I must admit, I have been nerding out far too much lately. Disney vs Warner Brothers, XBOX vs PlayStation vs Nintendo., Dogs vs Cats, Star Wars vs. Star Trek; the story is all the same. There are just some things worth fighting for, at least that’s what we’re told. But the real world is a fickle one, a veritable jungle of decisions sprawling into binary pathways of one thing versus another and sometimes it’s just not that easy. But such is not the case with Vi and Emacs, at least, not for me…right now.
Here’s the thing: I hate these decisions. They never seem like decisions to me; there are clear and cut case-by-case answers, and a question left unanswered indicates to me that you shouldn’t even be part of the discussion. So, where do I stand on this?
I am of the opinion that in cases like this, there is a single question or a short set of questions that can get you to a 95+% accuracy as to what your decision should be. For Vi/Vim vs Emacs, the question is this:
Do you want a hardcore editor that you can grow with? OR do you want a hardcore platform that includings editing capacity…that you can grow with?
If your chose the first answer, you’re a Vi/Vim person. One tool for one job, let’s keep it simple, clean, and move on to other things.
If you chose the second answer, well, you’re sadistic. Emacs is an ecosystem, a task biome that has exploded into an unprecedented environment in which the most arcane tasks can be accomplished with very little effort. Sure, plugins and libraries are to be expected, but Emacs is possibly the extreme case in this regard and good on it for being so.
Personally, I’m a Vim guy when I’m not using Sublime Text 2 (yes, I’m one of those). But that’s only because I want to leave the Emacs for someday in the future when I more resemble a wizard.