Comments on: Why Emacs is the only editor I can use

By: Vlad Bayan

Vlad Bayan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:48:57 +0000

emacs reminds me of a cellphone with embedded os, organizer, mp3 player, knife, lighter etc etc …and crappy phone functions

By: lua

lua — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:46:18 +0000

mmmmm….eeeclipse…autocomplete those long functionnames for me….mmmmmmm….mesa like

By: Niels

Niels — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:58:04 +0000

@John:

I do not know whether it does the same (or more), but in cua-mode you have a column editing mode in Emacs (I do not know why it is only available in that minor mode, which is its only drawback):

M-x cua-mode RET

to get to cua-mode

C-RET

to start column edit

By: Daniel Honig

Daniel Honig — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:33:12 +0000

Well I think you have some good points, indeed E-Macs is a very fine operating system, but the only thing it seems to lack is a solid text editor. ;) nyuk, nyuk, nyuk….

I think it just boils down to what you learn fast, having been a VI user for 10 years I can’t quite seem to make a lasting switch.

%s/vim/emacs/g = error

By: John

John — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:57:49 +0000

I used to be a pretty die hard Vim user, but ever since the ‘column edit’ mode in TextMate, I find myself bringing in source files from other editors (read Eclipse) just to use column edit mode in TextMate.

The keybinding and macro stuff in TextMate is (IMO) considerably harder to work with than in Emacs or Vim, but I’m willing to suffer through that for the other features.

Source control integration isn’t quite as important to me, as there are major context shifts before I check in anyway (run cmd line build, run tests, run build & RPM packaging on Linux VMware, deploy, test) so I don’t mind popping over to P4V or something else to do the check-in.

By: A view from the hill

A view from the hill — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:03:21 +0000

Settle for nothing…

While I’m usually a happy VC user (the SCM mode of Emacs) as the next guy, I recently haven’t been always so happy. In particular when I’m working on a larger set of changes in multiple files (using Subversion or Mercurial), the commit-per-file appr…

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:27:53 +0000

@Mike, Oh, I’m sure that if I had an editor with those three specific functions, I’d still miss many of the little features Emacs has, including some I implemented for myself. I just didn’t want to get to the point where I was listing off everything I use Emacs for, which would naturally eliminate many alternatives.

I tried to come up with only the most critical things. I can imagine living without narrowing and outlining, but I can’t work without tight SCM integration.

By: Mike Seth

Mike Seth — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:43:53 +0000

But there are so many more things in emacs beside what you mention! Narrow mode, outline mode, automatic code intendation, code templating, you name it, it’s there.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:05:11 +0000

@Joe, You don’t have to use a mouse with Emacs. It’s strongly discouraged, in fact.

By: Joe Stump

Joe Stump — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:46:54 +0000

All of these things are nice and all, but the thing that keeps me chained to VIM (though Ian’s constant harping is causing me to rethink checking out Emacs) is the simple fact that I don’t have to use a mouse. Muscle memory is the single biggest thing that keeps me using VIM.