[geeks] Editor Religous War (was Glad I don't live in Texas!)

Joshua D Boyd jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu
Mon Jun 17 09:26:37 CDT 2002


On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 05:15:18PM -0500, Nathaniel Grady wrote:

> I use both vi and emacs. vi is my editor, emacs is my IDE. When opening small 
> text files to make a quick change (eg: /etc) vi is king because it loads so 
> quickly I just keep typing w/o loosing a beat. Emacs takes a good 45 seconds 
> to open. This of it this way. You're out in the woods with a pair of scissors 
> and a chain saw. You come across a pretty flower in the path and want to 
> bring it back for your girlfriend. Either tool gets the job done.... Later 
> you get stuck due to a tree across the path. Again, either would get the job 
> done eventually. I never saw vi and emacs as competitors - they're different 
> tools for different jobs. There, I solved the vi vs. emacs religious war :) 

You know, there is a trick in emacs where you run it once and leave it
running.  Then, whenever you run it again, it opens up as usuall, but
it is just a UI connected to the already running emacs.  I'm
butchering this explaination (too early in the AM), but the short of
it is that once you boot your computer (where loading emacs is part of
the booting machine step), emacs starts extremely quickly.x

The real reason for the editor wars is that many people want vi to be
used as an IDE also.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd



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