Why I'm learning Emacs | Hacker News Reader

Why I'm learning Emacs

isaacsu.com

12 pointsisaacsu6 comments

Don't get me wrong, I use and love emacs, but I think it's a little silly to learn a new editor just because Steve Yegge says that all the "world changing" developers use it. As with any tool, pick the editor that that 1) is suitable for your task 2) you are comfortable with. Doesn't get any simpler than that.

The problem with that logic is that the best tools also tend to be the ones that take a bit of effort to become comfortable with. If you always go with what you're already familiar with, you'll never get anywhere.

Also, it's pretty hard to judge how suitable a tool as versatile as Emacs is to your task without already being at least familiar with it.

Ultimately, I'm a big fan of trying to use new stuff "just because". I've found some of my favorite tools this way: Haskell, Emacs and even Linux.

I'm learning emacs also, but I have been using it since perhaps 1990. Steve's article has a lot of good stuff in it.

However, there is one world-changing programmer that I know of (and I would guess there are likely others) that is rumored to have used VI and not emacs. As I understand it, Paul Graham used (uses?) VI and not emacs. Oh, another is Cutler, writer of more OS systems than most of us have ever used: RSTS-11, Vax VMS, and Windows NT. He uses Slick Edit. I am sure the list goes on. Where I work, primary editors include Pico, Textmate, Emacs, vim, sublime.

Presumably you are here to build amazing stuff, and unless your Amazing Stuff is a world-beating editor, your editor is not your job. So don't get too hung up on the editor. Lots of good ones out there.

A nice halfway house: http://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home

It's really great. I've been using it for a few weeks and barely missing vim at all.

Emacs clearly has the superior extension mechanism, especially if you're writing a lisp of some sort. But I believe vim clearly has the superior key bindings.

Was this submission flagged down? If so, why? Because it kinda disappeared off the front page for me.

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