Not to open a can of worms, but...

[thomasaaron]

OK, I'd honestly like to NOT be provocative here, but...

I've been experimenting some with emacs... (here we go...)
And it seems to me like it is not really that great.

Granted, it has a TON of features. But, not many of them are really all that exceptional.
For example, it has a lame calendar tool (which is nowhere close to the caliber of calcurse).
It has email capabilities (which aren't as nice as mutt).
It has web browsing capabilities (which are not really any better than links/lynks).
I'm not sure if it has anything for file browsing (but if it does, does it compare to midnight commander?)

As a text editor, per se, it may be fine. But it seems to me that all of the extras are in the same category as the Swiss Army Knife: A neat novelty, but there are better choices if you need real-world functionality.

I do like that everything is in one place. That's convenient. But the tradeoff in functionality doesn't really work for me.

Am I thinking of this wrong?

Let's not take off the gloves here.
Best,
Tom

[der_joachim]

Two remarks, more or less jokingly, but not intended as a troll.

My swiss army knife and me have been inseparable for 15 years now. Of course, there are better tools available, but my swiss army knife gets the job done. I am deeply offended that you have compared my trusty officer's knife with Emacs. ;)

On an even less serious note: Emacs is quite a decent OS, but its text editor sucks.

/me ducks

[ComplexNumber]

I've been experimenting some with emacs... (here we go...)
And it seems to me like it is not really that great.of course its not. i tried to use vi and emacs 10 years ago. the learning curve and effort required to master them far outweighs their actual benefits. personally, i like to have several different small applications doing the job, but doing each well.

[Mateo]

i know i'm in the minority here, but i'd prefer it if my text editor was, *gasp!*, a really good text editor. That is all.

[Mateo]

of course its not. i tried to use vi and emacs 10 years ago. the learning curve and effort required to master them far outweighs their actual benefits. personally, i like to have several different small applications doing the job, but doing each well.

I knew Vi wasn't for me when it took me 2 minutes to figure out how to exit it, the first time I tried it.

[ComplexNumber]

I knew Vi wasn't for me when it took me 2 minutes to figure out how to exit it, the first time I tried it.
the only time i've used vi recently is when i used visudo on other distros to enable sudo. its still really horrible. it took me about the same to exit. i remembered about all the different modes and stuff in vi, but nothing on it seems to be logical at all, so it took me a while.
if i spent 90% of my computer time buried away in an editor, then emacs or vi may well be a good choice. otherwise, they're not good choices.

[SunnyRabbiera]

This is reasonable to me, I really dont see any flames in your post.
I kind of agree though as I do not like emacs all that much, its alright but eh it could be better...
well so can vi too.

[DoctorMO]

I use vim for programming, I can't stand vi it just doesn't make any sense. you press backspace it does a delete, you press delete it makes a character change case; I mean what honest to god editor options are these? someone was on some drugs when they put those as defaults.

But bim (VI Improved) does offer some benefits over say gedit or kate; it's faster, has quicker search and replace; has a sort of regex built in and doesn't use the gui so I can run from cli. the disadvantages are, I can never remember what copy and paste are, copy and paste in a cli involves replacing all tabs with spaces (mucks up python no end) and it's difficult to learn any new commands other than the ones you use all the time because nothing is obvious.

[SunnyRabbiera]

I am not a programmer, however I have experiemented with many text editors on my quest in linux.
I have been trying to find something a little better then gedit, I used to use kate but right now I am trying to stick to gnome type apps.
vim is decent enough for what I do but I am goofed in its interface
but to be honest if i was a programmer I would just do it the old fashioned way and use punch cards, much easier then typing out miles of code :p

[muguwmp67]

but to be honest if i was a programmer I would just do it the old fashioned way and use punch cards, much easier then typing out miles of code :p
Hehe...that would be fun! At one line per card, II wonder how many warehouses would be needed in order to store the punch cards needed to compile windows?

Just think of the job growth it would create...

[SunnyRabbiera]

actually I would use a modified code for it, something simple yet something to get the job done...
and who said it would have to be paper cards ;)

[macogw]

I use vim for programming, I can't stand vi it just doesn't make any sense. you press backspace it does a delete, you press delete it makes a character change case; I mean what honest to god editor options are these? someone was on some drugs when they put those as defaults.

But bim (VI Improved) does offer some benefits over say gedit or kate; it's faster, has quicker search and replace; has a sort of regex built in and doesn't use the gui so I can run from cli. the disadvantages are, I can never remember what copy and paste are, copy and paste in a cli involves replacing all tabs with spaces (mucks up python no end) and it's difficult to learn any new commands other than the ones you use all the time because nothing is obvious.

You know most distros (including this one) symlink vi to vim, right? If you type "vi" it'll still run vim.
oh, and copy is yank. paste (or put) makes sense, and cut is delete.

[prizrak]

I like vim when I play around with xorg.conf too much and get stuck at the console ;)

[the_darkside_986]

In File Processing class, we worked in a linux CLI environment (Redhat 9, remote login) and I had gotten used to using VIM so much that I kept wanting to type "<Esc>w:" to save documents in Microsoft Word.

Before that, I had tried to VIM before the professor explained it in class and I ended up freezing up my session and had to shut down puTTY (tool for remote login to the server).