terse editor

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 05:33:49PM -0500, karina.popkova at verizon.net wrote:
> To what extent is vi or EMACs used,
> day to day, for development activities,
> writing code, editing, compiling, debug,
> etc ... Do hackers still use this stuff
> or do they concede to graphical editors
> and perhaps move onto next generation
> "eclipse" as an environment?

Hackers clearly still use both emacs and vi.  Others might be
migrating off of them, but neither is going away any time soon.

As for which to use, you are right.  vi is more minimal and emacs is a
whole OS.  emacs used to be considered bloated, but as computers have
gotten more powerful emacs has not kept up in bloat and so is now
quite reasonable.

Use the one you want, but learn the basics of both.  You will find
emacs editing mirrored in many places and it is powerful.  You will
also find yourself in vi now and then and it is nice to be able to get
out alive with your data.

An emacs note: there are three different emacs these days.

 1. "emacs -nw", the raw text version that will run in a text-only
    terminal, be usable at low bandwidth, etc.

 2. "emacs", the GUI version that will fire up an X window of its own,
    offer you menus, let you resize panes with a mouse even.

 3. "xemacs", the heavy GUI version offers color buttons and just
    enough coddling to make emacs's techie/obscure reality very
    jarring.


-kb, the Kent who likes neither but prefers emacs.