help-gnu-emacs
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: basic question: going back to dired


From: Bastien
Subject: Re: basic question: going back to dired
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:06:33 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.110011 (No Gnus v0.11) Emacs/23.0.60 (gnu/linux)

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

> At work, there's people doing daily tasks
> with Perl scripts and a very old (circa 1985, perhaps older) non-free
> MS-DOS text editor, MultiEdit. If they used Emacs (and a couple
> hundred lines of elisp code I could write for them), they would save
> *lots* of pain (believe me when I say that: I wrote the Perl scripts
> and know pretty well the data workflow). But there's no way in the
> world that they will invest the time to adapt to Emacs, because it is
> too far removed from what they're used to.

Is it really because it's too far removed from what they're used to?
Or is this just an excuse for not trying to move?

If they could be convinced that the cost of investing in learning Emacs
would finally be rewarding (and save them *lots* of pain), then I guess
they'd learn Emacs.  

But emotions are sometimes stronger than rational arguments, and people
tend to love what they suffer from, not only what they suffer for.

The nice point that "modernists" make is this one: we, old Emacs beasts,
sometimes convert from masochism (yeah! Emacs is pain! Pain is real CS!)
to sadism ("You n00bs! Come and learn the true esoteric way.")  And we
need to be aware of this before refusing any chance in the Emacs tao.  

But I think most of the proposals that want to make things easiers for
newcomers are either non-realistic or useless, because those you want to
reach will always get trapped into some other software.

-- 
Bastien




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]