Emacs Modernization: Simple Changes Emacs Should Adopt (2006)
Lately there&#x27;s been a lot of talk about what Emacs needs, written mostly by people who don&#x27;t understand Emacs.<p>Emacs is more of a journey than an application. It&#x27;s similar to a blacksmith forging their own tools - Emacs is the metaphorical ingot, waiting to be transformed and molded by the user.<p>If you&#x27;re happy with what you&#x27;re using then you don&#x27;t need Emacs, and Emacs doesn&#x27;t need to appeal to that crowd. Emacs isn&#x27;t a VSCode competitor, it&#x27;s something entirely different, and it&#x27;s waiting for those who desire transcendence - shedding the limits imposed by other tools.<p>You can install and use Emacs as quickly as any other application, but to truly reap its benefit you must go deeper. I don&#x27;t see the need to cater to people who clearly want something else, those tools already exist, please leave Emacs to those of us who appreciate it for what it is.<p>I disagree with all the reccomendations made in this article, all these changes are easy to implement, and the user is encouraged to do so - one of the main selling points of Emacs.<p>That doesn&#x27;t mean there is not room for improvement, Emacs is still constantly improving. Additionally, I&#x27;ve encountered many instances where a colleague or friend introduces me to some new feature in their preferred application, the majority of the time it&#x27;s a feature that&#x27;s been available in Emacs for years if not decades.<p>I&#x27;d prefer we continue to focus on the needs of Emacs users rather than the wants of non-emacs users. Emacs will still be waiting for them when they&#x27;re ready.