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Comment by medo-bear | Hacker News Reader

> I know you probably all love it, but everyone else is not interested in breaking of their fingers by learning obscure key command chains just to use org-mode. Sorry, but that is just the reality

i'm sorry to burst your strong held convictions but you can choose any of the following

a) use any key-bindings you like including emacs, vim, cua, or combination of

b) use org-mode without any knowledge of more advanced emacs commands (except basic knowledge of using an editor)

c) drink some milk (gotta have strong bones) and learn how to use the emacs system including emacs lisp and have one of the most advanced computing environments in existence at your service

sorry, but that is just the reality

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About 1000 times per day, someone says emacs is too big an ask for org-mode, and someone replies, it's configurable to feel like whatever you're used to.

The latter needs to accept that most users, particularly scientists, reject out-of-hand anything requiring configuration or compilation no matter how trivial.

But it's all moot since org-mode is largely promoted by non-scientists (computer science is not a science), and should a wysiwig-inclined scientist ever get past the emacs obstacle, he'll balk at the awkward BEGIN_SRC incantations.

> But it's all moot since org-mode is largely promoted by non-scientists (computer science is not a science)

I think you're just suffering from selection bias, given that this is on HN.

Add me to the list of people who began using Emacs and Org mode during academia in a non-CS program.

Furthermore, go look at the Emacs conference - you'll find a significant number of speakers are not CS folks.

Yeah, me three. I started with Emacs because it could syntax highlight both R and LaTeX code for Sweave, and discovered org mode a few years later.

That being said, nobody's gonna learn Emacs for org-mode, unfortunately.

Is astronomy a science?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgyRdnjRI4o

> But it's all moot since org-mode is largely promoted by non-scientists (computer science is not a science)

My academic training is in physics and mathematics. I was introduced to programming in my computational physics class. We used emacs as our editor

Congratulations for being special, 99% of academia uses Matlab, a simple GUI text-editor or something like Anaconda.

Emacs is such a fundamentally different paradigm from all other IT tools/editors that it just doesn't make sense to recommend a specialized tool with a steep learning curve and non-transferable skills when it's not ubiquitous and more standard alternatives exist without it which do OK. It doesn't matter that emacs was historically the first and everyone else decided to go in different directions, that's just the reality of today.

> non-transferable skills

im curious which transferable skills you think Jupyter has

> Emacs is such a fundamentally different paradigm from all other IT tools/editors

its not. you use a mouse and click where you want your pointer to go. you use a keyboard to type

> steep learning curve

this is very much like saying that linux has a steep learning curve and you refuse to touch ubuntu because you are scared to blow up your computer

much like saying that linux has a steep learning curve

Most people do say that. What programmers cannot grasp is progress is about giving people what they want, not what is rationally best. Most scientists want to knock out a paper or presentation, and make it home on time for dinner.

> Most scientists want to ...

are you their union rep ?

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