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Emacs for all coding, and general writing. I like it because I've grown very comfortable with it over the years, and the extensive library of lisp allows me to

Emacs for all coding, and general writing. I like it because I've grown very comfortable with it over the years, and the extensive library of lisp allows me to do nearly anything. (Years ago I wrote a Registry Editor for NTEmacs! Much Lisp is available at https://emacswiki.org/ https://emacswiki.org/ ) The only exception is writing email for which I use vim. Mostly this is because I use a text-based mail-client (which I wrote) over SSH. So having a daemon-process doesn't make quite as much sense. Vim allows me to easily reply/compose to emails with spell-checking, and that's about the only thing I've turned on.

passivepinetree 10y ago
It's interesting to hear that you regularly use both emacs and vim. Do you ever mix up keybindings when typing? I'd think the cognitive load that such switching entails would make it more worth putting that time into mastering a single editor rather than using both. Can you elaborate on how you got into such a system and how it's worked out for you?
- stevekemp 10y ago
  Honestly? No. The bindings for different editors are different, so for forward paragraph I use "}" in Vim and "M-}" in Emacs. But I just don't think about it. I guess the visual look is enough to make me know what to type. When it comes to email the "editing" is pretty minimal anyway, I'm mostly deleting bits of quoted text and inserting my reply, or composing from a blank template. As for how I started many years ago I used to pay for a shell hosting site, and they gave me PINE the mail-client which was console-based. I've stuck with console mail clients ever since. So much more efficient than graphical mail handling, and I guess at the same time I started having Linux desktops and used Emacs for development. I did use emacs at some point for mails, but found it slow to start-up. So I kept using vim when I eventually switched to using the mutt mail-client. At this point I'd say I'm very very familiar with emacs, both with the internals (C & Lisp) and as a user. By contrast I'm pretty good with Vim. I do keep learning new things about both, but I don't expect I'll ever master either!
groks 10y ago
Use emacsclient on the server to trigger emacs on your desktop to edit your mail message: https://andy.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/automatic-emacsclient/

passivepinetree 10y ago

It's interesting to hear that you regularly use both emacs and vim. Do you ever mix up keybindings when typing? I'd think the cognitive load that such switching entails would make it more worth putting that time into mastering a single editor rather than using both. Can you elaborate on how you got into such a system and how it's worked out for you?

stevekemp 10y ago
Honestly? No. The bindings for different editors are different, so for forward paragraph I use "}" in Vim and "M-}" in Emacs. But I just don't think about it. I guess the visual look is enough to make me know what to type. When it comes to email the "editing" is pretty minimal anyway, I'm mostly deleting bits of quoted text and inserting my reply, or composing from a blank template. As for how I started many years ago I used to pay for a shell hosting site, and they gave me PINE the mail-client which was console-based. I've stuck with console mail clients ever since. So much more efficient than graphical mail handling, and I guess at the same time I started having Linux desktops and used Emacs for development. I did use emacs at some point for mails, but found it slow to start-up. So I kept using vim when I eventually switched to using the mutt mail-client. At this point I'd say I'm very very familiar with emacs, both with the internals (C & Lisp) and as a user. By contrast I'm pretty good with Vim. I do keep learning new things about both, but I don't expect I'll ever master either!

groks 10y ago

Use emacsclient on the server to trigger emacs on your desktop to edit your mail message: https://andy.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/automatic-emacsclient/