Alright, so say they use Spacemacs (Which really should be the Emacs default). Now how would they justify their choice?
While I'm sure it adds a lot of usability features compared to the default Emacs config and it looks pretty cool, it's nowhere near as immediately accessible as Atom or Sublime - for example, I have no idea how to close an open file without Googling whereas in Sublime or Atom it's either click the "X" or use the standard Cmd-W shortcut. I also have no idea how to open a project or search for a file, and don't really know where to start discovering those things, whereas in both Sublime and Atom you can browse through the menus, or hopefully quickly discover the Cmd-P command launcher which lets you type a command.
If I wasn't somewhat familiar with Vim, I would have absolutely no idea what was going on as by default it uses Vim's modal keybindings. I also noticed an annoying lag when pressing spacebar to bring up the command list thing - slower than any lag in Atom!
It does look intriguing and I'd love to learn to use it more, but I don't think you can really say the usability of Atom/Sublime and of Spacemacs to a new user are anywhere near equal, never mind "how would they justify their choice?"!
You can just use the menu bar for that.
>I also have no idea how to open a project or search for a file, and don't really know where to start discovering those things, whereas in both Sublime and Atom you can browse through the menus, or hopefully quickly discover the Cmd-P command launcher which lets you type a command.
You can, as it tells you, use the fuzzy command search by typing M-x. Same as Atom, just a different command.
Honestly, and sorry for sounding rude, to me it just seems like you intentionally tried to not understand in order to prove a point; Just because in your mind you have this idea of emacs just having to be inferior in some way.
As it stands though, it's not.
Not at all and I didn't mean it to come across in that way, apologies if it did. Thanks for pointing out those things - I actually for some reason didn't think of using the menu bar at all, I guess because it looks like a non-GUI app. That's my fault anyway!
I was just interested in the "absolute newcomer" user experience, as that is how a lot of people will judge things, which for me after a few minutes was "I can't work out how to do what I need to do" and so I stopped. I'm sure that with an hour or so playing around, I would get used to it, and I intend to!
- the binding menu idle time is configurable with the variable `dotspacemacs-which-key-delay`, check the docstring.
- The key binding you missed (should be listed in the quick start guide) is `SPC h SPC` which is used to find various info like FAQ, layers, packages config, dotfile variables etc... try it for yourself: `SPC h SPC which-key` and choose `dotspacemacs-which-key-delay` then RET, you can now modify its default value of 0.4sec to 0.
- `SPC :` to access _all_ interactive commands of Emacs (`SPC SPC` in develop, shortcut configurable of course).
- to discover how to close a window just press `SPC` then look for `window` and so on, it takes 10 seconds to discover it ;-)
- If you were not familiar with Vim you can choose to opt for Emacs key bindings and `SPC` becomes `ALT-m`, everything else is the same. But you are familiar with Vim so I don't see what issue you want to raise.
Thank you for trying Spacemacs :-)
I wasn't trying to raise an issue at all, merely state that Spacemacs isn't as obvious to a new user as Atom - but I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, obviously (Spac)emacs has a lot more power under the hood potentially and I am sure is worth the additional effort to learn.
I have to say I'm impressed with what a good job you have done of making it user friendly :)
After quite a while it was still mysterious to me how to change simple things or to even trace where certain behavior was implemented. (that can be a problem in Atom too).
In short: I didn't have the time. I have a lot of work to do, no time to fiddle.
I still miss a few things from spacemacs.
helm-swoop mode is awesome. That could be done in Atom.
I'd like a <SPACE>-x-y command interface for atom. Proton seeks to achieve that: https://github.com/dvcrn/proton
I'd love to be able to handle panes with the agility of Emacs.
>my install kept getting broken by updates. Atom has never just fallen over dead like that.
Could you elaborate on that? This has never happened to me. If this happened because you wrote a bunch of custom layers then I'd argue that it's a non issue because in Atom you cannot do that at all (or at least experience the same problems if you do)
>After quite a while it was still mysterious to me how to change simple things or to even trace where certain behavior was implemented.
As you stated, the same is true for Atom.
>In short: I didn't have the time. I have a lot of work to do, no time to fiddle.
Time for what? The superior modification capabilities in Spacemacs by no means force you to fiddle. It seems to me that all your problems were caused due to you not being able to stop yourself to fiddling with the very sane and good defaults.
This is similar to the argument I see about people who switch to an iPhone all the time. "I just didn't have time to fiddle. I wanted my phone to just work." So just don't exercise your freedom to fiddle then! The defaults in both cases are just as sane and if you some time in the future need to customize something for the sake of productivity, the you can!
Sound to me like somebody moving to China from the US because they "Didn't have time to participate in politics anymore."