Will Emacs make me a better programmer? [closed]

Question

Steve Yegge wrote a comment on his blog:

All of the greatest engineers in the world use Emacs. The world-changer types. Not the great gal in the cube next to you. Not Fred, the amazing guy down the hall. I'm talking about the greatest software developers of our profession, the ones who changed the face of the industry. The James Goslings, the Donald Knuths, the Paul Grahams, the Jamie Zawinskis, the Eric Bensons. Real engineers use Emacs. You have to be way smart to use it well, and it makes you incredibly powerful if you can master it. Go look over Paul Nordstrom's shoulder while he works sometime, if you don't believe me. It's a real eye-opener for someone who's used Visual Blub .NET-like IDEs their whole career.

Emacs is the 100-year editor.

The last time I used a text editor for writing code was back when I was still writing HTML in Notepad about 1000 years ago. Since then, I've been more or less IDE dependent, having used Visual Studio, NetBeans, IntelliJ, Borland/Codegear Studio, and Eclipse for my entire career.

For what it's worth, I have tried Emacs, and my experience was a frustrating one because of its complete lack of out-of-the-box discoverable features. (Apparently there's an Emacs command for discovering other Emacs commands, which I couldn't find by the way -- it's like living your own cruel Zen-like joke.) I tried to make myself like the program for a good month, but eventually decided that I'd rather have drag-and-drop GUI designers, IntelliSense, and interactive debugging instead.

It's hard to separate fact from fanboyism, so I'm not willing to take Yegge's comments at face value just yet.

Is there a measurable difference in skill, productivity, or programming enjoyment between people who depend on IDEs and those who don't, or is it all just fanboyism?

Answer 1

Emacs made me more efficient at text manipulation and filesystem navigation. And since both these things are involved when I program, it's made me a more efficient (thus better) programmer.

Answer 2

I'm an Emacs fanboy, personally, but Emacs is just a tool. It won't make you a better programmer any more than a super-fancy pen will make you a better writer.

The clarification that "great programmers" adapt their environment to themselves may have some merit, but lots of tools can do that (e.g. vim and SlickEdit), so there's nothing particular about Emacs in that regard.

I think what's most likely true is that "great programmers" are passionate about programming and people who are passionate about it tend to find tools that help drive that passion. Emacs (and vim and SlickEdit, et al) is such a tool.

Answer 3

Yegge needs to meet Bill Joy. Not only is he one of the great programmers in the world, he also wrote large chunks of vi. In vi.

Short Shameful Confession: After 20 years of using vi (and vim/gvim in recent years) for everything, in the last year or so I've started using Eclipse for java editing (and Thunderbird for email), although at my current job my machine has so little memory that I usually use vi except when I need the debugger.

Answer 4

IMHO IDEs tend to be optimised around a specific platform or language or OS: Eclipse JDT is great for Java, Visual Studio is C++/.NET-centric, etc. They help productivity a lot (again IMHO) if you're only working on that platform, but if you change platforms you have to basically learn a new IDE (or at least a new set of plugins, views, perspectives and I don't know what else for Eclipse).

The advantage of knowing emacs, or Textmate, or vim (my personal preference), or any generic editor, is that the skills you acquire in that editor apply regardless of what platform you're writing for. They're optimised for editing text, and once you master them, you can edit text very efficiently in any language.

There's also Yegge's assertion that great programmers adapt their tools to their working style rather than vice versa. I think this is a win for generic editors, because you customise one editor, rather than having to work out how to adapt four different IDEs to all behave the way you want.

Answer 5

I believe its a large misconception that using these text based editors such as VI and Emacs are looked highly upon or needed to become a "great programmer". I always felt IDE's are mor e powerful then they use to be, and it truly comes down a preference and style.

Answer 6

I used emacs in college. that was about 16 years ago. I haven't looked back. While I wish I could still be comfortable with emacs, the truth is I am quite productive with my MS IDE.

the text you posted is just a troll. Yep. No other reason for it than to start a religious war.