@geniusmusing I used to try to learn # every Summer. I finally gave up. It is too complicated (and using non-standard terminology like C-c C-x instead of CTRL-C CTRL-X does not make it any easier) ... I also used to just close my terminal instead of trying to close Emacs.

I thought maybe # solved that, but it did not seem to be better.

I don’t think the issue is emacs’ appearance. If they try to develop a beauteous front-end for it, they should make that front-end replace the obscure (and obfuscating) control syntax with something that mere mortals can use. That way, they can deceive themselves into believing that improving the appearance solved their popularity issue.

(Is emacs not popular? I still see blog posts and tutorials where emacs is assumed, though nano is by far the most popular text editor.)