RE: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs

[Drew Adams]

> The question is ... whether any arbitrary, usually small, set of (setq X) or
> (face-spec-set Y) are better added to a hand-crafted init file, or done
> via Custom (so they end up in custom.el).  The typical advice users get
> on Stackexchange and similar, is to choose either variant at will (or
> randomly), and to version control their emacs.d directory with git.

FWIW,that's not the advice I give.  This is the advice I give:

https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/102/advantages-of-setting-variables-with-setq-instead-of-custom-el/106#106

And my advice is to use a `custom-file', so that Customize
doesn't fiddle with your hand-coded settings in your init
file.  (And you shouldn't fiddle with Customize's code in
your `custom-file'.)

> What this shows is that (too much) freedom of choice early on in a new
> user's adoption journey can be perceived as an obstacle (by new users).

That may be true.

(I kinda wish that Emacs would somehow provide users with a
default, empty `custom-file', so that Customize would never
go near their init file.)