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by abritinthebay 2983 days ago
I'd say it's uncontested if you like using emacs. Because - for me - it's awful. Mostly because I find using vim or emacs awful and only use either of them when I absolutely can't avoid it.

But that said - it does it's job very well and magit is certainly excellent software for those that are interested in that interface.

3 comments

No... I mean I hear you about not liking emacs/vim/evil-emacs. I happen to like evil-emacs, but I can see why other people would prefer VSCode. That's a matter of taste, and I won't tell people to switch.

But when it comes to magit I'm not so sure. I'm inclined to think that magit is _strictly_ better than any other git interface, so much so that even if you don't like emacs you should suck it up and use magit as your git porcelain, even if you use a different editor for everything else. Magit is that good- I just gave $100.00 to the project, and I never donate to open source stuff. It is that good.

Again - having used Magit because I heard the same effusive praise - it’s goddamn awful if you don’t like using emacs.

I don’t mean “it’s not my preferred git client”. I mean “I’d rather use almost anything else”.

Why? Because it requires emacs interface, concepts, and controls. And unless you’re ok with those it’s not better at all. In fact it’s _strictly_ worse.

That said: if you like emacs I think you’re correct, it’s almost certainly the best there is.

I think it's genetic. Whatever allele is responsible for emacs affinity, some people have it. It never ceases to amaze me how early in their studies they latch onto emacs and start doing increasing amounts of their computing through it.

Others, such as myself, suffer it only when compelled by an instructor.

IMO it certainly takes some learning curve to get up to speed with the keybindings and concepts. In the beginning anybody would struggle but after the learning efforts you'd find it to be much more productive than the other editors.