Best Python Editor (under Linux)

[Mike Dean]

On Fri, 03 Jan 2003 02:49:31 -0800 Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> I also don't want to get into a vi vs. emacs war, but how does emacs
> have a steeper learning curve, at least for just basic text editing
> usage (creating files, opening files, editing files, saving files,
> quitting)?

I, too, do not want a war, but, in my personal experience, emacs does
have a much steeper learning curve.

I downloaded Vim two or three years ago, my first experience with a
vi-based editor.  I went through its tutorial (took me less than an
hour), and was immediatly able to perform simple text-manipulation
tasks.  I went back and looked at it a time or two again later (as I had
put Vim aside for a few weeks, then decided to pick it up seriously),
and have never needed to look up the basic commands again.

On the other hand, I decided that I should give Emacs a serious shot.
Since a lot of people seem to like it, I figured that there must be
something there worth looking at (and I had read about ELSE, which I
still wish I could implement for Vim).  So I went through the tutorial.
Took me an hour, and I couldn't remember a line of it (well, I
remembered a couple of the cursor movement commands).  Over the next 6
months to a year, I revisited it three or four times in an attempt to
figure this thing out.  I now know the cursor movement commands, and a
few others, but not much.  I've since dropped any ideas of learning
Emacs completely, as, within 6 months of learning Vim, I was able to
fluently work with multiple bufferes and windows, multiple cut and paste
registers, and was writing my own scripts.

Just my $.02,
-Michael

*ducks mortar fire*