Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 14:43:58 +0300 (IDT) From: Eli Zaretskii X-Sender: eliz AT is To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: PLEASE HELP: novice has problem compiling In-Reply-To: <6vg64f$pfa$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com On Wed, 7 Oct 1998 ajschrotenboer AT lycosmail DOT com wrote: > Emacs is a very powerful editor, with many features. Quite frankly, as I > understand it, it is not for the weak of heart, or for novices. (I've > considered getting it, but so far am quite satisfied by RHIDE.) There's nothing wrong with preferring RHIDE, but please try to avoid spreading opinions about Emacs, if you don't have any firsthand experience with it to back them up. IMHO, there's nothing in Emacs that would justify the label of being ``not for the faint of heart''. It supports the same means of user interface (mouse, menus, colors, etc.) that RHIDE, or any other modern editor, does, and the basic editing is very easy and intuitive and can be learned in half an hour using the built-in on-line tutorial (which comes complete with exercises for the student to try). So starting with Emacs is about as hard as with anything else. About the only disadvantage of Emacs is that the package is *very* large (it will set you back 20-50MB, depending on how full is your Emacs installation). But part of this volume are packages and functionality that aren't available in RHIDE, and since disk space is not at premium these days, it hardly matters. OTOH, a big advantage of Emacs is that it is available on every platform out there, and will continue to be available for the observable future. So when you make it your main editor, you don't need to unlearn it later when you switch platforms. It takes time to get an in-depth knowledge of a sophisticated editor; with Emacs you can retain and multiply all that knowledge throughout your entire carreer as a programmer, whether amateur or professional.