[protomyth]

I get the feeling a lot of vi/vim users are folks who do sysadmin (whatever fun title that has this year) and vi/vim are installed on the box by default. You don't need a very deep knowledge of vi/vim to be productive. Its basically single page cheat-sheet to be productive enough for a lot of jobs, and it works ok over a low bandwidth connection.

[skissane]

I discovered GNU Emacs while at secondary school. Started out running it under OS/2 (using EMX), later switched to Linux. I spent countless hours studying in awe it’s gazillion features (and that was 25+ years ago now, the features have only multipled since.) It seemed more like a work of art than a kitchen sink. But I didn’t really use it in anger for much, because I didn’t have much to actually use it for.

Never got into vi, it seemed weak and unfriendly - until I got my first real job. I was primarily a developer, but did a bit of sysadmin on the side, and hung out with the sysadmins a lot. And all the Solaris boxes had vi, and trying to get emacs installed was too much work. And I became quite good friends with one of the sysadmins in particular, who was a big vim fan.

20 years later, I use MacVIM every day. And on the rare occasion I start emacs, I’m struggling to remember how to do anything.