From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Christopher Lemmer Webber Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: What is the most useful potential feature which Emacs lacks? Date: Tue, 12 May 2020 08:44:53 -0400 Message-ID: <87k11htj96.fsf@dustycloud.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="45242"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: mu4e 1.2.0; emacs 26.3 Cc: Emacs developers To: ndame Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue May 12 14:46:00 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jYUII-000Bbj-Mi for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 12 May 2020 14:45:58 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38416 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jYUIH-000305-Os for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 12 May 2020 08:45:57 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:42286) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jYUHI-0001w1-2g for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 12 May 2020 08:44:56 -0400 Original-Received: from dustycloud.org ([50.116.34.160]:58698) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jYUHH-0001T2-7o for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 12 May 2020 08:44:55 -0400 Original-Received: from twig (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dustycloud.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D41B426679; Tue, 12 May 2020 08:44:53 -0400 (EDT) In-reply-to: Received-SPF: pass client-ip=50.116.34.160; envelope-from=cwebber@dustycloud.org; helo=dustycloud.org X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: First seen = 2020/05/12 08:44:54 X-ACL-Warn: Detected OS = Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Spam_score_int: -18 X-Spam_score: -1.9 X-Spam_bar: - X-Spam_report: (-1.9 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=_AUTOLEARN X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:249959 Archived-At: ndame writes: > There is a discussion on Reddit about sponsoring development of > multithreading in Emacs, and people there say it's too hard, takes a > lot of time and it doesn't even bring that much benefit to the user. > > If this is the case (is it?) then what are those other features which > could bring much more tangible benefits for the user and assuming > somebody works on them full time sponsored by the community they can > be implemented in, say, a few months? I guess there are really two potential directions to think about it: - What is the most potentially useful direction for newcomers who are familiar with other mainstream UI patterns? - What is the most potentially useful project for existing everyday emacs users? I think these are two separate things to solve. IMO the former is more important than the latter right now because Emacs has a way of making users capable of extending it... it is one of the most beautiful things about the choice of lisp as its configuration system. So the real question to me would be: how do we lower the barrier to entry? There's been a lot of discussion on this, and I think the most promising direction to me so far has been seeing the wild success of Spacemacs as a "starter pack" that comes preconfigured in a way that it feels familiar to Vim users. These days most programmers start off in neither Vi(m) nor Emacs, they start out with UI patterns that solidified after those programs were made. My suspicion is that a Spacemacs-like "starter pack" would solve a lot of this, but it's work that's hard to motivate... once most developers are far enough down the Emacs rabbit hole, doing this work really doesn't do much to scratch their own itch. Thus if there's a space for paid work, I think it would be to do this work which might not be as directly useful to the developer, but would be directly useful to other newcomers. It would be useful and important IMO to directly test against newcomers' experiences and collect feedback. (The more difficult question to me would be: do the training wheels ever come off the bike? Or is it just a "different UI pattern" at that point that one comes to accept and use emacs in that way?)