I guess everyone has heard of "the editor wars" (usually
simplified to "emacs vs. vi(m)".
So have I. I have one editor I use almost daily, but there
are three editors I can actuall use (well, OK, two of them
are more "editor families" than distinct editors).
First off, I self-identify as an emacs user. I've used one
or another emacs as my primary editing environment for the
last 20 years. A new editor would have to be pretty darn
astoundingly good for me to change that.
However, if you don't have a favourite editor already, I
suggest you try out several different editors. Use them for
at least 3-4 weeks and spend a day or two coming to grips
with your editing environment. When it comes to editing
comfort, first impressions can actually lure you into
ditching something that is good and instead make you choose
something that is less good. After you become sufficiently
used to your editing environment it will be hard to change.
So, why did I end up with emacs-like editors (one of the
"editor families")? Primarily thanks to the fact that emacs
had a built-in tutorial. Secondarily becaiuse of emacs
lisp. I've always liked lisp and lisp-like languages
(something that may be obvious, looking back through my
Advogato diary entries).
I said I was proficient with three different editors, I
better explain taht too. I can (and do) use vi (and vi-
heritage) editor(s) (primarily nvi and vim, with a distinct
preference of nvi over vim), because I used to earn my
living by being a unix sysadmin, occasionally being sent
out to clients. You can't really expect to be able to
install and compile emacs whenever you hit a new site, it
just wastes time. So, learn to use the tools available.
I can also use ed. Admittedly, I mostly use ed as part of
shell scripting, but that's because it can trivially be
driven via stdin (build edit command using echo, pipe these
into ed filename and make sure to finish
with wq, stick this in a loop and you're set to do
things in sequence, with externally kept state; not pretty,
but it does the job).
Somewhat amusingly, I actually used vi before I used emacs,
but never really continued with vi (and from there derived
editors). I don't know if I'd kept with vi, had there been
a good in-editor tutorial (or at least a tutorial docuiment
I dcould've played around with). It felt like a struggle,
initially. I had some rudimentary ed when I started with
vi, but the latter was sufficiently different to cause
impedance mismatch between what I knew and the capabilities
available in the new environment.
Emacs, on the other hand, was nothing like ed, came with in-
editor tutorials, in-editor documentation and a lisp
environment to boot. I was willing to invest the necessary
time to becxome proficient and have, as they say, never
looked back really hard.
Clearly, I have a favourite editor, but I don't think there
is such a thing as "one true editor, best for all possible
things". I guess the fact that my .emacs contains (setq
wq "Emacs, not vi!") to be sufficient proof of that...