The Modernization of Emacs

[Joel J. Adamson]

Kaldrenon <kaldrenon at gmail.com> writes:

> On Jun 20, 9:28 am, David Kastrup <d... at gnu.org> wrote:
>> Kaldrenon <kaldre... at gmail.com> writes:
>> > I'm very, very new to emacs. I used it a little this past year in
>> > college, but I didn't try at all to delve into its features. I'm
>> > starting that process now, and frankly, the thought of it changing -
>> > already- upsets me. I don't feel like the program ought to change in
>> > order to accommodate me.
>>
>> Actually, the "E" in "Emacs" stands for "extensible".  Part of the
>> appeal of Emacs is that you can change it to accommodate you.
>
> Well put. Perhaps I should have said that I don't feel like the
> program ought to change to "accommodate" -everybody-.
>

The point is that the responsibility to customize is on the user.  All
the developers need to do is continue providing the most customizable
piece of software around.  If we place the responsiblity to customize
on the developer, then he develops a piece of software customized for
himself; that wouldn't be Emacs.

Which brings me to another point: as someone already said, you could
fork the code and make all these changes, but then it would be
something else, it would stop being Emacs.

And it would stop being cool.

Joel

-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA  02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109

A webpage of interest:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html