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Org Mode

So I left a comment on HN about why non-programmers don't do open source and someone replied to me inviting me to get involved. And I started to write a long-ish reply and I'm not sure I want to engage there for various reasons.

So the next four paragraphs are from my initial draft there before I decided to make this a blog post, not an HN reply:

As a non-programmer, this looks really intimidating to me. My understanding of Emacs is that "it's for serious programmers only" and I only know some HTML and CSS and have yet to learn a real programming language, though it's a long-standing goal of mine to do so.

I have a Certificate in GIS and theoretically should fit right in on HN, I don't and I have experienced incidents where people went out of their way to make sure I knew their ugly opinion that I don't really belong here and I'm not really welcome here and so forth.

Anyway, I do have a point: I searched for "what does org mode do" (or some phrase close to that) and then learned this has something to do with Emacs and searched a similar phrase for Emacs and I still don't really feel enlightened, though some of what I am reading seems to suggest this can be used for all kinds of things, not just *serious programming.*

If so, I will suggest you have some very serious branding and messaging issues, because I sometimes edit resumes for tech professionals and I'm fairly comfortable talking with people in tech and so forth.

Links I have looked at so far, in no particular order: Upon a quick initial investigation, my impression is that their marketing (to newbies like me, at least) truly sucks. I am thinking things like "Markup -- the same language used to edit comments on Reddit!" and "Org Mode: The gateway drug to programming for non-programmers."

I tend to be philosophical and I am trying to look at this as an opportunity to slippery-slope myself into FINALLY learning to program. So I am consdering looking into this further at some point, but maybe not immediately. I have a lot going on currently.

I did end up leaving a reply because I found a typo and was then off and running with my big fat mouth. So here are a couple of screenshots on the off, off chance they use any of my suggestions, I will have a memento, so to speak:


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