
Erik Naggum on Emacs and muscle memory - fogus
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/821a0f04bab91864?dmode=source&output=gplain
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qntm
This essay was evidently written in 1997. I don't know what the competitors to
Emacs were in 1997 other than Vi, but these days there are extremely powerful
text editors which are exceedingly easy for a novice to pick up and use _right
out of the gate_ and _then_ go on to offer vast arrays of substantially more
advanced tools for those prepared to explore and become experts.

Just because it used to be extremely painful to become a towering expert at
text editing doesn't mean it should continue to be so. It's not like riding a
bicycle-- text editing actually _is_ _easy_. Or at least, it can be _made_
easy, and there is no argument for keeping it difficult.

Remember, text editing in and of itself is _of no value_. Tools should get the
hell out of the way of their users.

~~~
lukeschlather
>Text editing in and of itself has no value.

I just don't know what to make of that. It's true, but only in an incredibly
over-technical sense. Text-editing is one of the primary forces that drives
the world. Pen or keyboard or voice to speech, text is primary.

Yes, of course, the meaning behind the text is more important. But the meaning
doesn't appear at all without some means of creating the text. It's like
saying that the teeth are not important, it's the food. You can't eat the food
without teeth.

~~~
qntm
I'm saying that the meaning of the text - be it prose, poetry or code - is
_all_ that is important. Text editors are tools, like paintbrushes and
screwdrivers. They only important or valuable to the extent that they enable
us to create stuff of actual value.

You can go down the route of text editing as art, like that Vi Golf concept
that was floating around. And a well-made tool is indeed valuable and
beautiful to behold. Nevertheless, I maintain that a text editor is strictly
as important as the text it is used to create.

~~~
AlexandrB
This still isn't an argument against using powerful text editors. If you're
doing carpentry, both a hand-driver and a power-drill can drive screws, but
one will get the job done faster. The advantage is, of course, situational;
but power is especially important when refactoring and modifying existing
text/code where being able to automate repetitive changes can speed things up
significantly.

~~~
qntm
Of course it isn't an argument against powerful text editors. It's an argument
against _obtuse_ text editors.

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valisystem
This is incredibly pedantic, and yet, fails to point out parts of the problem.
Or maybe the guy just wanted to flatter himself in saying that people that
does not want to learn how to use a text editor (can't refrain the old joke :
or the editor it lacks) are necessarily stupid morons that can't have a proper
opinion on the subject.

I tend to orient my tool choice to one that will require the least effort and
still allow to achieve the task properly, even though the least effort might
be, sometimes, a huge effort. I concentrate on the least effort for a simple
reason : if a better tool I could not imagine comes out, I will minimize the
hard learned knowledge I'll have to discard. Putting effort in something gives
you momentum, you won't let it go easily, because you make the balance
difficult to evaluate. Jump between easy to switch solutions, and you are
guaranteed to mostly enjoy the best tools (for its class at least) you can
get.

~~~
rwl
> This is incredibly pedantic,

Agreed, but...

> and yet, fails to point out parts of the problem.

Which parts? You don't go on to say.

> Or maybe the guy just wanted to flatter himself in saying that people that
> does not want to learn how to use a text editor (can't refrain the old joke
> : or the editor it lacks) are necessarily stupid morons that can't have a
> proper opinion on the subject.

This is not the impression I got. Rather, he was expressing frustration at the
concept of "intuitive" or "novice-friendly" software, emphasized by the
commercial software industry, that saves initial learning time at the expense
of training people to do mindless tasks over and over, instead of learning to
use their computers more efficiently. I think he was saying that it is
unfortunate that, due to the emphasis on this concept by commercial software,
there is now a (perhaps large) segment of the population that won't accept any
other kind of interface; and he was saying that Emacs development should
probably not target these people.

Whether the expression was pedantic or not, this seems like a reasonable thing
to be frustrated about, and a reasonable conclusion to draw.

~~~
valisystem
Sorry for the late response.

I'll just point out one part of your comment, and use it to illustrate what I
wanted to say.

> instead of learning to use their computers more efficiently

What i wanted to say is just that, you might be just more efficient by
avoiding spending a lot of time learning complex tool, and concentrate on
simple one, with the hope that the loop of improvements of your tools will
compensate the loss of productivity due to a non-optimum usage. The general
idea is, if you spend of lot of time to learn a tool, you are betting that it
will worth it on the long run, at the hypothetical cost of losing the time use
to acquire that knowledge we you finally decide that an alternative is a
better option - with the added momentum you'll have before quiting your hard
learned cherished tool. On the contrary, when learning quickly, less
efficient, simple tools you bet on the future evolution of that tools : you
will gain in productivity on the later tools that might pop up, ones that you
will also learn quickly, but will be a bit more efficient.

While I would completely agree with the author on the fact that some people
will refuse to learn what would be more efficient tool on the long run, he
fails to recognize that a chain of more simple tools, that improves over times
and allow quick adaptation and optimization can be in some circumstances be an
approach that leads to the exact same efficiency.

This is why I complain that the article was pedantic, because it states too
strongly that mastering complex software is the way to go, whereas, while
there is a regrettable tendency to discard complex tools too quickly, diving
in them might be not always as wise as it could seem.

------
koenigdavidmj
What is with this guy's aversion to uppercase?

~~~
zachbeane
The aversion is restricted to capitalizing the initial word of a sentence.

It's easier to rearrange words in a sentence and join or split sentences in a
paragraph if the first word of a sentence is not capitalized.

Capitalizing the first word of a sentence can also lose information.

It's also helpful to identify people who focus on the trivial.

~~~
akavi
Except it isn't trivial; it materially damaged the ease with which I could
read the essay.

As a long-time English reader, I've internalized the idea that there will be a
capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. So when it's lacking,
especially when the beginning of a sentence corresponds to a newline as in the
beginnings of paragraphs in this essay, my immediate mental response is to
assume that I've overshot the sentence's beginning, and immediately to
backtrack to find it.

Overriding this behavior takes mental effort which detracts from the ease with
which I can read. Making it harder for your readers to consume your ideas is
hardly a trivial issue.

~~~
tincholio
For Emacs users:

(defun capitalize-naggum () "Capitalizes text written in Erik Naggum's
annoying no-caps style" (interactive) (save-excursion (goto-char (point-min))
(aux-naggum (point))))

(defun aux-naggum (current-point) "Recursively capitalize the buffer, moving
sentence to sentence. Valid punctuation symbols are [.?!]" (re-search-forward
"[a-z]" nil 0 nil) (if (= current-point (point)) t (capitalize-word -1) (re-
search-forward "[.!?]") (aux-naggum (point))))

------
dizm
Blogs and Twitter killed the amazing Usenet rants.

~~~
loup-vaillant
?!?

The rants are still there. They just moved. Or did Usenet influence its users
into writing thoughtful rants in ways that blogs and agregators don't? I never
used Usenet, but this seems unlikely.

------
krmboya
Great article even if it was '97'. And I found emacs easy to use after: C-h t

~~~
loup-vaillant
Yes, but actually typing it is beyond the ability of most users: you have to
read the presentation screen before hitting a key, and you have to guess that
"C" means "the control key".

~~~
ajross
Sigh. The first (clickable!) item on the launch screen of the editor is "Emacs
Tutorial". The first paragraph displayed in the tutorial after you select
(with the mouse!) that item is contains:

C-<chr> means hold the CONTROL key while typing the character <chr> Thus, C-f
would be: hold the CONTROL key and type f.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that emacs is "easy" to learn
(seriously: getting truly good at it will take months at least). But don't
pretend that the documentation is hard to read. It's just documentation.

~~~
loup-vaillant
First, Oops.

Second, I didn't want to say that it was difficult, but that many people
behave like morons.

------
adavies42
reminds me of QuickSilver talking about _wu wei_ , and seems fairly accurate--
the sequence "tap Command, pause about a quarter second, type "S", hit Space"
for launching Safari feels a lot like "lean towards where you want to go" does
on a bike (or maybe "steer one way and lean the other to make a tight turn
without leaning the bike over as far", a more advanced technique).

