From VI to Emacs

I use plain old vi or Vim pretty

regularly these days and in doing so have gotten through one of most painful and

frustrating learning curves ever. I actually prefer it to things like

jEdit and Homesite for a lot of editing tasks. Trouble is, I can’t

shake the urge to learn Emacs.

Of course now that I’m actually used to

type-beep-curse-type-curse-hit-escape editing, Emacs feels horrible.

All that control-meta key contortionism and C-x letter letter M-x

letter nonsense makes me want to shout even more obscenities than when

using vi.

In spite of all that, I would really love to get used to a non-modal

editor that is infinitely customizable, free and, from what I hear, very

powerful.

So I’m going through the tutorial just to see how much pain I can

withstand. Maybe I’ll write a couple of my next posts with it. If you

don’t hear from me for a few days, you’ll know why.