It can hardly be called resistance to improvement, when everyone do improve it - just in their own ways. The default isn't some fashion statement, some aesthete that's objectively good (though I am sure some people do subjectively like it). But it's meant to be sort of a least presumptuous blank state that everyone can radically overhaul. So arguably it's an encouragement for improvement just like everything else in Emacs, which focuses on making the tools for improvement easier.
It's just that "improvement" as a matter of public consensus that everyone can agree on to elect the next blank slate has been to impossible to settle on. But the counterculture here broadly might be extreme reluctance to inconvenience even a minority of existing users, in pursuit of market share/growth.
There is no better UI for text editing that I have ever come across. I'm not sure why so many people are resistant to the idea that emacs has the correct answer to most UI issues. More programs would stand to take lessons from emacs. Emacs is, in its own right, a very successful piece of software. When eclipse was a thing everyone was saying how great it was vs emacs. But eclipse is gone (I think?) and emacs is still GOATed.
There's a particular kind of hubris from non emacs users (especially those who swear by new ides), that us losers are somehow deprived. We are not and don't need your advice. Nothing to do with counterculture. I tried many editors before I became obsessed with emacs.
>But eclipse is gone (I think?) and emacs is still GOATed.
The 2024 stack overflow developer survey [0] puts Eclipse at over double Emac's market share. If Eclipse is gone, then Emacs is double gone. Emacs struggles to attract and retain new users. This advice is not calling existing Emacs users deprived. It's rooted from the bad defaults giving new users a bad impression of Emac's viability because the default is so bad. If emacs built out proper telemtry they could actually track how the defaults they provide affect the new user experience in order for them to optimize it and figure out what users are looking for.
> If emacs built out proper telemtry they could actually track how the defaults they provide affect the new user experience in order for them to optimize it and figure out what users are looking for.
I can't tell if this is an attempt at humor or something people actually believe
Yep. Look at IntelliJ. It just copied VsCode when it already had a great UI where things were easy to find and consistent. Now it’s got meaningless icons and hides important stuff by default, making it modern but far worse than before. Thank goodness emacs is not trying to chase the latest and stupidest.
Nonsense. Many emacs users spend their whole lives inside of it so they're quite sensitive to what is actually an improvement and what is not. The arrival of the various modern completion packages -- vertico, orderless, consult, etc. have been welcomed ... but note that these are all add-on packages. Likewise, all of the "improvements" provided by the OP are a matter of loading and configuring packages.
People who aren't regular emacs users tend not to understand it and are not reliable reporters about the editor or its community.
It’s not counterculture. It’s understanding of what’s important. Functionality, discoverability and extendability over opinionated UI/UX that nobody asked for.
