Re: Making Emacs more newbie friendly

[Miles Bader]

PT <mailshield.gg@mailnull.com> writes:
> BTW, it seems in the corporate world Eclipse will fill this space
> instead of Emacs. It's a self described "universal tool platform - an
> open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular". When a
> newbie tells me he gave up on Emacs because is to alien I usually tell
> them to use Eclipse instead. And they usually are happy, because it's
> nice, shiny and point-and-clicky. :)

FWIW, I've seen a number of beginning programmers start out with
Eclipse, be initially impressed, but later move to Emacs.

It's hard for me to judge because I've used Emacs for so long, but I
kinda understand why -- the sort of "more structured" interface of
Eclipse can be initially comforting, but ultimately end up feeling
restricting.  Once you get used to it, Emacs is far more accessible and
straight-forward (for mostly the same reasons that cause it to be
less structured).

-Miles
-- 
"Nah, there's no bigger atheist than me.  Well, I take that back.
I'm a cancer screening away from going agnostic and a biopsy away
from full-fledged Christian."  [Adam Carolla]