Re: contributing to Emacs

[David Masterson]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com>
>> 
>> Would you say that Emacs still has development practices from the
>> 80s/90s that, given the chance and newer toolsets, you could see being
>> done differently and better?
>
> What are "development practices from the 80s/90s"?

I'm not a developer of Emacs -- I've kibitzed around in it off and on
for 40+ years.  In the 80s, there was reliance on email/news for comms
(there wasn't much else available).  It worked good, but things got
misplaced once in awhile because of the disconnect between email & news.
I'm sure things have improved with newer tools (like Git allowing direct
checkout/checkin of code with proper controls rather than emailed patch
files), but I asked if you could see things being better.

>> It's okay to say that what Emacs has now is working well for the current
>> developers, but is difficult for on-boarding new developers that want to
>> start out simple before graduating into Emacs internals.
>
> Practical suggestions for changes that would make it easier are
> welcome, but they must not make the lives of the current developers
> significantly harder.

This is what I thought.  You, as a current developer, should be
commenting on suggestions from the standpoint of "will it make my life
harder?" (with a grain of flexibility).

I hope others understand that point.

-- 
David Masterson