Is it worth investing time in learning to use Emac

Question

Right up front: I do not want to start a religious war.

I've used vi for as long as I can remember, and the few times I've tried to pick up Emacs I've been so lost that I've quickly given up. Lots of people find Emacs very powerful, however. Its programmability is somewhat legendary. I'm primarily doing Solaris+Java development, and I'd like to ask a simple question: will my productivity increase if I invest time in getting my head around Emacs? Is the functionality that it offers over Vim going to be paid back in productivity increases in a reasonable timeframe?

Repeat: I don't want a "my editor is better than yours" answer. I just want a yes or no answer as to whether it's worth investing the time or not. Will my productivity really increase?

Answer 1

Emacs documentation is a forest. I came from Emacs to Vim when I realized how organized Vim's documentation is, and how chordable many of the features are. I don't know what lies down the path of an Emacs expert, but I will warn you that learning to do anything useful in it takes a long time, and won't make you any better at nethack. Stick with Vim.

Textmate is a better Emacs for Macs, though that won't help you with Solaris. Eclipse is kind of cool, and has a lot of plugins.

Answer 2

I really see no reason to switch. I've used vi for a long time and am quite comfortable with it; about every six months I would install emacs to give it a go, then quickly just switch back. Yes there were things I much preferred about vi, but the main reason I never stuck with it is because the time investment to fully learn another editor when I already know an extremely capable one isn't worth it.
I'm reminded of this rather dated study.

In my opinion, SLIME is about the only reason to switch to emacs if you're already proficient with vi.

Answer 3

I used Vim for 10 years leading up to delving into Emacs 2 years ago. I have a reasonably fresh recollection of just how my productivity curve modified over time.

My points are all conditional, YMMV depending on your strengths and experience.

If you have used Unix and the command line long enough that you are familiar with C-a, C-e, C-n, C-p, C-k, C-y, etc as they function on the shell, it will not take long to transition to using those same bindings (the defaults) in Emacs. I recently discovered that XCode uses these bindings as well.

If you are comfortable with an always running editor, tending buffers (like you would browser tabs) and thus living in the application (like you would with Web2.0 apps in the browser), Emacs will likely show immediate productivity enhancements.

If you generally work in projects of many related files, this persistence pays some added benefits in maintaining context to that buffer. Each buffer is contexted at its open file allowing for convenient use of various productivity boosting tools for your that project (like grep-find, eshell, run-python and slime). This coupled with text completion, yasnippets, etc start to look a tiny fraction like an IDE although ad-hoc and heavily individualized by your configuration. This is apart from more civilized Emacs IDE-like services like ECB.

My productivity took a hit initially as I typed "jjjkkk" constantly Esc-Esc-Esc-Esc for the first week or so. The following week I cautiously started using the right navigation keys. Then I discovered the configuration file... Honestly, if I had had Emacs Starter Kit from the start, I would have said my productivity slowly worked back to parity over the 3rd-4th week but I did go down the config file rabbit hole. A co-worker of mine, though, has just transitioned from vim to emacs and he just grabbed the Starter Kit and he is on his way. First week in and he seems comfortable and enjoying all the surprise benefits (that sensation will probably last a decade).

Finally, if you make mistakes you will immediately gain productivity (and confidence) from the circular kill/yank-ring and undo-ring. I am also personally a fan of region specific undos.

My short answer is Yes it is worth taking 3-4 weeks of a diminishing productivity-hit to learn Emacs. Even if you decide you prefer a streamlined unix utility combo over Emacs for development you will derive from it an education widely applicable beyond the editor.

Answer 4

Depending on how you code, you may see a productivity increase. For background, I'm also a long-time vim user, but I learned emacs about 2 years ago, and now use them interchangeably.

What drove me to the point of actually learning emacs was its useful ability to have a large number of files open at once, and to easily switch between them. I was in the middle of introducing a feature that added and touched a large number of classes. (This was C++, so there were typically two files per class.) Since I was still firming up the interface, I would typically be in the middle of updating one file when I would realize that I needed to change another.

With gvim, it was easiest to open a new window for each file, which was starting to get unwieldy. With Emacs, though, it was simple to open a new file in the same window (Ctrl-x, Ctrl-f). Once Emacs has a file open, it's very easy to switch back and forth between the open buffers (Ctrl-x, Ctrl-b).

Taking that one step further, a single emacs session may open many windows, so in addition to splitting the window vertically, I could decide, without interrupting work on a file, to open another next to it, letting me effectively work side-by-side while still keeping each window at the default 80-character width.

There are still some things that I find easier in vim (e.g. block-select mode, simple macro recording, diff mode), and things that are easier in Emacs (line alignment, file/buffer management, window/screen management). Therefore, I find myself alternating between the two (and sometimes using both simultaneously), depending the editing task I anticipate.

If you're still unsure, I'd suggest trying it out. Run through the Emacs tutorial and then use it to write code for a morning or a day, leaning heavily on the help. If you still don't like what you see, stay with vim. Regardless of what the editor brings to the table, your familiarity and knowledge of the tool will by far be the most important factor in your productivity.

Answer 5

How fast do you type? If you hunt and peck, then emacs is not for you. If your fast tho, it can help not having to grab your mouse all the time.

Answer 6

If you are concerned about the health of your hands choose Vim.

I suffered from a bout of RSI in the past, and I found one of the main culprits was "chording" i.e. holding down many keys at the same time. Emacs uses chording extensively whilst VIM uses single letter commands chained in quick succession. This puts much less strain on your hands as the muscles don't have to twist and contort to perform commands in the editor. Injury due to RSI can ruin your productivity so in your calculations be sure to account for this.