It appears that I’m temporarily at the end of the Internet: I can’t find anything interesting to write about today. Instead, here’s a rant.
I’ve written before that the Lisp Community’s well-known crabbiness with n00bs is probably the result of having the first thing said n00bs do when joining the community is to suggest some scheme or other for doing away with parentheses. If you’re a Lisper, you know how quickly that gets old. If you’re not a Lisper, you can take my word for it.
Sadly, I recently noticed a parallel offense on the part of Emacs n00bs. Many of them come to Emacs, notice that the extension language is Lisp, and suggest that we rewrite Emacs in a “modern” language such as JavaScript, Python, or Ruby. Here’s a recent example that inspired this rant. As you can see, the poster has no idea of the architecture of Emacs or why things are the way they are. That’s alright: he’s a n00b and no one expects him to understand that stuff out of the box. That said, it’s a good idea understand a subject before you start agitating for wholesale changes.
Here’s a bit of truth for all the n00bs out there: Parentheses, Elisp, and plenty of other things you don’t like or understand aren’t going anywhere. You can make whatever suggestions you like but if you want to be received cordially and have your suggestions treated with respect, take some time to understand the community and whatever it is the community was formed to support.
Postscript: I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Notice how gentle and respectful those responding to the poster were. The Emacs community really is a friendly and welcoming group of people.