005vd-MA for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 18:45:41 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:47658 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VGtjY-0002XW-R6 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:45:40 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:39859) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VGtj2-0002Qi-Oc for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:45:14 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VGtiw-0003u4-Nw for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:45:08 -0400 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:60936) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VGtiw-0003sZ-Hg for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:45:02 -0400 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VGtiv-0005dO-PM for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 18:45:01 +0200 Original-Received: from tor1.digineo.de ([87.118.91.140]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 18:45:01 +0200 Original-Received: from wgreenhouse by tor1.digineo.de with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 03 Sep 2013 18:45:01 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 74 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: tor1.digineo.de User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:q/JNcrGWc9b//ONz53/bjinlZw0= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:93222 Archived-At: Richard Riley writes: > Rustom Mody writes: [...] >> The situation is reversed today -- the modern kid expects everything >> to run without study. This need not be a good thing -- the >> 'intuitive' interface may in fact be the stupid interface; does not >> change the fact that its the universal expectation. > And for a good reason. The majority of people want to *use* SW not > learn how it works or figure out its internals. Of course most of us > here are emacs users so we're not normal - but I'm always a little > surprised when a dinosaur then thinks everyone should be that way as > if its somehow "better" - its not. Most people *use* the SW to be > productive in something else. The problem is that the expectation that they can use computers without study is, simply, a wrong expectation. The fact of the matter is that those kids just can't use computers.[1] Or they can, but only within very limited parameters. The notion that they are "digital natives" thanks to touchscreens and GUIs is simply false. They are digital troglodytes, digital Neanderthals, because our countries have failed to teach them to be anything better. As for workers in various fields who use computers as part of their work, they don't think of themselves as technical workers, but nonetheless, they are expected to be highly competent with certain software, and even hired on the basis of experience with certain software. So, it turns out that as far as doing real work, you need to put in years of practice with the technology anyway. Dealing with customer support tickets in a phone bank or running optimization problems in a spreadsheet are not even jobs that we think of as computer programming jobs, but nonetheless they are, and the people doing them either received training, or they blundered their way through years of learning the best practices for that job. Either way, some GUI did not teach them how to do it in a Blinding Flash of the Obvious. Gnus may be a very poor choice of mailclient for someone whose needs are really met by the increasingly limited interfaces of popular webmail or mobile applications (want not to top-post in Gmail? Sorry, you can't anymore!). But for users like the ones I describe in the second paragraph, who are in jobs that make high demands of their computer skills but don't call themselves computing jobs, an Emacs-based mailclient was and remains an excellent choice. Discussing Amazon's old Emacs-based interface for customer service employees, Steve Yegge wrote: > People still love it. To this very day, I still have to listen to long > stories from our non-technical folks about how much they miss > Mailman. I'm not shitting you. Last Christmas I was at an Amazon party, > some party I have no idea how I got invited to, filled with business > people, all of them much prettier and more charming than me and the > folks I work with here in the Furnace, the Boiler Room of Amazon. Four > young women found out I was in Customer Service, cornered me, and talked > for fifteen minutes about how much they missed Mailman and Emacs, and > how Arizona (the JSP replacement we'd spent years developing) still just > wasn't doing it for them. [2] And again, these were not people whose job is to write software, or who necessarily know anything about writing software. These were precisely people whose job it was to be productive in something else: dealing with upset customers. Go back to your iPad, Richard. Footnotes: [1] http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ [2] https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel -- Best, WGG