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Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?"
From: |
Jambunathan K |
Subject: |
Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?" |
Date: |
Mon, 29 Jul 2013 20:16:05 +0530 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux) |
Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:
>> Remember he [RMS] is talking about secretaries in early days of
>> computing learning Emacs and learning programming in the
>> process. I am sure secretaries had no CS degrees and more
>> importantly they belonged to a period when computers were not
>> common place and were quite the cutting edge. I just laugh when
>> young kids in this day of Google complain that Emacs is
>> primitive and is difficult to learn. I consider it a joke.
Welcome back! This time let's talk about Emacs!
We are discussing - http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html
What fascinates me in that article is this,
,----
| They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend
| Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries,
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared
| ^^^^^^^^
| ^^^^^^^^
| off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things
| and they learned to program.
`----
The magic phrases are - "didn't say it was a programming" and
"believed".
Belief or No-Belief, learning, stopping short of saying the whole truth
- all seem interesting to me. Do they help or hinder learning?
Specifically, if someone is interested in introducing Emacs to a
non-Emacs user, what strategies should they adopt to maximize their
chances of having a new convert. I welcome any insights from both the
victors and the vanquished on the "Convert to or introduce Emacs
battle".
Personally, my first love with Emacs was when someone showed M-q to me
and the most uglily indented text aligned nicely between the margins.
> If you, on the other hand, write poetry or whatever with Emacs,
Not a poet here.
- Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Emanuel Berg, 2013/07/29
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?",
Jambunathan K <=
- Message not available
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Rustom Mody, 2013/07/29
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Phillip Lord, 2013/07/29
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Luca Ferrari, 2013/07/30
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Aurélien DESBRIÈRES, 2013/07/30
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Aurélien DESBRIÈRES, 2013/07/30
- Message not available
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Rustom Mody, 2013/07/30
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Emanuel Berg, 2013/07/30
- Message not available
- Re: Emacs history, and "Is Emacs difficult to learn?", Emanuel Berg, 2013/07/30