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It often _is_ the most sensible choice, _for them_. The problem is, not everyone is doing the same job in the same environement, and they have a hard time realizing that. Their empathy/imagination stays too close to their own experience.

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... the same job in the same environment coming from the same background. If you've spent 5 years at university training yourself in vim or emacs, it makes sense to keep using that; if you've started on the job with jEdit or whatnot, it's hard to justify giving up high productivity for several years for some random promise of even-better riches down the line.

What does jEdit give you that you couldn't learn in Emacs in a day or two? Basic text editing is pretty straight forward to learn in Emacs. The part that takes time is learning all the other cool features, and that can be done gradually over time without giving up immediate productivity.

jEdit uses java-like beanshell for scripts, which is pretty different from elisp. So now you have to rewrite all your custom macros in a language you don't know and with an entirely different paradigm. But tbh, it's just an example -- any advanced workflow will require some time to adjust, for benefits which are hard to quantify.

Tried switching from QWERTY to DVORAK recently? Same thing.

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