On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 2:06:00 PM UTC+5:30, Marko Rauhamaa wrote: > Rustom Mody : > > > Emacs 'tries to be everything' in exactly the same way that a 'general > > purpose programming language' is too general and by pretending to > > solve all problems actually solves none (until you hire a programmer). > > Emacs isn't too general. It's just right. > > > Problem with emacs (culture) is that its aficionados assume that a > > superb conceptual design trumps technological relevance, > > It's relevant to me every day, for business and pleasure. > > > [Did you notice that you used the locutions 'M-$', 'M-x'? What sense > > does this 80s terminology make to an emacs uninitiate in 2015? > > They can be initiated in mere seconds to that esoteric knowledge.
You are being obtuse Marko! Yeah that 'M-' is what everyone calls Alt can be conveyed in a few seconds But there are a hundred completely useless pieces of comtemporary-to-emacs inconsistency: - What everyone calls a window, emacs calls a frame - And what emacs calls a window, everyone calls a pane - What everyone does with C-x emacs does with C-w (and woe betide if you mix that up) - What everyone calls head (of a list) emacs calls Car (Toyota?) > > > From seeing my 20-year-olf students suffer all this > > What do your students suffer from? The beauty of the matter is that they > can use any editor they like. They don't have to like or use emacs. > > (In some shops you actually virtually *have* to use Eclipse or Visual > Studio or the some such thing. That *is* painful.) > > > combined with the hopelessness of convincing the emacs folks that we > > are in 2015, not 1980, > > What do you need to convince emacs folks about? Emacs isn't perfect at > everything, but the emacs developers have kept it admirably up to date. > It has been following the quirks of Java, git and MS Exchange even if it > has been an uphill battle. > > > I conclude this is a losing battle > > What would you like to achieve, exactly? Some attitude correction? That emacs starts its tutorial showing how to use C-p and C-n for what everyone uses arrows is bad enough. That the arrow-keys are later found to work quite alright is even worse and speaks of a ridiculous attitude -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
