> Surprising undo model
I tend to get surprised by this complaint - especially in the article where undo-tree was recommended as an alternative.
Both the Emacs undo and undo-tree are "surprising" models in that very few standard editors support anything beyond the most basics. Personally, I've not had trouble with Emacs's undo (beyond it not visualizing it). Switching to undo-tree may be OK, but it's still surprising. Switching to the standard one in most editors is a pretty serious regression.
> How to download packages
Once I properly learned Emacs, I did not have a need to do this for the first few years. I'm not referring to decades ago, but the 2010's. While I agree that a convenient way to download things from MELPA would be nice, I hardly see not having it as a barrier. Most people new to, say, Visual Studio don't start with "How do I download plugins". And once you know some of Emacs basics, package downloading is but 2-3 lines in the config file and a keybinding that presents you a menu.
> How do I enable fringes/margins
Again, I don't see this as a beginner feature. I don't know how to do this, and I've never wondered about it - both as a beginner and as an advanced user. I've use Visual Studio quite a bit and never tried to enable/disable them there either. I don't think this is something a typical beginner would deal with.
> Windows-vs-frames
What is the issue beyond terminology? It wouldn't bother me if we rename these. I don't see a great enhancement, though.
> Each small change has a cognitive tax, and allowing users to feel psychologically comfortable and add tweaks slowly will make the learning curve much gentler.
Although I personally don't recommend it, but have you heard of Customize in Emacs? It used to be (and may still be) the recommended way to change config options. It has help on various options, and is an interface - not "edit config file with Elisp commands". Many users say it really helped them and certainly flattened the learning curve.
> I wouldn’t be surprised if the strongest indicator of whether someone sticks with Emacs is whether they have access to an Emacs expert with whom, or a community where, they feel comfortable being a newbie.
I did not have access to an expert. I simply read a book on it[1], and the rest was from occasional Google searches. In those days there really wasn't that much friendly info online, but it was enough to maintain the momentum. There is a ton more stuff these days to help beginners. Not to mention Youtube videos.
(BTW, as a reference point, I was a power Emacs user for almost a decade before I learned enough Emacs Lisp to write a simple loop - too many people have the misconception that one needs to know elisp to use Emacs well).
As someone commented on HN in an earlier submission: Who becomes a power user of anything without reading manuals? That it's not straightforward to do simple text editing in Emacs is a fair criticism[2], but also a bit of a shallow one. There are plenty of friendly text editors for simple text editing. Let people use them! The value proposition of Emacs is in its powerful capabilities, not basic text editing. It's a bit like complaining that Ferraris are a pain to learn to use when all you will do with it is grocery shopping. Just use a regular car!
[1] This was the norm in the pre-Internet days (80's and 90's), BTW. Even in the 00's when interfaces were nicer, the people I knew who were power Visual Studio users became so by reading books or online manuals - not by random discovery or random Internet pages.
[2] It's ironic that I write this, given that the only reason I began using Emacs is that the other option people led me to (vi) was even harder to do basic text editing. At least with Emacs, I could type and it behaved like most editors I'd been accustomed to in DOS. With vi I was immediately confronted with command/insert dichotomy, not being able to edit prior to the insertion point, etc.
It's also amusing that people complain about Emacs not being like "normal" editors, and folks invoke Stack Overflow polls to indicate its lack of popularity, and yet vim is used by a quarter of SO users and is ranked 5th. vim is also beginner hostile, so the beginner hostility really isn't the reason for Emacs's low usage.