A community can be technically capable without being full of elitists. Just look at Clojure.

It helps to have a lot of very visible brackets when people sign up, it scares away the majority who won't cut it.

Emacs is in that unfortunate position that you can learn the shortcuts and 'use' it for months before you even see your first bracket and end up thinking the brackets are the problem, not you.

The number of times I've heard people demand the scripting language change to python...

And that exact attitude also drives away people who could handle and enjoy Lisp just fine, just not unwelcoming elitism.

Yes, it's a feature, one we should use a lot more of.

Someone that thin skinned would demand that the project accommodate them, try to take it over and then run it to the ground.

After all it's not like Stallman didn't become homeless because of people like that.

Can you please not do programming flamewars on HN? It's low-quality discussion and it has poisonous effects on the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html