Re: How to make Emacs popular again.

[Bob Newell]

In your long posting with many ideas about making Emacs
beginner friendly, there is much to consider, and I must say
right at the start that easing the Emacs learning experience
is a worthy goal.

It does raise the question: how did the current Emacs users
learn Emacs? I can't speak for anyone else but I don't know
that my own experiences are in any way unique. I learned first
from the tutorial, then from some of the manuals, then by doing
and experimenting and reading more of the manuals, and trial
and error.

Could this have been more efficient? Yes, of course. But I did
I learn a lot in the process--- a very serious "lot"--- and it
cemented my knowledge and appreciation of what Emacs could,
and was already, doing for me.

Do I advocate pure bumbling in the dark as a means of
learning?  No. But perhaps guided bumbling is more of the
thing.

We can never forget something critically important: Emacs is a
very sophisticated, very powerful tool, and like all such
tools, it takes effort and dedication to learn. (Even lesser
tools, like office suites, take effort to learn, if perhaps in
lesser amounts.)

While we can and should do all we can to make the road
smoother--- short of turning Emacs into something completely
different and so overwhelmed with tooltips, popups, and other
"help" that it becomes unpleasant or even unusable--- let's
face it, Emacs is never going to be "easy."

Emacs will continue to attract a certain audience. I'm not
sure that this is an issue per se. Nor (as I've said in the
past) do I mean this to be an elitist thing. Emacs has a
certain appeal to certain people. So does opera, baseball, or
liver and onions.

Things are, in fact, very much easier now than when I started
with Emacs decades ago. Today, there is a wealth of on-line
information, with tutorials, how-tos, discussions, code
samples, and help readily available to anyone who asks
politely. 

But in the end: do you become a chess master after reading a
"Chess Made Easy" book? Do you become a concert guitarist
after working through "Guitar Playing Made Easy For
Beginners"?

Effort and reward go together, whether it's Emacs or anything
else that is deep and sophisticated. If someone wants instant
gratification, maybe Twitter is a better choice.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

- Via GNU/Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB