My understanding of the origins of emacs & vim: emacs originated as the tool of choice for programmers. In those days a programmer would sit at a single text-b

My understanding of the origins of emacs & vim: emacs originated as the tool of choice for programmers. In those days a programmer would sit at a single text-based terminal all day, working dawn-til-dusk in a single editor process on a complex set of files stored on one system. emacs was designed to be an all-encompassing and extensible environment, because the programmer had the time and skills to sculpt his environment for maximum efficiency - and because the operating system shell was extremely basic in those days. vim arose as a sysadmin's tool. Unlike programmers, sysadmins were constantly moving between systems and performing a variety of simple edits on various text files. They needed an extremely quick editor with sensible defaults, because they wouldn't be working on a single system long enough or doing anything complex enough to benefit from a customized environment. Which editor is superior today depends on which archetype a particular user resembles. If someone isn't interested in crafting emacs into a cybernetic extension of their own mind, they're missing the point and should probably stick with vim for its sensible out-of-the-box behavior. They're both strictly superior to every other text editor available, because they're both fully accessible through keystrokes.