[TeMPOraL]

> Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore.

Yet another thing 70s got better than today's software. The defaults you're used to are a historical accident, and are also crap - that is, an impediment to productivity.

> I tried opening the help of both programs (...)

> Emacs? I'll copy-paste here (key bindings help)

How on Earth did you get there? The very first thing in the Help menu (also conveniently bound under C-h t, and also conveniently listed in help-for-help view that shows if you press C-h C-h) is the Emacs Tutorial. The thing that's designed to teach you the basics quickly. Just read and follow the instructions, and it will all make sense.

As for whatever you just pasted here (looks a bit like output of C-x ?), it's probably part of the self-documenting aspect of Emacs, which you're yet to discover. That is, you can get help and documentation on absolutely everything - including runtime values of key bindings, variables and functions (both C and elisp) used by Emacs.

> Everything seems like it's actively fighting the user, and making it more difficult or convoluted than it should.

It's not. It's just:

- following a (somewhat) consistent set of UX principles that are older than IBM CUA (which gave you CTRL+C / CTRL+V, etc.). Older does not mean worse.

- a tool for serious users, who are not afraid of spending 5-15 minutes reading the tutorial.

To be clear, I'm not arguing here for Emacs over Vim. I'm arguing here against the stupid - and stupidly common - approach that proper UX means a newcomer must be able to use the software productively after 30 seconds of exposure to it. It's a stupid approach, because the only way to do this is to dumb down the program to the point it does so little that it can be mastered in 30 seconds. Emacs, like Vim, and Blender, are tools for people who want to be productive. A prerequisite here is the willingness to learn something.

[raverbashing]

> The defaults you're used to are a historical accident, and are also crap

Agreed, that's why I use modern IDEs as well when vim gets in the way

> How on Earth did you get there?

f1 + ? then "describe bindings" which looks like the most relevant option

(I had opened a file with emacs first, I see the welcome page has more helpful guidance, but opening a file is usually what people do first)

> following a (somewhat) consistent set of UX principles that are older than IBM CUA

Sure, it's the same with vim, old standards

> a tool for serious users

Thanks for reinforcing my point that Emacs is more worried about gatekeeping people than being friendly

[TeMPOraL]

> Thanks for reinforcing my point that Emacs is more worried about gatekeeping people than being friendly

Any ideas how it could be better?

It has a built-in tutorial. It has thorough help. It welcomes you with instructions on getting help, as you noted yourself. There's plenty of guides and tutorials on-line, too. What else could it do to be more friendly, that would not involve sacrificing its productivity features?

Because it's not really gatekeeping - otherwise why would Emacs have so many, often annoying (myself included), evangelists? It's just about keeping the productivity ceiling high.

[raverbashing]

> Any ideas how it could be better?

There are a couple of things to explore. I've followed your suggestion and looked at the tutorial, which is fine for the most part (Alt didn't work but it's probably my terminal's fault, ESC ESC works but it's not great)

Compare it with vimtutor.

In the 1st page vim taught how to move around and how to close VIM. Emacs is still teaching 'PgUp/PgDown'. It teaches you how to insert text 7 pages down. Vimtutor: 3rd page

For this basic operations emacs is not harder than vim it is just that they go on and on on and don't get much to the point. To find out how to save a file you need to go all the way down and then read about 'buffers' and how your file is now a buffer and you save it (??)

And that seems to be the main difference. Everything is harder than it should be. Most shortcuts involve C-x something or C-x C-something (which is not very ergonomical). It does not share the conventions or even the vocabulary of other systems.

And something that applies to vim as well: Programs should cut the crap about using direction keys/PgUp/Down/Home/End. My 80s computer had them. Every modern computer has something similar to those operations and that works on all programs. "Oh but then you have to take your hands off of home" I do use a mouse and I do use other programs, as much as I like shortcuts, I have to move my hands and there are a lot of shortcuts outside of that area.

[TeMPOraL]

Thanks for your thoughts. The tutorial could definitely be improved and restructured.

> Most shortcuts involve C-x something or C-x C-something (which is not very ergonomical). It does not share the conventions or even the vocabulary of other systems.

Hey, Vim is the ergonomic one, Emacs is the extensible one (ergonomy improves somewhat with evil-mode, aka. vim emulation in Emacs) :).

> Programs should cut the crap about using direction keys/PgUp/Down/Home/End. My 80s computer had them. Every modern computer has something similar to those operations and that works on all programs. "Oh but then you have to take your hands off of home" I do use a mouse and I do use other programs, as much as I like shortcuts, I have to move my hands and there are a lot of shortcuts outside of that area.

The reasoning here is this: those conventions used in modern programs are hurting your productivity. Vim in particular is strongly optimized towards making your keypresses maximally efficient. Emacs much less so, but still, its defaults beat arrow keys, for which you need to move the entire hand.

FWIW, Emacs has cua-mode (named after that IBM CUA thing I mentioned), which gives you behaviour similar to every other program you know. Maybe it could be introduced to people earlier, but there's a good argument against it - CUA keybindings are really inferior to what vim/Emacs gives you.

[Draiken]

Honestly I feel that it has become more of a fame and dissimination thing than anything else.

I've seen VIM portrayed as this holy grail of productivity for several years now, while Emacs has always been portrayed as a quirky complex editor.

I'm a VIM user and never used Emacs (nothing against it) but, correct if I'm wrong, both have a similar philosophy and have a higher learning curve than modern editors. They're also both extremely powerful under the right hands.

When I first got into VIM, it was from some conference video showcasing it and how to get good at it. Now remembering back I don't think I ever saw a similar thing for Emacs. I've heard of VimCasts but never heard of EmacsCasts (or something like that). It probably exists, I just never heard of it.

Maybe that's what missing for Emacs?

Take all this with a grain of salt. I may just live in a bubble regarding this :D

[erikbye]

http://emacsrocks.com/

http://emacs.sexy/

[eadmund]

I think it's basically the Blub Paradox for editors: vi(m) is so much better than almost any editor, that its users think 'this, this is truly the best!' When they look at e.g. nano or Notepad++ or Atom, they can easily see how vi(m) is so much better, but when they look at emacs, they simply think, 'nah, I don't need to use that!'

The thing is, just like conditional, symbolic expressions and garbage collection are pretty important for writing expressive programs, so too a power extensible interface to textual information is important for communicating with a computer. vi(m) is a great editor, but emacs is a great editing environment.

[GlennS]

I don't think it's deliberate gatekeeping.

In the process of learning a tool thoroughly you forget what it was like to not know how to do it.

So, it becomes hard to write a good beginner's tutorial. And you forget why the things which help beginners are useful, so they just look like clutter.

Personally, I don't think that 10-15 minutes reading the Emacs tutorial is much help to anyone. However, I am glad that I have spent the past few years learning how to use Emacs (and I haven't even learned elisp properly yet), and grateful to the people who made it and all the great software around it.

[Timpy]

You're addressing something that is not really related to raverbashing's point. It's just a quick look at learning curves.

>I'm arguing here against the stupid - and stupidly common - approach that proper UX means a newcomer must be able to use the software productively after 30 seconds of exposure to it

No one here made the claim that Vim is better because you can be productive faster, nor was it said that productivity software should have no learning curve.