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We agree completely. Neither Emacs users nor developers care about start-up time or size on disk. And that's why Vim is installed by default on Linux distros (

• madhadron 6y ago
  Not quite. vim is installed because vi is required by the POSIX standard and vim is the GNU version of vi. For the same reason, ed is still installed by default. It has nothing to do with popularity.
  • catalogia 6y ago
    Vim isn't a GNU project and is licensed under it's own GPL-compatible license (see: :h license)
    • madhadron 6y ago
      Good correction. The most common GPL licensed vi clone, then.
• tsimionescu 6y ago
  Yes, we are probably in agreement on that point. We probably disagree on whether we should care about start-up time. We probably also disagree on what exactly it means to learn Vim before learning Emacs. I've been using Vim as a console editor far before I knew Emacs existed, but I have no idea how to use Vim for anything more than basic editing. Choosing an editor to learn as your development environment (which is what I would consider 'learning Emacs/vim/etc' actually means) is unlikely to be a decision you take based on system defaults. You are far more likely to learn the editor/IDE that your mentors use, whether that is Vim or Emacs or, as was my case originally, Borland Turbo C. Alternatively, when you are experienced enough to make a conscious choice of editor to invest in learning and customizing, your criteria will be more varied, but still likely not depend that much on system defaults.