Re: Changes for emacs 28

[Ricardo Wurmus]

TEC <tecosaur@gmail.com> writes:

> So the 'issue' here isn't a direct "this doesn't look good so I won't
> use this" but a case of association. When I see the vanilla Emacs splash
> screen I'm reminded of the *worst* editors I have experienced, which is
> (as we both know) completely inaccurate, but first impressions are
> coloured by a myriad of factors.
>
> Vim of course also lacks a splash screen, but it's also known as a
> terminal-exclusive editor. I know I tend to set different expectations
> TUIs and GUIs, so I'd imagine I'd find this less of a subconscious
> red-flag.

This is something I have seen in other people who wanted to learn Emacs
after they saw me use it and heard me evangelize… When they get started
with vanilla Emacs they see something that looks like it’s going to be a
lot of work to make it work well for them.

Many of them do know of Vim, if only for the fact that they don’t know
how to exit it.  (They realize then that they also don’t know how to
exit Emacs.)  They remember that Vim requires a lot of work to make it
do things that it doesn’t do out of the box, and they fear they’ll have
to do the same with Emacs.

At that point their initial enthusiasm has all but disappeared and they
glance over to their colleagues who use Rstudio or Atom (in 2017) or
that proprietary editor Sublime.  Everything seems so easy and
approachable and just as extensible.  They see their colleague use Git
from within Rstudio and wonder if they’d ever get to that point if they
will first have to configure Emacs to do all the basic things first.

When I started to use Emacs (after the third serious attempt switching
from vim) I had lots of time on my hands — literally, because I had just
decided to learn touch typing with Dvorak.  Everything was uncomfortable
and new, so the pain of learning Emacs and making Emacs learn about me
disappeared in an ocean of unrelated discomfort.  This situation doesn’t
seem to be very common in those that are curious about Emacs.

-- 
Ricardo