When it comes to text editing, I got got by the Emacs bug practically from day one. The idea of an editor where practically everything was coded in macros, and could be changed in almost any way was very attractive. The Emacs I started with was a monster for the Vax 11/780 that the CS department had, and there often were complaints about the amount of resources it hogged, which in 1984 were considered to be quite exceptional.

As a consequence I never learned Vi. Often I regretted it, when remotely connected to some Unix or Linux system that didn’t have Emacs installed. A couple of weeks ago I read Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?. I sort of knew a reason why I should – it’s everywhere, unlike Emacs.

So, time to bite the bullet. I have installed gVim on my Windows working platform, MacVim on the Mac development platform and ViEmu into Visual Studio and have been forcing myself to learn as much as possible. It IS a steep learning curve indeed, but I was very, very surprised. Almost everything I use in Emacs on a day to day basis is in Vim, and quite a bit of it is quicker and easier to use than Emacs – it’s just that so much of the power is hidden from immediate view.

I’m glad I took the time to learn, as I think I’ll be sticking with it, and I know I’ll have a text editor waiting for me no matter which machine I use.