> Emacs is an extremely esoteric program [with respect to] documentation
I sort of get the other points, but I really don't get this at all. How is Emacs documentation esoteric? Emacs is without a doubt the best-documented application I've ever used. I can't think of a single thing with documentation as comprehensive, accessible, navigable, interactive, searchable, or genre-spanning as Emacs' documentation.
Emacs' documentation is so far from assuming that you already know how Emacs works that it'll literally teach you not only how to use the available configuration options for its built-ins (and any external packages you choose to install) or the language used to set them, or even how to write code in that language, but what computer programs even are.
Someone with zero programming knowledge whatsoever could sit down at a computer with no internet connection, open Emacs and its manuals, and learn everything they need to use, understand, and modify Emacs all the way to the point of contributing their own Elisp code to popular packages or Emacs itself. All that without reference to a single external document or a minute of personal instruction. Emacs documentation covers everything from how to change your colorscheme to what a loop is. How is that 'esoteric'?
I sort of get the other points, but I really don't get this at all. How is Emacs documentation esoteric? Emacs is without a doubt the best-documented application I've ever used. I can't think of a single thing with documentation as comprehensive, accessible, navigable, interactive, searchable, or genre-spanning as Emacs' documentation.
Emacs' documentation is so far from assuming that you already know how Emacs works that it'll literally teach you not only how to use the available configuration options for its built-ins (and any external packages you choose to install) or the language used to set them, or even how to write code in that language, but what computer programs even are.
Someone with zero programming knowledge whatsoever could sit down at a computer with no internet connection, open Emacs and its manuals, and learn everything they need to use, understand, and modify Emacs all the way to the point of contributing their own Elisp code to popular packages or Emacs itself. All that without reference to a single external document or a minute of personal instruction. Emacs documentation covers everything from how to change your colorscheme to what a loop is. How is that 'esoteric'?