Why do people still use Vi and Emacs?

Posted by mawg on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by mawg
Published on 2010-04-01T05:54:29Z Indexed on 2010/04/01 6:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 517

Filed under:

vi

|

emacs

|

editor

|

ide

|

stone-age

This is not a subjective question. I am genuinely looking for techinccal reasons to do so.

I will risk offending some folks (not intended as an offence – maybe as a goad) by saying that I have been coding for 30+ years and used to be religously attched to each of them, but as soone as I saw editor-cum-IDE which seemed to offer more, I moved on.

Is there any compelling reason, in this day and age, to choose Vi / Emacs over – say- Eclipse for code editing? Even Notepad++ for win-doze users seems to offer more.

Just sayin'

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about vi

How to deal with job that stop and cannot continue unless made foreground?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Recent example: mountlo (using UML): vi@vi-notebook:~/b$ mountlo -m 16 -d /dev/uba1 /home/vi/mnt/usb -t vfat -o iocharset=utf8,allow_other& [1] 32561 vi@vi-notebook:~/b$ Checking that ptrace can change system call numbers...OK Checking syscall emulation patch for ptrace...OK Checking advanced syscall… >>> More
SQLBits VI session submission - Today is your last day

as seen on SQL Blogcasts - Search for 'SQL Blogcasts'
We will be deciding on the sessions tomorrow (Tuesday 8th March) so make sure you get your session in for SQLBits quick. Don't forget we are focussing on performance an scalability so make sure your session covers one or both of these. To submit your session Step 1 - Complete your Speaker Profile… >>> More
SQLBits VI session submission - Today is your last day

as seen on SQL Blogcasts - Search for 'SQL Blogcasts'
We will be deciding on the sessions tomorrow (Tuesday 8th March) so make sure you get your session in for SQLBits quick. Don't forget we are focussing on performance an scalability so make sure your session covers one or both of these. To submit your session Step 1 - Complete your Speaker Profile… >>> More
We've increased the number of sessions for SQLBits VI

as seen on SQL Blogcasts - Search for 'SQL Blogcasts'
Due to the overwhelming number of session submissions we have increased the number. So we now have 24 sessions plus 4 sessions from sponsors planned. To do this we are shortening each session to 50 minutes. I hope this goes down well, I guess we'll see when we get the feedback in. >>> More
We've increased the number of sessions for SQLBits VI

as seen on SQL Blogcasts - Search for 'SQL Blogcasts'
Due to the overwhelming number of session submissions we have increased the number. So we now have 24 sessions plus 4 sessions from sponsors planned. To do this we are shortening each session to 50 minutes. I hope this goes down well, I guess we'll see when we get the feedback in. >>> More

Related posts about emacs

Error while installing emacs23 from Software Center

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
Trying to install emacs in Software Center Ubuntu 12.04 got this error. installArchives() failed: Selecting previously unselected package emacs23. (Reading database ... (Reading database ... 5% (Reading database ... 10% (Reading database ... 15% (Reading database ... 20% (Reading database ... 25% (Reading… >>> More
Shorten Emacs timeout of ~/.emacs read

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
My ~/.emacs start-up file is stored in my AFS home directory. Often when I login to a linux machine I will forget to renew my AFS credentials before attempting to edit a local (non-AFS) file with Emacs. When this happens Emacs will attempt to load ~./emacs but cannot because it is in AFS space where… >>> More
Running emacs in GNU Screen overrides .emacs settings for [home] key binding in FreeBSD 8.2

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
If I use the following .emacs file, I am able to go to the beginning/end of the current line using the home/end keys as I would expect. (keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?) (add-to-list 'load-path "/home/sam/programs/go/go/misc/emacs/" t) (require 'go-mode-load) (global-set-key [kp-home] 'beginning-of-line)… >>> More
Emacs 23.1 make error 139 in Mac OS X 10.6.3

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
When I try to compile GNU Emacs 23.1 on my machine with Mac OS X 10.6.3 I repeatedly get the following ending: Directories: /src/emacs-23.1/lisp/. /src/emacs-23.1/lisp/./calc /src/emacs-23.1/lisp/./calendar /src/emacs-23.1/lisp/./emacs-lisp /src/emacs-23.1/lisp/./emulation /src/emacs-23.1/lisp/./erc… >>> More
portable emacs? (emacs server not working)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have seen a few suggestions on making emacs portable (on Windows). I have this in my site-start.el: (defvar program-dir (substring data-directory 0 -4)) (setq inhibit-startup-message t) (setenv "HOME" program-dir) I changed the HOME variable so that not only my .emacs init files (and other init… >>> More