It's hard to find objective advice about text editors
It can be frustrating to try to do “research” on text editors because, in my experience, bias is so prevalent. And this makes sense.
If someone is an expert in Vim or Emacs, they probably spend a lot of time in it. That’s time they haven’t spent learning other editors. It seems plausible, then, that the more experienced someone is in a specialized editor, the less able they are to give a fully informed opinion of how it compares to some other editor. Not to mention the power of the sunk-cost bias.
This makes it a dubious quest to search for answers to questions like “Vim vs. Emacs?” or “Should I learn Emacs?” or “Is modal editing better?” Because, first, there are no objective answers. Only opinions.
But also because many people seem to believe they can indeed answer these questions objectively. Some insist that modal editing lets you write at the “speed of thought.” But did they ever try getting really fast at non-modal editing? Others say it’s worth learning Emacs just for Magit. But how hard have they studied Sublime Merge, LazyGit, Edamagit, VSCode’s Git UI, etc.?
Here’s a great example from a Hacker News discussion:
[T]here are benefits to modal editing that learning all the keybindings in X can’t replicate. It’s difficult to explain and has to be experienced to fully understand.
As a quick example what are the vscode equivalents of I and A to enter insert mode in the beginning or end of a line? These small things quickly add up.
My friend, you’re asking about Ctrl-a (go to start of line in the Emacs-inspired, native macOS movements) and Ctrl-e (go to end of line).
If you want to jump to the end of the visual line instead, it’s Command-<left/right arrow>.
And you can
move by paragraph!
How can you appreciate the value of “learning all the keybindings” of another editor when you don’t even know these basics?
Nothing against this person, by the way. It’s just a useful example.
Trying to make sense of this abundance of assertive but frail opinions is part of what led to my recent outburst about Emacs.
(Still working on this post. I don’t think I’ve landed in the right spot yet.)
Backlinks
- A perfect editorSharing Bruce's great post.