4 ms·

I love Emacs & it's my go-to editor, but I struggle to offer a solid, logical reason why. I only use a handful of packages, a smidge of Org mode, minimal custo

I love Emacs & it's my go-to editor, but I struggle to offer a solid, logical reason why. I only use a handful of packages, a smidge of Org mode, minimal customisation, & run Emacs in the terminal, so switching to something more modern should surely give me everything I need & many more features in spades. But nothing else scratches the itch despite my best efforts to move to something else. Perhaps for me Emacs is like an old pair of slippers: comfy, familiar, does what I need it to without fuss. I can't say whether it's a good choice for anyone else, but this grey beard engineer likes it.

crabbone 4y ago
I'll help you with the reason: people who make Emacs are professionals at editing text. They understand what tools a good professional needs when working with text. The only editor that can complete with that is Vim. IntelliJ / MS / Eclipse products don't hold a candle to that, their authors simply don't know how to edit text well, and consequently don't know how to make tools to that end. It's the same reason why anyone would buy Hasselblad camera over, say, Canon. Canon is fine for a person who simply wants to take pictures of things they want to remember. Maybe even for a student in photography class. But, if you are going to earn your money as a photographer... well, you want a tool that you can rely on. If you go to the Moon and want your camera to work, you'll choose Hasselblad etc.