Best editor?

[François Pinard]

[Aahz]

> Use vim.  80% of the power of emacs at 20% of the learning curve.

I used Emacs for a long while, and learned it a bit thoroughly.  I
also learned Vim mor recently, and still have many things to study.
See http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca/opinions/editors.html for some
(incomplete) thoughts on both, Emacs in particular.

If you do only light use of editors, both Emacs and Vim are rather easy,
despite tinily annoying for some details, each its own details :-). If
you deeply use them, they both require a lot of learning, eventually.
Emacs does a few things that are difficult in Vim, but we can usually
live without those few things, not overly missing them.  Both editors
are also extensible with Python, and Vim does Python a bit more nicely.
Overall, Vim is also cleaner than Emacs, and this pleases me.

This in between light and deep use that Aahz is most right: Vim offers
many niceties that undoubtedly require some learning, yet significantly
less than Emacs.  Emacs has a lot more knobs to adjust, which is not
always so advantageous for average users, and overkill for casual users.

Whatever Emacs or Vim, learn to extend it with Python.  There, you get a
great deal of added power and flexibility for almost free, assuming and
given that you already are a Python lover.

-- 
François Pinard   http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca