Re: Emacs learning curve

[Óscar Fuentes]

"Drew Adams" <address@hidden> writes:

>> > We've seen no _evidence_ about a supposed dearth of newbies 
>> > coming to Emacs, in spite of repeated _claims_.  No
>> > Emacs-is-dying problem has been shown, so far.
>> 
>> Of course it is very hard to show statistics for newbies. 
>> OTOH, absence of proof does not indicate that the fact does
>> not exists.
>
> Can you say "Tooth Fairy"? "Santa Claus"?
>
> I won't mention other religious figures.

Can you say "Barack Obama"? "Paris Hilton"?

I have the same amount of evidence about their existence than of Santa
Claus. But somehow I've concluded that Barack Obama exists, and Santa
Claus does not. Some people would oppose that conclusion, though. Maybe
that discrepancy is to to the fact that I'm interested on pursuing the
truth, while others chose to narrow their knowledge-adquiring devices
for supporting wathever makes them feel happy.

For a long period of the PC era, Emacs was the king of the text editors
for technical users. Maybe some people had other preferences, but they
could hardly argue about the power of Emacs. Nowadays Emacs lacks behind
on productivity features for the needs of a large, growing set of their
target users and is going the way of OS/2, VAX, the Amiga and other
pieces of software that stay alive as living fossils just because the
efforts of some enthusiasts. If you doubt that, please join the group
that believes on the existence of Santa Claus.

What I'm trying to convey here is that Emacs can be again a top-notch
programming environment, second to none, the first choice for every
hacker. The first requisite for that is to stop being
self-complacent. And stop looking down on others too.