RE: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[Drew Adams]

> >> It's not like extreme user-friendliness was ever a
> >> guiding principle here. :-)
> >
> >I disagree.  There is a difference between "extreme
> >user-friendliness" - which I think is, and should be,
> >a guiding principle here, and prioritizing "friendly
> >to newcomers".
> 
> While "friendly to newcomers" means something on its own, "user-
> friendliness" only means something after one has characterized the
> users in question.  That's the main point I've been trying to make:
> that there is no such thing as a generic user, so we have to make
> decisions about which kinds of users to optimize for.
> 
> In most UI/UX conversations (not necessarily here, but on the Net in
> general), most of the time people unconsciously say "user-friendly" as
> a synonym for "easy for newcomers to pick up quickly" -- without
> realizing that it also implies "tends not to reward sustained
> investment", since these two qualities inevitably trade off.
> 
> So if we characterize our users as "those who see, or who have the
> potential to see, the value of making a sustained investment in their
> text manipulation environment", *then* yes, by all means Emacs should
> be user-friendly.  But if we're saying "user-friendly" in the
> colloquial sense that most people use the term in, then no, I think it
> would be a mistake for Emacs to aim for that.

I agreed with that point when you made it earlier.

My point was that Emacs does have the quoted
"extreme user-friendliness" as a guiding principle,
even if it does not treat the quoted "friendly to
newcomers" as the highest priority.

And the difference involves just what you said:
Emacs users are not only, or even particularly,
newcomers.  Emacs tries hard to be friendly to its
users, and you've described its main users well.