From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rustom Mody Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?" Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 08:37:29 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: <87y58pplcp.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1375112429 13176 80.91.229.3 (29 Jul 2013 15:40:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:40:29 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jul 29 17:40:30 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 1V3pYj-0000Be-Rp for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:40:29 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:53778 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V3pYj-0004O9-Fz for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 29 Jul 2013 11:40:29 -0400 X-Received: by 10.224.69.6 with SMTP id x6mr2443088qai.0.1375112250282; Mon, 29 Jul 2013 08:37:30 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.50.27.74 with SMTP id r10mr482044igg.10.1375112250077; Mon, 29 Jul 2013 08:37:30 -0700 (PDT) Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!cb17no1013810qab.0!news-out.google.com!ce7ni0qab.0!nntp.google.com!cb17no1093555qab.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=59.95.19.95; posting-account=mBpa7woAAAAGLEWUUKpmbxm-Quu5D8ui Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 59.95.19.95 User-Agent: G2/1.0 Injection-Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:37:30 +0000 Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:200245 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:92512 Archived-At: On Monday, July 29, 2013 8:16:05 PM UTC+5:30, Jambunathan K wrote: > Personally, my first love with Emacs was when someone showed M-q to me > and the most uglily indented text aligned nicely between the margins. I started using emacs in the early 90s because I wanted something better than an interactive shell for teaching interaction with a (pre)haskell interpreter. Dunno if comint mode existed then -- I at least did not know about it. Wrote my own mode which used to crash not just emacs but even linux in interesting ways! Couple of years later, found scheme-mode written on top of comint and search-n-replaced it for my purposes. > Specifically, if someone is interested in introducing Emacs to a > non-Emacs user, what strategies should they adopt to maximize their > chances of having a new convert. I welcome any insights from both the > victors and the vanquished on the "Convert to or introduce Emacs > battle". Find myself increasingly on the vanquished side nowadays. This has many sides: For one I can corroborate Emanuel's observation that today's kids are more 'spoilt' -- as google gives more and more, attention-span gets less and less. I am frequently asked to use something more 'modern/reasonable' etc than emacs (eclipse/sublime-text etc). Some of the reasons are simply noob-acclimatization issues like tutorial uses C-f/b/n/p instead of cursor keys, non-use of cua keystrokes etc. However some things are from the pov of an old user more crucial: - poor support for refactoring - poor support for mainstream languages like java which make it quite hard to sell emacs in an eclipse-d world.