Re:EmacsConf 2024 Notes
by BeetleB on Saturday December 28, 2024 @08:22PM
(#42536530)
I'm saying that the bulk of the community that keeps it alive and growing are either not SW professionals, or are but their use of Emacs goes well beyond SW use. As such, even if they "switch" to a tool like VSCode, they'll still primarily use Emacs for most things (email, document authoring, TODOs, etc). And Emacs as a SW will continue to grow as a result.
A significant portion of the Emacs "influencers" are not SW developers (think Protesilaos). Quite a few very popular Emacs packages are made by non-SW folks.
Which, as I pointed out, is why most of the talks are not related to SW development. Because that's not why the power users use Emacs.
In my (large) company, the bulk of Emacs users I've met use it for SW development, and little else. As such, while they may be really good users for the SW development they do, they tend to be fairly ignorant about the rest of Emacs (not heard of org mode or magit, some even think XEmacs is the improved Emacs, etc). Globally, such folks may well be in the majority, and if the bulk of them stop using Emacs, no one would even notice.
In fact, as someone who's been using Emacs since before VSCode existed, I simply did not notice the (real) exodus to VSCode. If you follow only the Emacs ecosystem (Emacs reddit, blogs, social media), the online engagement has exploded in the last 15 years. You would never guess that Emacs may have lost users overall (if it did).
A significant portion of the Emacs "influencers" are not SW developers (think Protesilaos). Quite a few very popular Emacs packages are made by non-SW folks.
Which, as I pointed out, is why most of the talks are not related to SW development. Because that's not why the power users use Emacs.
In my (large) company, the bulk of Emacs users I've met use it for SW development, and little else. As such, while they may be really good users for the SW development they do, they tend to be fairly ignorant about the rest of Emacs (not heard of org mode or magit, some even think XEmacs is the improved Emacs, etc). Globally, such folks may well be in the majority, and if the bulk of them stop using Emacs, no one would even notice.
In fact, as someone who's been using Emacs since before VSCode existed, I simply did not notice the (real) exodus to VSCode. If you follow only the Emacs ecosystem (Emacs reddit, blogs, social media), the online engagement has exploded in the last 15 years. You would never guess that Emacs may have lost users overall (if it did).