[draw_down]

People mean a lot of things when they say "one thing". "Do one thing" can mean "replace all occurrences of one string with another". Or it could mean "browse the web", which of course isn't really one thing but a thousand things.

[criddell]

I've always wondered how Emacs fits with Unix philosophy? With it you can replace strings AND browse the web, but also play games, do file management, email, chat, etc...

[jonjacky]

Emacs doesn't really fit with the Unix philosophy. Emacs came from the MIT AI Lab and ITS, not Bell Labs and Unix - it got included with most Unix distributions later.

Editors that do fit with the Unix philosophy (they were written by its original developers) are ed sam and acme.

[pzone]

It does one thing and does it well: an interactive Lisp runtime ;)

(Actually, most of the individual applications you're thinking about are these days provided through an Emacs package system.)

[veddox]

That is something that got even ESR wondering - chief "Unix philosophy"-advocate and Emacs patriot par excellence that he is...

(Although one thing that can be said for Emacs as regards the Unix philosophy is that it is programmable.)

[splawn]

It fits the same way a shell does.

[girma]

I think the primary issue here is, the more comfortable you are with technology, the harder it is to see the forrest (the goal) for the trees (the discrete tasks involved to get you there).

[OJFord]

I think it's best stated "solve one problem".