From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Joe Corneli Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: little pink poodles (Re: Issues with emacs (was Emacs users a dying breed?)) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:59:13 +0100 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1340485165 23807 80.91.229.3 (23 Jun 2012 20:59:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 20:59:25 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Tom Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jun 23 22:59:24 2012 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 1SiXQR-0007o3-45 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 22:59:23 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55453 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SiXQR-0008BN-4G for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:59:23 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:43575) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SiXQM-0008B4-4I for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:59:19 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SiXQK-0000MU-98 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:59:17 -0400 Original-Received: from mail-ob0-f169.google.com ([209.85.214.169]:36063) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SiXQK-0000MH-1c for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:59:16 -0400 Original-Received: by obhx4 with SMTP id x4so5084069obh.0 for ; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:59:13 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; bh=8EDND4XHw3VaJ83jOTA6e62Gq7N6Ts+7uS5EkCAN/Yg=; b=muxbbhC+RSLTjvTVj+b67v7LXDBiThhJ+GZk64cBkZCvIdBiIg3OWrkOk2azK7Yw+n J2lb3Mumzy8NidgczmdGNsCivNN5Ros5sAWcOtIg8iutg9VF2C4Lp7bjkZjEKgj+7Sx5 hsPBzMQybBzxrMtqxnMEdGuIv2S3fWzCTpo55AwYon40984aKVeRFBl/fPrYrS1XtEHH iDj5/ZeoIpy6BrIdTXjegO8xcHxaDYeql6yRgLQV6BbSg749I1ARgZtfvfwl/xVbOsVH 5d1DZt18TjPa1+sXdo4usvTfXDTle0cHPWbtUFMpUDYgSWs3BszU8SdHIW5IQuGAMaMa jaZw== Original-Received: by 10.60.14.169 with SMTP id q9mr7085489oec.19.1340485153237; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:59:13 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: by 10.182.141.6 with HTTP; Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:59:13 -0700 (PDT) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 209.85.214.169 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:85396 Archived-At: > 1. Motivate more users to be volunteer developers? Any idea how > to do that? Something that seems important to mention about Emacs is how amazingly and brilliantly helpful the user community is. I can mention a few people like Kai, Pascal, Stefan, Thien-Thi in particular (along with others) who took it upon themselves to essentially teach me and I don't know how many others - how to program. In Lisp. This is a huge gift and highly motivating -- and exciting. "Thanks" is not enough! Other vital ingredients to the learning process: the source code, the documentation, the interpreter, etc.... and many many people have contributed to that. More recently, I've had the opportunity to compare the Emacs community with the Drupal community, and let me tell you, Emacs is *amazing* for learners, whereas Drupal still makes my eyeballs spin in my head. Figuring out how to get help with Drupal is an art form in itself. With Emacs, the help part seems to "just work" -- or, it has in the past. If we were to lose that (e.g. due to endless discussions in which not a single s-exp is uttered, this one included), that would be sad. Maybe this is one reason to at least *be able* to operate a mail client in Emacs (if only to use it for discussions about code). As for "contributing code back to Emacs"... I did in fact sign papers for FSF, and I posted this and that little snippet to gnu-emacs-sources over the years. I don't think any of them made it into Emacs. I still find this aspect of things slightly confusing, and I think some improvements in "workflow" may be in order. I also pointed out bugs, and those were usually fixed - so kudos for that (this part of the workflow seems to work well). Maybe it's at least *technically* easier to contribute these days (using bzr for the core code, and contributions via package.el/Marmalade) - I haven't tried recently. Anyway: just like it doesn't make sense to expect people to develop good code without a debugger (something that became increasingly clear working on Drupal code), it doesn't make sense to ask people to contribute code at all without reasonably clear pathways for doing so. And since there's TONS of stuff out there already -- even just getting a handle on what's already been contributed seems like hard work! -- this itself would be something worth contributing to. Screenshots are good (http://www.flickr.com/groups/emacs/), the Emacs Wiki is maybe "good enough"? To sum up: a well-trained Emacs user is likely to be a contributor, ready to jump through hoops, roll over, and beg for their dinner... but only when it's clear how to do that.