Actual Email about emacs and vi

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Maybe….

Subject: Re: The UNIX-Haters’ Handbook? (was Re: Who are the most obnoxious computer groupies?)
….

Matthew Crosby wrote:

In article ,
Loren Petrich wrote:
>

In my experience, vi is the absolute worst full-screen
(character-mode GUI) text editor I have ever used.
[ and so on in the anti-vi mode … ]

vi has the fastest, most efficient keybindings around.
[ and so on in the pro-vi mode … ]

Harley Hahn’s book Unix Unbound (which I recommend, BTW,
to anyone learning Unix) has chapters on vi and emacs. The
vi chapter contains the following paragraph:

HINT: If you are learning vi and you become temporarily
discouraged, take a break and try a little emacs. emacs
will seem so complex and impossible that you will feel a
lot better about using vi.

While the emacs chapter contains this one:

HINT: If you are learning emacs and you become temporarily
discouraged, take a break and try a little vi. vi
will seem so complex and impossible that you will feel a
lot better about using emacs.

Says it all really, doesn’t it? 🙂

Totally stolen from The Linux and Unix Menagerie

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0 thoughts on “Actual Email about emacs and vi

  1. Not everybody is smart enough to take advantage of the power of vi or emacs. Of those who are, some will find emacs more engaging; others will find that vi helps them work faster. For everybody else, don’t even bother trying; use whatever toy seems comfyest.

    Me, I mostly use vi running withing emacs, in “viper-mode”.

  2. Are there really people who do not know that there are other (and better) editors in the world besides emacs and vi?

  3. Just use viper-mode if emacs seems too complicated for people.

    Why would anybody want NERDTree plugin, when they could just use dired or, better yet, Windows explorer?

    Did you guys know that Eclipse doesn’t have word-wrapping? True story! They’re workin on it…

  4. You know, it occurs to me that anyone still fighting the vi vs. Emacs war is living so far in the distant past that I’m surprised they can operate a web browser. I said it in the last thread and I’ll say it again: a (small)pox on both your houses.

  5. Brian X: I agree completely. Anyone who hasn’t permanently switched to vi after all these years is beyond help.

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