Recently, I recommended to a friend that basic vim/vi is worth learning because it’s a baseline that you can always trust will be there across different Linux systems.
They asked me what I used most on my home system, and the answer was emacs, but I was very clear that I was not recommending it. It’s a particular kind of person who finds themselves at home in emacs, and for everyone besides those people, selling them on emacs would feel like persuading them to do hard drugs.
I think there’s a good reason for that. If you’re not as concerned about resource consumption (Emacs used to be called “Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping”, back when 8MB was a lot), then there’s no reason to avoid even more complex and resource intensive IDEs. People who wanted a complex editor, but in a relatively small footprint, stuck with some variant of vi.
Thus, vi found a stable evolutionary niche. It’s a tardigrade.
The comments on this post went exactly like they have over the past 20 years, with one exception.
Emacs is all but forgoten.
Vim wins.
you have offended all 6 of us, prepare for retribution
Recently, I recommended to a friend that basic vim/vi is worth learning because it’s a baseline that you can always trust will be there across different Linux systems.
They asked me what I used most on my home system, and the answer was emacs, but I was very clear that I was not recommending it. It’s a particular kind of person who finds themselves at home in emacs, and for everyone besides those people, selling them on emacs would feel like persuading them to do hard drugs.
Didn’t even macs have vi?
Basically every Unix-derived OS comes with vi. Emacs came out in 1976, macs didn’t exist until 1984.
Yes and it’s better than TextEdit that is bundled with MacOs
I think there’s a good reason for that. If you’re not as concerned about resource consumption (Emacs used to be called “Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping”, back when 8MB was a lot), then there’s no reason to avoid even more complex and resource intensive IDEs. People who wanted a complex editor, but in a relatively small footprint, stuck with some variant of vi.
Thus, vi found a stable evolutionary niche. It’s a tardigrade.
Be real fukin careful now. You’ll tear my enacs from my cold dead hands
(But yeah, I use evil-mode. Also I edit files on remote servers with vim. I’m a traitor…)
When people are free to choose the best editor for them, we ALL win.