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by boskone 5746 days ago
Don't lose another four years before blogging about how you finally switched to emacs from vim and bite the bullet now. Emacs is to vim as vim is to textmate IF you are a hard core software developer. Vim is best for sysadmins, simple, quick non-complex editing.

I know, I know... But when you were newly in "love" with textmate I'm sure if I said you need to switch to vim you'd say no way. Skip vim and go right to the best there is, Emacs.
3 comments
jjcm 5746 days ago
From the HN Guidelines: "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

You have nothing new here, nor do you have any evidence to back up your claim that emacs is superior to vim for development purposes. I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with you here - I don't have the authority to as I don't have enough experience with Emacs to make that call. Emacs is a great piece of software, and I think that we can all agree upon that here even if we aren't a user of it (such as myself), but that doesn't mean we can make un-cited statements about it.

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silentbicycle 5746 days ago
...and once your fingers are raw, bloody stumps from typing with three modifier keys held down, then you can write about coming home to vim again! Bonus!

Seriously, can we not start yet another Emacs vs. vi argument? Neither is perfect, they both have ardent fans, pick either, get really proficient with it, and don't look back.

(Emacs user who loves Emacs's extensibility and multi-buffer design but prefers vi's modal keyboard ui. And yes, I know about viper, etc.)

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oddthink 5746 days ago
Have you noticed that all of the recent press seems to be for vim? It seems like every month there's a new "I switched to vim!" post, but never a similar emacs version, or even a mention of emacs in the switch article.

Note: I am not attempting to argue emacs vs. vim.

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silentbicycle 5746 days ago
If I'm not mistaken, they're usually switching to vim specifically from textmate. The Mac + Ruby community seems to be disproportionately well-represented in blogs, probably due to a high concentration of web developers.

Some high-profile Ruby people (e.g. Yehuda Katz) wrote about switching to vim about two months ago (http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi...), and it probably set off a chain reaction.

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swah 5746 days ago
Agreed, but is it painful. (And yes, I swapped Control with Caps on day one)
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