Re: Emacs learning curve

[David Kastrup]

Tom <address@hidden> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> How on earth are those two related??  CUA Mode already exists and need
>> just be enabled; the IDE features need at best a lot of work, if not
>> implementation from ground up.  Enabling CUA by default modifies the
>> most basic keybindings; adding IDE features changes nothing until the
>> user actually activates the IDE.  Etc., etc.
>
> The logic goes:
>
> 1. we don't have a killer application out of the box with zero
> configuration like refactoring support, etc. It needs lots of work.
>
> 2. we have a UI which is very different from the ones in popular 
>   systems (e.g. keybindings)
>
> 3. since we don't have a killer feature which is instantly appealing
> to newcomers and we have a different ui, they usually say, in my
> experience: Why should I bother with it?  Why should I learn new
> keys for copy/paste if there is not killer feature?

Why should they switch their editor at all if there "is not killer
feature", never mind the keybindings?

Why would they become contributors when being able to program/contribute
is not attractive (not killer feature) for them?  Why would people
bothered by keybindings switch to an editor where they need to
contribute code before it becomes tolerable for them?

> 6. By taking the conservative estimate that 1 percent of new users
> become emacs hackers who contribute something worthwhile (code,
> documentation, testing, etc.) then if we can attract 1000 more new
> users we can get 10 good contributors. If we can attract 10000, we get
> a 100.

People who can't be bothered to think about keybindings can't likely be
bothered to think about programming.

So the kind of new users you are trying to attract would likely have a
worse contributor ratio than that.  They will have a non-zero whine
factor, however.  You'll be more than busy enough catering for their
superficial complaints and feature remapping requests ever to get around
to implementing a killer feature.

> That's why I think making emacs more appealing to new users is
> important.  More users means more hackers (that 1 percent, that is)
> and more hackers means more development resources which leads to a
> better emacs.

I have my doubts.

-- 
David Kastrup