From VI to Emacs

June 12, 2003

I use plain old vi or Vim pretty

regularly these days and in doing so have gotten through one of most painful and


frustrating learning curves ever. I actually prefer it to things like


jEdit and Homesite for a lot of editing tasks. Trouble is, I can’t


shake the urge to learn Emacs.

Of course now that I’m actually used to

type-beep-curse-type-curse-hit-escape editing, Emacs feels horrible.


All that control-meta key contortionism and C-x letter letter M-x


letter nonsense makes me want to shout even more obscenities than when


using vi.

In spite of all that, I would really love to get used to a non-modal

editor that is infinitely customizable, free and, from what I hear, very


powerful.

So I’m going through the tutorial just to see how much pain I can

withstand. Maybe I’ll write a couple of my next posts with it. If you


don’t hear from me for a few days, you’ll know why.