Re: Changes for emacs 28

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 15.09.2020 11:12, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 11:45:27AM -0700, chad wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 3:31 AM <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> >
> > > But the argument "it's more popular, so it must be better" is too naive, I
> > > think.
>
> [...]
>
> > try emacs but go (back) to VSCode, because ...". Usually, that sentence
> > ends in some form of "it's much easier/more intuitive to get started" or
> > "it's quick/easy/obvious how to get it to 'it just-works'".
> >
> > In other words, the popularity is a symptom, not a cause.
>
> This is exactly the point I was putting in question: My
> take is that popularity is part of a giant feedback loop,
> so it's *both*, a symptom and a cause. And a (non-negligible)
> set of forces driving that feedback loop are the marketing
> departments of big corps [1]. They wouldn't be doing their
> jobs if it weren't so.

A feedback loop is of course there.

But since we're not in marketing department, and we're not outlining a 
promotional campaign, it's also irrelevant.

We're not living in a vacuum, and we try to help real people. If a 
feature, or a UI design, or etc, has reached a significant level of 
popularity, adopting it in our program is likely to be beneficial. When 
someone comes in with just basic familiarity of other programs such as 
VS Code, and manages to become productive enough in Emacs faster because 
of that, it _is_ good.

It's far from the only consideration we should make, but scoffing at 
"popular" misses the point.

> Failing to see this leads to this over-eager "how can we
> change Emacs to make it more popular" thing, instead of
> to a more balanced view, where potential changes are
> judged against a more complete set of principles and
> goals (newcomer friendliness surely being one of them!).

As long as we don't discount familiarity when talking about newcomer 
friendliness, I agree.