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Questions by New Users That Seem to Be Stupid or Annoying

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This is a comment I wrote for an important blog post by irreal which was a bit of a rant. Jcs pointed out that there is a recurring question by Emacs n00bs who want to have the awesome properties of Emacs but with a different (more modern) programming language than Emacs lisp:

I understand both sides.

Of course, for an Emacs person, recurring questions whose answer is always the same negative one is annoying. BTDT myself.

On the other hand side, it's logic that n00bs that start to understand the advantages of having a deeply customizable environment want to get going using the knowledge they already do have. And Lisp isn't any knowledge that is popular at all.

My personal approach for similar things is that I write a blog post about it, explaining as good as I can, adding links to external sources, and just sending out links to these articles when the question arises once more. This is minimal effort and helps people as well.

The good thing is, that Emacs is able to attract n00bs in the first place. Most n00bs use Atom or other editors or no standard computer OS at all. The mobile world with iOS/Android on mobile phones or tables is cannibalizing users that once have used Windows or OS X. GNU Linux not so much to my personal experience.

So if we don't want Emacs to get extinct, we have to accept the fact that there is a constant flow of people who ask stupid questions from an expert point of view. Simply because they still have to learn a few things on their own here and there. From my point of view, those questions tend to be answered by the mid-experienced users when the experts have done their fair share and got annoyed.

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