Young people using Emacs?

Question

My "highly extensible editor" of choice is vim. Started using vi 10 years ago, at age 17, and I haven't really looked back. I like to stay away from my mouse as much as possible.

I rarely work in compiled languages these days, so the only thing I feel like I'm missing from an IDE is syntax-completion. Constantly switching to a browser to look up the order of arguments to various PHP functions gets a bit tedious.

PS: I don't want to start a vi/Emacs war here. I suspect that Emacs and vi[m] users have more in common with each other than either group has with IDErs.

I'm 62 and I've been using emacs for 21 years. I am capable of using vim in a pinch, but I really prefer emacs.

I used to use TECO a long time ago (in the 1970's) and I liked that one too.

First off, why do you care what other people think? It is clear that Emacs has a vibrant community, as there are lots of extensions and lots of people working on the core. There is plenty of support to be had for it.

If you are "worried" that other editors are better, then you should try those editors and make the decision yourself. Only you can know what you like.

That said, I am young (23) and use Emacs. I have used it for almost 15 years. I have tried other editors, including Vim, Eclipse, Netbeans, and Textmate. None of those editors work as well as Emacs as far as I'm concerned, so I feel I made the right choice. I can't, however, tell you which choice to make. You will have to figure it out for yourself.

It is important to note that I am pretty "invested" in Emacs. I maintain a lot of extensions, and have spent a lot of time understanding the Emacs core... so if I switch editors, I am throwing away a lot of time and experience. This could theoretically cloud my judgment, but I don't think it does. Textmate works like Emacs, but has fewer features. (I try not to use my mouse, so the eyecandy and OS X integration don't buy me much.) Netbeans and Eclipse are nice for managing Java projects, but on the rare occasion that I have to do Java, I still find Emacs easier to use. I even find that writing Ant files myself gets me closer to "where I want to be" than relying on Eclipse's auto-builds. That leaves Vim, which is certainly featureful, but is still a "lesser" Emacs. Emacs has all the features of Vim -- if you want modal editing, you can just invoke Viper. The only reason to use Vim is that you have already learned Vim, and you can't stand the keybinding and editing model differences between Vim and Viper. (No, Viper is not a Vim clone. It's Emacs with modal editing.)

Anyway, JMHO. I think Emacs will serve you well throughout your programming career. (Or any career that involves text. Emacs is great for writing books... and email.)

When i was young i heard this: A good hacker must be expert in 4 editors and 4 languages.

And have taken it to heart since then....

I routinely use vi(m), (x)emacs, eclipse , sed/awk/perl ( yeah .. they are text editors ).

IMHO, mastering a range of tools is essential. One should subject his brain to move out of comfort zone every once in a while.

I now found it amazing that i have hundreds of key combinations at my fingertip , and rarely type key sequence of one into other.

I'm 21 and started using Emacs at 15, only moving away for Textmate/E in recent years. I personally can't stand IDEs, feeling they get in the way far more than they help. Give me a good straight-up text editor any day.

I'm 19, started using emacs last year, and I'm liking it. Even though I don't know how to use its "advanced" features yet, I'm comfortable with the fact that they exist and I could learn them when needed.

In my college, there shouldn't be much more than 5 students using Emacs or Vi, though.