Emacs vs. Eclipse vs. Vim

[Arnaud Delobelle]

Josh <jhofmo at hotmail.com> writes:

> If you were a beginning programmer and willing to make an investment
> in steep learning curve for best returns down the road, which would
> you pick?
>
> I know this topic has been smashed around a bit already, but 'learning
> curve' always seems to be an arguement. If you feel that one is easier
> or harder than the others to learn feel free to tell, but let's not
> make that the deciding factor. Which one will be most empowering down
> the road as a development tool?

Vim and Emacs are both general purpose text editors, whereas Eclipse is
an IDE.

One thing that's good about Vim and Emacs is that most of the skills you
acquire while using it to write programs you will be able to use if you
want to:

  * write emails
  * post on Usenet
  * write to-do lists
  * write a letter to your grandma
  * in the case of Emacs, almost everything else :)

I don't know Eclipse at all (I tried installing it a while ago but it
was very unresponsive on my machine) so maybe you can do these things in
it as well, who knows?

It's good to know the basics of Vim as I think it will be installed on
most Unices (correct me if I'm wrong, my experience is limited).

I think the best is probably to try out a few editors/IDEs and then
you'll see how each goes about doing stuff.  It'll make you better at
knowing what to expect from an editor.

-- 
Arnaud