On the rate of change [was: Another Emacs incompatibilty]

[<tomas@tuxteam.de>]

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On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 10:57:03PM +0200, Torbjörn Granlund wrote:

[...]

> What does this have to do with emacs?  Well, each emacs release changes
> things to make much of what we long term users have gotten accustomed to
> invalid [...]

It's a very difficult balance to hit for a bigger "software project" (and
by this seemingly innocuous phrase I encompass the whole thing around it:
design, uses, developers and their dreams, users and their needs, culture,
haters, detractors, the whole kaboodle).

It doesn't move, and then it's dead (heck even /bin/ls had to take ACLs
into account at some point and SELinux at another). It does move too
much, and then people flee in all directions (remember Jamie Zawinski's
CADT [1]?).

The really, really hard part in it is that there's no "just right" rate
of change. Emacs (the project, the whole kaboodle) just happens to hit
my sweet spot squarely. It doesn't seem to be the case for you. It moves
too fast. Have a look at the mailing list and you'll see as many people
desperate because it doesn't move fast enough (just a month ago we had
a monster thread on this ML, I think).

I have seen so much grief caused (basically) by this kind of tension.

Any ideas on how to tackle that?

Cheers

[1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

-- t

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