path: root/2020/info/06.md

# Trivial Emacs Kits
Corwin Brust

[[!template id=vid src="https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--06-trivial-emacs-kits--corwin-brust.webm"]]  
[Download .webm video, 720p, 113MB](https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--06-trivial-emacs-kits--corwin-brust.webm)

Techniques to help new users bootstrap a more gentle introduction to
Emacs, one (short) init.el file at a time.

# Additional Materials
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- Actual start and end time (EST): Start: 2020-11-28T10.45.48; Q&A
  2020-11-28T10.57.38; End: 2020-11-28T10.59.48

# Questions

## What makes the Emacs community unique (special/different?) from other communities (if anything)? And/or, are there other communities that are similar in your view?

## Do you use Emacs as a community building tool?
- Yes, Corwin uses Emacs as a community building tool.
- Corwin: "Heck yeah, Emacs is a community building tool"

## Are you suggesting there is value in "Emacs for scientists", "Emacs for programmers", "Emacs for writers" etc. &#x2013; i.e. different defaults for different groups?
[Corwin] Implicitly, yes.  My argument is that we should rethink the
problem of building and maintaining Emacs configuration sets each
time we assemble a team to work on something.  That gives us a new
chance, each time, to maybe produce new data that helps us make more
informed decisions about how to make our own personal approaches more
robust (and easier to read), but also to help "chip away" at the huge
work of making Emacs more easily configurable for new users.

## What is the background you are using? What is the tool you are using to present?
[Corwin] Wallpaper Engine on Steam is probably the thing that's
grabbing attention.  I haven't tried it under GNU/Linux.  My family
are (mostly) Windows users right now ****heavy sigh**** I don't want
to get into my tool chain a huge amount, but I will talk about it some
as/during the Welcome to the Dungeon talk tomorrow.  For now I will
say I'm using a mix of free (free and not-free but too easy to avoid
tools on my one pretty good computer).  I would love to have the time
to invest to use more (only) free stuff but sometimes we can't afford
the freedom, in terms of the learning curve.  I think this is the most
important problem space in free software, FWIW.

# Notes
- <https://github.com/dungeon-mode/game> co-founder
- Initial "trolling" by showing presentation notes in different
  editors: vim, Notepad++, VS Code, Sublime Text.
- LISP wasn't on the list.
- Disagreement is not the barrier.
- Emacs is threatening as something that addresses many different needs/use-cases.