Re: Transient Mark Mode on by default

[paul r]

2008/3/24, Sascha Wilde <address@hidden>:

> To be honest: I don't care to much about that kind of people.  There is
>  a fair amount of software out there to suit there (limited?) needs --
>  please don't try to make Emacs just another one of these.
>
>  I like Emacs for being driven by "doing the right thing" and by that
>  aiming to become the perfect tool from hackers for hackers[0].
>
>  By all means: educate those who are willing to learn:  don't make it
>  unnecessarily hard for them and point them in the right direction,
>  e.g. by pointing out that customization is crucial to make Emacs
>  "yours".
>
>  But _pretty please_ don't choose the defaults on what joe average
>  programmers would expect.

My point of view is that newbies are precious resource in any project,
and neglecting them is dangerous. For many reasons, emacs would
benefit from having a greater number of beginners and casual users.
They are the connection between inside hackers and the outside world
[1]. A lot of things happen outside emacs world, RMS had an
interesting post about that recently.
Another point is that newbies tend to spend a lot of time expressing
what they like or not like on any project, and more generally
discussing about choices of software. That way, they maintain a
dynamic activity visible from people that do not know emacs yet.
Finally, their point of view might be biased by common software
practices, but at least it is not biased by many many years of
emacs-only usage :)

I do not see any serious threat to have emacs turned into a notepad,
an eclipse, a gedit or a kate, just because its default settings make
it more accessible to the mere mortal.

-- Paul

[1] btw, in this world, people start counting from 1, not from 0 ;)