Are there any reasons why a C# developer should learn Emacs/Vim?

Question

I work as a c# developer in a purely Microsoft shop.

I recently started teaching myself assembly using gas and Linux in my free time away from work. I like messing about with Linux, I'm still very new to it though.

I keep hearing I should learn VIM or Emacs but the thing is, there is absolutely no way I'll need to use them in work, so I feel a bit guilty pouring time into mastering one of them. Worse than that I'm wondering if learning VIM or Emacs could make me slower with visual studio as I'd confusing short cut keys.

Currently I'm doing my editing in Linux using SciTE (I think this became notepad++ on windows).

For someone who works in a purely ms product environment is there any real reason for me to learn Emacs/VIM? I see that there is a setting in vs studio to use Emacs shortcuts, has anyone here got more productive by mastering them in vs, or in other words can you see it being worth while?

Thanks in advance!

Related: Is learning VIM worth the effort?
Related: Is it worth investing time in learning to use Emacs?
Related: Why should I use an IDE? (view from the otherside)

Answer 1

Begin the flame war :)

I'm a VIM addict and not ashamed to admit it. I find that using VIM makes me significantly more productive in my daily life. Coding is a lot faster when you don't have to take your hands off of the keyboard.

By default VS has poor support for VIM bindings. However, there is a cheap add-in available (ViEmu) that provides excellent VIM keybindings for Visual Studio. I have a personal license and I believe it was worth every penny.

That being said there is a steep learning curve associated with VIM. It will in all likelyhood kill your productivity for a week or two. After that though, the benefits will start coming and you should notice a boost in your productive powers.