All talks: https://emacsconf.org/2023/talks/
Mentoring VS-Coders as an Emacsian (or How to show not tell people about the wonders of Emacs)
https://emacsconf.org/2023/talks/mentor - Jeremy Friesen - Track: General
Watch/participate: https://emacsconf.org/2023/watch/gen/
Q&A room: https://media.emacsconf.org/2023/current/bbb-mentor.html
IRC: https://chat.emacsconf.org/#/connect?join=emacsconf,emacsconf-gen or #emacsconf-gen on libera.chat network
Guidelines for conduct: https://emacsconf.org/conduct
See end of file for license (CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 + GPLv3 or later)
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Notes, discussions, links, feedback:
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Questions and answers go here:
- Q: re: super-. -- which key do you bind to super? then where is meta?
- A:mac: ctrl-meta-super---space---hyper-meta-ctrl (caps lock as ctrl)
- Q:Great talk; what's the package you use to make the Org slide?
- Q: If people do get interested in picking up Emacs because of what they see you do, how do you recommend they get into it?
- A: A lot of it comes down to the problems that they're trying to solve. I worked in TextMate for a long time, then Sublime, then Atom... I chose Spacemacs, and then I chose Doom, and then I said, wait, start over, erase everything, start with the tutorial. I said, I really want this functionality. Then I went and figured out how to do it. Helping ask them, "What do you really want to do?" Ex: okay to advise people to go back to vim, develop ownership of their editor. Understand the problems they're experiencing, which tends to be what we should do in software development. Take the time to walk with them on their journey to understand what's frustrating them. Story about a mentee learning to ask questions earlier (not focused on navigating editor).
- Q: I've been using Emacs for about 30 years and I find it really difficult to figure out how to help people get started with it. Uh ... so I guess my question is the same as the green question right above this.
- A: My wife a while ago talked about the idea of being in between someone who's more informed and someone who's less informed. Introducing someone who's new to Emacs might be too hard because you're too much an expert. Pedagogy. Sharing what you have where you're at will by nature move the entire queue of people behind you, will help move them together forward. Not an only one person thing, improving shared understanding.
- Zone of proximal development; just i + 1 - Lev Vygotsky
- It can be very challenging to unwind things. Muscle memory. I know how to do it on a keyboard... We've internalized so much. Being curious with them and close to them, trying to diffuse questions and not ask overly leading questions...
- What is the question that I can ask the group so that I can ask the question? ex: not "Why do we suck at sharing code?", but before that
- I'm also 30 years in (at least) and just recently picked up JF's method of only giving away a little bit of the functionality of emacs at a time.
- Q:Have you encountered anyone that are being... "nagative" about the fact that you're using Emacs? (Assuming that they just don't know/have misconceptions about Emacs and nothing malicious.) If so, how do you handle these kinds of people?
- A: Analogy with a pen: my goal is to write something, who cares about what kind of pen I use?
- I want my text editor to flow with me.
- I don't need it to multi-thread-- it's just me on the computer.
- "My goal is to be better at computering."
- Q: I love the attitudes and worldview that infuses your blog posts and your talks this weekend. Learn something every week: it's CUMULATIVE. English class was the most important. What other advice do you have, and how is it generalizable to those of us who are not devs?
- A: fountain-mode (package for writing screenplays)
- Wonderful answers! Thanks so much!
- Broad curiosity (ex: background is liberal arts, very little computer science classwork/theory; Lord of the Rings, poetry, etc.)
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