Why is the Emacs init file a hidden file? [closed]

Question

Why is the Emacs initialization file -- .emacs, or .emacs.d/init.el -- a hidden file (or in a hidden directory)? Is there some good reason for this? It can make normal operations outside of Emacs unnecessarily awkward.

Dialog boxes in other programs don't deal well with hidden files. For example, I tried to attach my .emacs.d/init.el to an email, in my Gmail account. The Firefox/Gmail dialog doesn't show hidden files or folders, and doesn't let me type in the path name.

Answer 1

It is so you can list your home directory without seeing the gazillion configuration files that are there.

Answer 2

Configuration files in your home directory are usually hidden in linux. Why shouldn't they be hidden? They're nothing you need to see all the time.