[Gllug] vi vs emacs (repeat)

[Nix]

On Mon, 07 Mar 2005, Tethys whispered secretively:
> Nix writes:
>>vi can probably do lots of other things, but I'm afraid that its decided
>>irregularity and the lack of an elegant underlying framework has
>>generally stopped me learning anything other than the simplest things
>>about it: the rest drops out of my head: I can't learn things that don't
>>base themselves on simple underlying principles well, and vi doesn't
>>seem to bother with principles *anywhere*.
> 
> See, one of the things I like about vi is that it *is* extremely
> regular. Commands to perform an occasional task can be worked out on
> an ad hoc basis because they use the same form as another command that
> you already know and use regularly. How you can call it irregular is
> beyond me.

Probably because the one-letter command names are impossible for me to
remember. I remember things as *words* dammit; I even remember most
Emacs commands as the names of the commands that implement them. :)

(Also, I was forced onto vi on a horrible system that had no docs for
it whatsoever, which probably coloured my view of it forevermore.)

> Anyway, I tried to learn emacs, but just couldn't get my head around
> the obscure and seemingly random key sequences, and I just couldn't
> remember them. For whatever reason, the vi commands fit my way of
> thinking much better.

I think this is a religious difference :)

(I think the Emacs manual explains the philosophy of the Emacs
keybindings somewhere. It's fairly similar to vi's, if I remember:
(semi-)consistent ways to `do things like this only applying to words
instead', and so on for lines, paragraphs, and so on.)

> Emacs has only one good thing going for it IMHO, and that's the
> inbuilt Lisp interpreter[1]. But that very fact has left it open
> to abuse as people have tried to write all manner of ill conceived
> extensions, which have just contributed to the general bloat.

What bloat? You don't pay for what you don't use. Packages you
never call are never loaded.

> [1] Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that the Lisp
>     interpreter has an editor bolted on :-)

Yes :)

-- 
> ...Hires Root Beer...
What we need these days is a stable, fast, anti-aliased root beer
with dynamic shading. Not that you can let just anybody have root.
 --- John M. Ford
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