On Saturday, August 23, 2014 2:38:10 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> > Rob Gaddi : > >> Emacs and vim both have huge learning curves > > Really now? > > When you start emacs, it advises you to start the builtin tutorial. > You need a tutorial for a text editor??? > If that's supposed to prove how easy Emacs is, you have failed miserably. > Any application which requires a tutorial should consider it a UI failure. > Ideally applications should be "intuitive" in the sense that all features > should be self-explanatory, obvious, and easily discovered. Of course, the > more complex the application, the less this is likely to be true, but every > feature that requires explanation is a feature that is begging for > improvement. > > That's how I learned it in the 1980's and didn't experience any learning > > curve. > No learning curve at all? That means one of two things: > - either you *instantly* intuited every single Emacs feature the moment you > started the application; or > - Emacs has no features at all. > I'm pretty sure neither of those is the case :-) > > Nowadays, emacs has a GUI that makes you productive immediately without > > any keyboard commands. I have seen complete newbies adopt emacs without > > any kind of duress or hardship. > I just started up emacs, and got a GUI window with an abstract picture of a > gnu and a bunch of instructions which I didn't get a chance to read. I > clicked on the text, and the instructions disappeared. I don't know how to > get them back. They were replaced with what looks like a blank page ready > to type into, except it starts with this ominous warning: > ;; This buffer is for notes you don't want to save, and for Lisp evaluation. > ;; If you want to create a file, visit that file with C-x C-f, > ;; then enter the text in that file's own buffer. > Why would I be writing notes I don't want to save? If I did, wouldn't I, you > know, just *not save them* instead of write them in a special buffer > (whatever that is!)? > Lisp evaluation? I don't have any speech impediments, thank you very much. > Okay, so let's try creating a file, using those instructions. I dutifully > type C-x C-f and, apart from "C-x C-f" appearing on the screen, nothing > happens. I wait a while in case it's just slow. > Ah, silly me, I need to *enter* the command to make it happen. So I press > Enter. Nothing happens except the cursor moves down a line. > Perhaps Emacs has frozen? The blinking cursor is still blinking, so that's > unlikely. > Okay, let's click the blank page icon, the universal symbol for creating a > new, blank document. That at least is recognisable. > Well, that's just bizarre. I expected a new document. Instead, I got a > message in the status bar at the bottom of the page, saying: > Find file: /home/steve/ > and the blinking cursor. I don't want to find a file, and if I did I would > use my computer's Find or Search application, not a text editor. So still > no new document I can type into. > When all else fails, use the menus. So I try the File menu. It's a bit > disconcerting that, alone of all the applications I've used on eight > different platforms (Windows 95, 98, XP, Classic Mac, Mac OS X, Linux with > Gnome, KDE and Xfce window managers), the mouse pointer points the other > way when over a menu, but hey, I'm a sophisticated user and I refuse to be > put off by such a minor, albeit gratuitous, difference. But there is no New > Document command, and I am stymied again. > I shall not be defeated by a mere text editor. I click the New Document icon > again, hoping that what failed last time will succeed this time. But at > least I am not entirely insane, for although I did not get a new document, > at least something different occurred: an error message appeared in the > status bar: > Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer > This is the moment that I decide to give up on Emacs and take up something > trivial in comparison, like being a Soyuz pilot, если вы знаете, что я имею > в виду. emacs = Editor for Middle Aged Computer Scientists - Generally Not Used vi = a program with two modes -- one in which it beeps and the other in which it corrupts your file -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
