
Debian's Vim maintainer switches to Emacs - nickb
http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/10/from_Vim_to_Emacs_-_part_1/
======
rbanffy
Once, during a FISL (International Free Software Forum) here in Brazil, I ran
into an engineer from Sun. He warned me I should switch from vi to emacs
because prolonged vi usage causes hair loss.

I thought he was joking, but after we took a short tour around the many
laptop-toting geek gatherings and we realized bald and near-bald vi users
outnumber bald and near-bald Emacs users about eight to one.

Since then, I have decided I would start using Emacs or, when that's not
possible, at least try to use joe or nano for those same editing tasks.

Maybe the guy is going bald and wants to do something about it. Let he switch.

~~~
brent
Maybe that was because vi users outnumbered emacs users 8:1.

~~~
omouse
Users are the blank buffer of the god Emacs. Tremble before the Gnu!

    
    
        M-x clone-buffer
    

and if you're against cloning...

    
    
        M-x man
        M-x woman
    

I think you will see a sharp increase in the number of emacs users soon :D

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palish
The article doesn't present any reasons to switch to Emacs, just reasons why
he had not previously switched.

I realize that the editor war has passionate individuals on both sides of the
fence, so I'll choose my words carefully.

In terms of Emacs versus Vim, I'm agnostic. It seems like as long as you're
not doing the hand-on-mouse-hand-on-keyboard dance then you've solved the
Editing Problem. Maybe some people have become super-productive after
switching from one editor to the other, but it seems rare.

Personally, I was introduced to Vim a couple years ago by a coworker. I liked
the idea of never using the mouse while editing, so I memorized the new
workflow and haven't looked back. There are two reasons why I haven't been
interested in switching to Emacs:

1) The Vim key bindings have been burned into my brain over the course of two
years. I even close popup dialogs by accident sometimes, because I often press
the ESC key after typing anything.

2) The ViEmu Visual Studio plugin ( <http://www.viemu.com/> ). As far as I
know, there isn't an Emacs equivalent. And yet, even if there were, why switch
to it? The value is in the ability to not take your hands off the keyboard,
which the Vim key bindings already provide. So that would simply be trading
one set of key bindings for another.

In summary, certain tools work for certain people. As long as people are using
quality tools, why does it matter which one is used?

~~~
asmosoinio
Because the article it is only part 1 of (2-3), right?

\-- Hence, I've decided to write a small (2-3) series of blog posts on the
issue, to future memory. The post you are reading is about why, since a few
months ago, I wasn't willing to give Emacs a try, and how I've changed my
mind. \--

~~~
palish
Cool, I look forward to them.

------
bayareaguy
I remember when I first started using emacs, the hardest thing was simply
remembering to type 'emacs' instead of 'vi' at the command line.

At one point I had 'vi' aliased to 'emacs' but I stopped doing that because I
shared my account with some friends and they got really freaked out by it.

~~~
kirubakaran
_I had 'vi' aliased to 'emacs'_

Awesome idea! It must have messed them up real good.

------
amix
Traitor! ;)

That said I have used vim for at least 3 years and I have evaluated emacs a
few times, but I come crawling back to vim. For me vi is like zen, so simple,
yet so complex. Another thing I like about vi is how key bindings make sense,
e.g. to delete 2 words I type d2w (delete 2 words), it's lighting fast and
very easy to remember - and currently I don't even think when I edit, I just
do.

I am looking forward for the next posts to hear about his arguments for doing
such a radical switch.

------
kirubakaran
I really hope that pg switches some day.

I might even let him fund my startup if he does that :-p

------
silentbicycle
Emacs and vi(m) are both rather good text editors, esp. for code and
structured text, but in fundamentally different (and complementary) ways. Find
which fits your style / needs better, learn it, use it well. The end.

------
st3fan
It is the only sane thing to do.

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newt0311
Reason why I stick with emacs: vi is a great text editor but emacs is a shitty
OS... and OS >>>>> text editor.

~~~
sant0sk1
wait...what?

~~~
Xichekolas
I think he meant: "While vim is a great text editor, I stick with Emacs
because it's pretty much an OS in its own right, and even a crappy OS is
better than just a text editor."

... I'm a vim user :)

~~~
andreyf
I think that would be a slightly more appropriate claim if Emacs supported
multiple threads, or lexical scoping...

~~~
palish
... or page tables, or a custom filesystem, or the ability to involve a
million developers in a battle about which is the "best"...

Well, 1 out of 5 isn't a bad start. We should totally develop an EmacsOS and
market it as "the most customizable operating system ever".

~~~
andreyf
I don't think you're very far off with EmacsOS... except I'd imagine it as a
EmacFox or Chromacs?

~~~
palish
Chromacs is good. Its marketing tagline could be "Chromium's mac daddy".

------
hs
I don't use emacs simply because it's GNU/FSF; tried it but prefer vim so much
because vi follows unix philosophy

I can't stand GNU unnecessary complexity, reflected in very long 17997 bytes
GPL license (the COPYING file)

I do use GPL softwares (out of necessity); however, i try as much to avoid g*
programs and use BSD/MIT equivalent

