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I learned vim over emacs because vi is installed on every linux machine I have ever touched, so when I sit down to a server and I need to edit a config file, I try vim, then I use vi, and I always find one or the other. I just opened Terminal on my Ubuntu 10.10 machine and typed "emacs" and it informed me that it wasn't installed, but was available in a slew of packages.

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I never understood this rationale for learning vim. Do you really spend a lot of your development time on random Unix boxes you and all of your friends lack root access to?

These days, probably not that much, with the advent of virtualisation. But a decade ago there were a lot of shared shell servers in use with only a minimal install and a small per-user quota. So the rationale made sense...

Probably a good reason to use Perl too, finding a machine without it is hard. =)

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