Emacs vs. Eclipse vs. Vim

[Richard Riley]

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:

> Clay Hobbs <clay at lakeserv.net> wrote:
>> The first real text editor I used was Vim, which I actually started
>> using about a year ago.  I've looked at Emacs and it just looks
>> confusing.
>
> I've been using emacs for so many years (um let's see, it's got to be close 
> to 25 years now; first saw it on Columbia's TOPS-20 systems in the early 
> 80's) that my fingers know what they're doing without my even thinking 
> about it.  In fact, I used to work with another emacs nut.  Every so often, 
> one of use would watch the other do something and ask, "What was that?".  
> Inevitably, neither of us could evoke the keystrokes we had just typed.  We 
> would just re-do it, and watch our fingers to see what we typed.  It didn't 
> even have to be on a keyboard; we could air-type it, and that was good 
> enough.
>
> In any case, the basic logic behind emacs is pretty simple.  C-F is forward 
> one character.  C-B is back one character.  C-N is Next line.  C-P is 
> Previous line.

It's worth pointing out to people making "loony" signs here that the
arrow keys work too ....