Re: Emacs learning curve

[Tom]

David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org> writes:

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

Maybe they use Eclipse which is a bloated monster, and while they do Java 
development in it, they want a more efficient editor for their simpler editing
needs. Why couldn't Emacs be this editor if it is easy to use casually?
(Not having to learn new things to use it.) And if we can get them to use it
they may even get to like it and want to learn more about it.


> 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?

Most of the new users won't be contributors. They
will be simple users who use Emacs for simple tasks. But some percent of 
them would become contributors who would like to help out if they grow to 
like Emacs.


> 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.
> 

You forget one thing: users of popular tools often runs forums and stuff
to help out others. So even if not all new users would contribute code
they would write blogs, answer questions, etc. so they could even take
such load off the core developers and they could concentrate on important
issues more.

More users means more whiners, but more helping hands too who would help
in the janitorial work.