Re: Yet another discussion on improving the first time user experience

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 22.09.2013 08:18, schrieb JMorte:
> On reddit:
>
> http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1mt8a5/
> nearly_everyone_who_is_new_to_emacs_hates_it/

Thanks.

Below some extracts from this source considered helpful:

I found my way to Emacs after having spent some time with Sublime Text 2. It took me a good bit of perseverance and several sallies at Emacs before I was finally able to 
find my footing. I should note that this difficulty was in spite of my already having a basic familiarity with Scheme (enough to make sense of simple init file hackery) and 
already being someone who spends countless hours seeking out and implementing tiny customizations (e.g., Stylish, Pentadactyle, Quicksilver, KeyRemap4MakBook––caps lock to 
ctrl! right shift to forward delete! space+j,k,l,i to arrows!––and a few other utilities of that sort). Of course, my fiddling is small-time dabbling compared to proper 
optimizers, but the fact that an interested, reasonably capable person such as myself was put off of Emacs 4 or 5 times before finally finding my groove should count as 
evidence for your premise.

[ ... ]

The most formidable barrier I encountered when trying to pick up Emacs was simply the keyboard navigation. I have been cultivating a repertoire of key-chording for fifteen 
years or so, and virtually none of my habituated cords translate into the default Emacs bindings. When I first opened up the editor and tried to start using it a bit, I 
felt hobbled and constrained. I am 100% sold on the theoretical and practical virtues of Emacs, but I think it's a serious flaw that the software doesn't lend itself to 
effective use as a basic text editor straight out of the box. Really, why should I have to read a tutorial that forces me to use strange and awkward key-bindings just to 
figure out how to move the cursor around the screen effectively and scroll the window?! Since Emacs' essential strength lies in its extensibility, I think its built-in 
intro should instead start by offering up a menu of common key binding schemas.