>>The thing you described(error analysis) can be done in any language and I would have done in vim and wrote a shell script. Exactly. The difference between Em

>>The thing you described(error analysis) can be done in any language and I would have done in vim and wrote a shell script. Exactly. The difference between Emacs and Vim cultures is, in vim you use shell and programs(like sed, awk, perl etc) as a kind of assorted set of tools to build what you want. Emacs gives you all that in one nice integrated package. If I'm not wrong this was also originally a difference between Unix and Lisp cultures. In Lisp you had the operating system boot to a Lisp REPL. In unix you have it boot to a shell. Then one good thing about lisp is the list syntax helps you exchange code and data in a proper structure. Whereas in shell you have to understand the structure of what you are passing around(Text). Which is why after a while you just have to write a Perl script to get things done. Error analysis is just one thing. Once you start building your utils, in Elisp, you just continue to use them together as a part of a larger workflow. In Unix you can do the same, but it will take you a lot of Perl and shell scripts. >>I have 10s of keyboard shortcut in vim, but all of the steps are just combination of keys or passing selection to unix command. Same in Emacs. When using vim you still have to commit a few things to Muscle memory, you have to learn movements, you have to learn modes. And then learn to use them with registers and macros. You do the same in Emacs. >>I can do all of the things in most programmable editor. Vim is a very nice editor. And I still use it a lot. But Emacs is a editor and beyond. I like to describe Emacs as an Editor and a very good programming system, which offers you way to program anything that comes in the domain of programmatically controlling a text buffer. >>I know how extensible emacs is, but there are very very few examples that requires this. I though the same way, but the use cases keep increasing once you start using it. It's really like saying spreadsheets are useless because you can iterate lists over a for loop and do what you like. Its only when you start using features like Pivot table, What-if, Vtables etc do you begin to see how powerful it can get. Some times it also requires changing the way you think about a tool to get it right. Once you start using it you begin to see all kinds of curious cases where it can be put to use. I've even seen(in YouTube) cool uses of Elisp Macros and Clojure macros stitched together to make Emacs generate Clojure code. Then plugins like aggressive-indent-mode and paredit just make writing code a bit like uttering your thought at the speed it occurs. You can also use Elisp to make debugging easy, or generate templates of code or do various other things. These are just very basic things, the possibilities are endless. >>Secondly the argument that lisp is better for text processing is not even relevant. You can install lisp compiler and use it with most editor if we are just passing the input into it. So basically you are suggesting I re-invent emacs itself? Because that's what installing a Lisp compiler and building text manipulation APIs means. Why should I do it, when the community has spend more than 5 decades doing it for me.