Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>]

On 27.04.2020 20:50, ndame wrote:
> 
>> The article is here:
>>
>> https://download.blender.org/documentation/pdf/LXF204.feat_3d.5cjt.pdf
> 
> That's not it, google found a version, some excerpts:

Yeah, the above is a 5-year old article. But it was interesting too, and 
especially the emphasis on animators generally needing dedicated 
training to start being productive.

> "Blender developers – would defend the software’s defiantly idiosyncratic UI on the grounds that ‘different doesn’t always mean worse’. Blender could do everything that other 3D packages could, they argued, and given a little time, it was possible to adapt your old working methods to a new combination of icons, keyboard shortcuts and menu commands. But for artists working in visual effects or game development – notoriously high-pressure industries, particularly when deadlines are looming – time is at a premium. Many people who might otherwise have loved Blender got no further than its splash screen"
> 
> ...
> 
> "Others struck at the heart of Blender veterans’ sense of identity and even their muscle memory. In almost every other 3D application, you leftclick to select things. In Blender, prior to 2.80, you rightclicked by default. Supporters argued that it made for a faster, more precise workflow – but it was also alien to artists coming to Blender from other software."
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> https://www.pressreader.com/australia/linux-format/20191217/281745566267591

That's a very good read. Another quote, not much relevant for Emacs, but 
it could make for a good promo material for FSF:

“We don’t see open source as free. We see it as free-ing,” says Bell. 
“You could cer­tainly save money if you wanted to, but I see it as an 
op­por­tu­nity to take a por­tion of the bud­get and re­di­rect it to 
our core soft­ware. We truly hope that oth­ers will take the 
de­vel­op­ment work we’ve put in and push it fur­ther.”

> There are obvious similarities with Emacs' current situation.

I also see a lot of parallels between the programs themselves.