Re: Making Emacs more newbie friendly

[PT]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:22:49 +0100, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> > The question is: is more people using Emacs a good thing at all? Or
> > is it only an additional burden (more clueless people on the help
> > forums, etc.)?
>
> You are trying to frame loaded questions.

No, it was a sincere question. And if the answer is no, it's not a good  
thing then I'm okay with it.

> What is "a good thing"?
> More people using Emacs is not a worthwhile objective per se.  If it
> were, we should replace Emacs by toiletpaper, and its user base would
> explode.  A worthwhile objective for a developer is to have Emacs
> become a more productive tool for his work.  This is not unrelated to
> the size of its user base, since developers usually tend to start out
> as users.

Exactly. I don't know what resources are at the emacs developers' disposal  
(do they work on it on their free time? is some of them paid to work on  
Emacs?), but if companies see more value in emacs then they might even  
sponsor developing some new features for them.

At companies when it comes to choosing a developer tool the recommendation  
of the employees and their existing experience with those tools can be an  
important factor at the decision.  So if Emacs is more newbie friendly  
that can mean more potential users, more value as a tool for employers and  
possibly more resources for future development.

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