On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 12:20 , james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx sent:
>must...resist..trying....to...convert...
>
>Gah, sod it. Here goes:
>
>Emacs might be awkward at first. Just like walking might be awkward
>when you're used to crawling. That doesn't justify going to work on
>your hands and knees.
>
>People get past the learning curve and use Emacs because once they do,
>they find that they can do things more quickly and easily than they
>can in anything else. Some things are just impossible to do in
>Windows-like editors without a lot of hard work - replace-regexp is my
>favourite example, and has saved me hours of work. Add to that the
>syntax highlighting, indentation awareness, cooperation with make,
>latex, javac, whatever, region comment/uncomment, etc., etc., and you
>will begin to see why learning Emacs is worth it.
>
>Vi people will say the same kind of things about Vi, but of course,
>they only like Vi because they haven't got used to Emacs yet.
>
>And there is one more thing that I love about Emacs that will probably
>be seen as a problem by others: I don't know all of it. That's right,
>I enjoy my ignorance. I learn new things all the time, and my
>"editing experience" is enriched. Please excuse that lapse into
>marketing speak.
>
>Notice I have stayed away from calling Emacs the One True Editor.
>This isn't because it's not, but because that kind of talk tends to
>scare people away.
>
>Emacs is the only religion I need.
>
Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggghhhhhh! Not again. Oh well, I might as well throw
down too. I started on UNIX with vi (and in response to a way earlier thread,
not all of us started on Windoze - my first system was IBM OS-360, then on to
various others, then UNIX). When I first used vi I was blown away by the power
of the thing. Later I discovered Emacs. I switched. I still use vi if I want
to do something small very quickly (I hate waiting for Xemacs start up). If I'm
doing serious coding I use Xemacs just because it is much, much more powerful.
So, the old saw about people staying with what they know isn't always true. I
just try to use the right tool for the job. Oh, I also use ed and sed ;-)
Jan
