Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:41:08 -0500
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Cc: esr@snark.thyrsus.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> I proudly mentioned my work on VC-mode, and got majorly dumped on for
> bothering with Emacs at all.  The kids out there think we're a
> stagnant backwater, an old-boys club of bearded grognards that has
> learned nothing and forgotten nothing for the last decade.

Curiously enough, I'm having an opposite experience these days: a
bunch of extremely able developers who work for years with MS Visual
Studio came to respect Emacs, as a viable and powerful alternative to
the bloated and dog-slow Studio, even on Windows, to say nothing of
GNU/Linux (this is a dual-platform project, where software is
developed to run on both systems).  All I needed to do is introduce
them to some optional features, such as Speedbar, ebrowse, and gdb-ui,
and craft a simple .emacs to bind the various Fn keys to
compile/run/debug commands they were used to have.  After that, I
never again heard anyone of them laughing at "stagnant backwater" that
is Emacs.

Of course, I'm not saying that Emacs is going to win proprietary IDEs
any time soon, just that not everybody "dumps" us right away.

> In particular, crappy tools and weak leadership hinder attracting new
> developers.  I can't solve the weak leadership problem, so I'm 
> focusing on what I know how to do: fix the tools.

Sorry, I was taught to identify the 80-20 divide and concentrate on
the 80 part before I turn to the other 20.  I don't see a point in a
revolution that wastes everybody's resources just to produce a 20% or
25% improvement.  But that's me.