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Do we want more choice? (was Bookmark the end of file?)


From: Rusi
Subject: Do we want more choice? (was Bookmark the end of file?)
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2015 20:28:19 -0700 (PDT)
User-agent: G2/1.0

On Monday, April 13, 2015 at 3:05:07 AM UTC+5:30, Drew Adams wrote:
> > > Even if you were right that one use case is more common, why
> > > wouldn't we want to let users control the behavior, instead of
> > > deciding it for them at coding time?
> > 
> > Because offering more choices doesn't always help the user.
> 
> No, of course not.  But neither does offering fewer choices.

There is a general realization nowadays, that everything being equal,
less choice is likely better than more choice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

In the case of emacs that gets a hefty multiplier.

eg. To set up thunderbird one needs to point it to the right source and maybe a 
couple more settings
To set up gnus one has to read a 500 page manual of choices!!
Do you not think that corresponds to the number of thunderbird to gnus users?

At a more coarse-grained level:
When I was scouting around for something like org/planner I asked here,
I got a lot of lengthy and diplomatic answers.
Wasted a couple of months deciding.
Now after some years of using org, I can give a 1-line answer that would have
been way more helpful to me then:

"Planner core-devs have switched to using org themselves"

In short planner vs org is a bogus choice

tl;dr If I have any choice in the matter, please take away the spurious choices


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