[JoshTriplett]

Personally, I started out using Emacs because I wasn't a big fan of the "modal" style of vi (insert/command mode). Later on, I started pair programming in shared GNU Screen sessions, in which we ran vim; a pile of "how did you make that change so quickly" questions later, and I ended up switching to vim for the speed of basic text editing tasks, which save more time than I lose by not having as many high-level mode-specific commands.

However, I still use Emacs for LaTeX documents via AUCTeX, because I find it far more powerful for basic editing, with commands to insert directives, environments, \item, etc.

[chetanahuja]

' "how did you make that change so quickly" questions later, and I ended up switching to vim"'

Heh... what a perfectly beautiful little invitation to a flame-war. If it was about 5 years ago, I would have fallen for it in a minute ;-)

[nocman]

It didn't sound like an invitation to a flame war to me at all. It sounded like his honest personal experience.