I think the possible valid answers are: “vi”, “emacs”, “both”, “seriously it’s 2024”, and " huh?"
Vim, I’ve not given emacs a fair try yet. At work I’ve got to use what I’ve got to use and neither is an option. At home the last thing I want to do is write more code.
When I do have a choice I’m not doing much more complicated things than editing a config file and anything more advanced than cat would do I guess.
for me its clearly vim, the modal editing and the hotkeys are what makes vim great.
the power of emacs lies in customisation. and building your own setup.
i can use vim hotkeys in almost every ide/editor i need.
to use emacs, i need to set up emacs to do everything you need to do.
you can work like that,
but its not for me.nano
Butterflies
vim
Seriously, it’s 2024. Use vim
Yes. And others.
I learnt Emacs years ago, it’s very helpful to the day-to-day terminal use, however if I could go back I would learn Vi instead, it’s better for pinky strain.
The ‘general’ package has basically fixed that for me:
https://github.com/noctuid/general.elMakes it pretty simple to swap out most common emacs shortcuts for much more ergonomic alternatives.
I really wish more text editors being actively developed in the present day would take advantage of the IBM CUA standard that has been embraced by Windows and (Desktop) Linux since basically the early 1990s.
Vi for me for config, script, and text type files. Used to use emacs a lot for developing hobby stuff but prefer other IDEs now.
Likewise, I use vi for sysadmin work, and a big IDE (VSCodium) for writing code.
Proficiency is absolutely key. I was troubleshooting a feature with a Jr the other day and asked him to search through the log out put (that was currently being displayed on his terminal). Unfortunately he was trying out a new emulator and didn’t know how to actually search the output.
We went about it a different way, but at the end I just told him it didn’t matter what tools he used as long as he actually knew how to do what’s required with them and to please get that figured out for next time.
If nano or pico is installed I will use those, else vi
emacs. If you want vim keybindings there is a mode in emacs called “evil-mode”. If sticking with pure emacs I recommend rebinding the caps lock key on your keyboard to control.
Nano (pico). You shouldn’t have to look at a quickref to save and quit a document.
Get in, make your changes, get out.
