The Modernization of Emacs

[Hal Vaughan]

Joel J. Adamson wrote:

> Xah Lee <xah at xahlee.org> writes:
> 
>> ----------------------------------------
>> SIMPLE CHANGES
>>
>> In the following, i describe some critical changes that are also very
>> easy to fix in emacs. If emacs officially adopt these changes, i think
>> it will make a lot people, at least programers, like emacs and choose
>> emacs as their text editor.
> 
> The problem with this line of thinking is that it aims to make Emacs
> appeal to people -- I think it is rather the other way around.
> Certain people appeal to Emacs:  certain kinds of people like Emacs
> and the way it is set up, and they change it to suit their needs.

I worked for years as a special ed teacher and I learned that people have
different learning styles.  It's not just learning, but it's perceiving and
working as well.  Some people will always do better with a command line and
some will always do better with a GUI with point-and-click.  That doesn't
mean one is smarter than the other or one is a true geek and one isn't. 
It's just the way our brains are wired.

Emacs appeals to the type of personality that is often a hard core
programmer.  It works for those that want to customize everything and have
full control over their environment AND do well with a command line rather
than a more visual and graphic environment.  For those, emacs is probably
the best program for them.  

Some people prefer to drive a Miata and some prefer a Dodge Ram.  One isn't
better than the other, they're just different.  Trying to make a Dodge Ram
look like a convertible so Miata lovers will want to use it is a waste. 
It'll never be a Miata and the more people try to make it adaptable so it
can be one, the more they ruin what's special about it.

The more emacs is adapted for the non-technical, the more it'll lose what
makes it special and a good fit for programmers.

> Among your changes, I found none that made sense to me, a person who
> used Unix before Windows became widely used.  For people like me, who
> always preferred Unix, changes like changing "buffer" to "opened file"
> seem inefficient and unnecessary.

It seems to me that is the kind of person emacs is written for.  What will
it gain if a large number of non-technical people start using it in
a "non-emacs" mode?

> Sorry -- this totally falls flat.  It won't make Emacs more widely
> used.  The only thing that will make Emacs more widely used is making
> people aware of it; as soon as I became aware of Emacs (from reading
> Wikipedia, ironically), I began using it and I knew I was stuck with
> it.  It's not even important for the survival of Emacs that it be more
> widely used -- it was never important in the last thirty years of its
> history, why should it be important now that Microsoft Word is so
> widely used?

Let those who need Word use it.  To try to change emacs into something it
isn't is ignoring what makes it special.

Hal