Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Yuan Fu]

> On Apr 21, 2020, at 9:57 AM, Simen Heggestøyl <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> For the record, I have a proof-of-concept package for GNU ELPA which
>> I call `gnu-elpa` and which just adds "most" of the autoloads found in
>> GNU ELPA packages (along with the corresponding changes to
>> `auto-mode-alist`), such that `M-x eglot` or opening a smalltalk file
>> will prompt the user if they want to install the corresponding package.
>> 
>> It's not as good as activating `eglot` and `company`, but I think such
>> a `gnu-elpa` package should ideally be bundled with Emacs-28.
> 
> That sounds really nice.
> 
> — Simen
> 

I like the idea. If I open a Racket file in VSCode, it show a prompt that asks 
me if I want to search the “market place” for a racket plugin. If I click yes 
and click install, everything magically works. Now my racket buffer has 
completion, highlight, etc. For more popular languages like python, VSCode even 
auto detects for linters and python executables, etc. And with one click it 
finds (or downloads) linters and executables and sets them up for me. Maybe it 
is hard to make Emacs as pretty as VSCode (with all the fancy visual web tech); 
but making Emacs smarter and more helpful should be a tractable task. We 
already have Customize, all we need to do next is to add some smart helper 
functions that install packages and setup stuff. 

Yuan