Re: Emacs learning curve

[immanuel litzroth]

> So yes, you are right. The current UI won't keep the very
> determined hackers away, but in my experience the question most
> new users (and
> most new hackers) ask when encountering Emacs is: "Why should I
> bother with it if it's so alien?"
* It supports an order of magnitude more languages that *any* other program
out there.
* It runs on more operating systems than most other programs.
* In a pinch it will run fine over a limited bandwith connection.
* It's quite easy to script repetetive tasks in it especially when
they involve manipulation
of text. It's very powerfull once you get under the hood.
* There's a developer community that has usually already written what
is just a vague
idea in your mind.
* If you're happy with what you have now you shouldn't bother
changing, but the alienness
shouldn't scare you.

Are some arguments you might use if for some weird reason you want to
spend the next
weeks answering questions about emacs, elisp, .emacs(.el) etc. I
personally always advise
using Visual XX on windows and also give them the email of the
resident experts :-)
Immanuel