Re: Emacs learning curve

[Sean Sieger]

"Drew Adams" <address@hidden> writes:

    > People that do not get this do not become rigging carpenters---
    > they don't get to hang stuff over people's heads.

    ;-)

    Do you have an up/down, left/right, red/green test that potential
    hangers must pass?

Riggers.  No, it's a catch twenty-two, you can't become a rigger unless
you're a rigger and ... and your father, uncles and grandfather were
riggers first.  Yes, spacial-conteptual tests are given.  Back in the
day (when we threw lit cigarettes on the stage when we were through
smoking them and so on) we did what old guys told us to, people that
didn't, well, didn't come back.  I remember when Yale graduates first
started showing up---glazed looks in their eyes, but my boss had taught
them, so they came through all right.

    Consider timing them and counting mistakes as they try to fumble
    through an Emacs scrolling and window-splitting exercise.  The final
    exam could attach hanging and dropping actions to Emacs keys (with
    no one onstage, of course).

Yuh-huh.  Every install starts with removing counterbalance-rigging and
replacing it with computer-controlled drives ... red means `stand by'
(warning), green means `go' (the whole f'n stage moves ... ooof).  The
sucky software back then was written in C++ oh-by-the-way.  Rigging and
Automation are not for the faint of heart.

    And now I know where the idea of "upstaging" someone came from.  I
    knew something good would come of this thread.

Emacs tends toward good.  (That's a belief ... I didn't know I had any
beliefs.)