[jgoerzen]

I'm saving that for next week. ;-)

(seriously.)

It's really very simple for a child. C-x C-s, C-x C-c, and arrow keys. All they really need to do.

I thought about vim, but I think it would lead to too many confusing situations.

I have a printed "cheat sheet" up there for the boys. It has commands and keyboard shortcuts. They sometimes forget it exists, but at least Jacob can read and follow directions on it without any trouble.

[sparkie]

I would give vim a miss - particularly if they'll be hacking xmonad.hs in the near future - emacs has much better Haskell support (I believe). The same is true for dozens of functional languages. I can't be doing with the confusion of multiple editors, so emacs wins for me purely based on the languages it supports.

I wish I became familiar with emacs a lot earlier. It took me ages to transition from using IDEs because of the steep learning curve.

Oh, and I wish I grew up with a Dvorak keyboard. I was forced to learn it after getting RSI about 8 years ago - but I'm better for it now.