Meanwhile, if you're used to Vi's modal editing or Emacs's elisp, you're basically going to hate the other tools forever if for whatever reason. For example if you need IDE features for your project or the Vim/Emacs extensions for language X are no stable/flexible enough.
Ctrl+F for Find is a common standard, for example, but it's hit or miss whether this is Ctrl+F for Find (and that's your lot! Find & Replace is something entirely different), Ctrl+F for Find (and you have a checkbox for Replace), Ctrl+F for Find (and you have a checkbox for Replace... and this is how you search across multiple files as well). And there are multiple standards for all of these additional options. Your muscle memory will be useless no matter what you're used to. You're welcome to describe emacs as unusual... but don't assume everything else is a nirvana of UI consistency. The process of "just" switching can be a bit more inconvenient than you might think ;)
When I'm working on Python code, I'm in PyCharm. My C++ work on Windows is in Visual Studio. When I ssh into the Linux machine that serves our in-house documentation to make changes, I'm using vim. On OSX, I use BBEDit most of the time. When I'm writing a letter, I'm usually in Word or Google Docs.
I think if I spent all day every day in one environment, I would get bored.
Yes, at least whenever possible.
> I think if I spent all day every day in one environment, I would get bored.
The opposite perspective: It's extremely frustrating constantly switching between significantly different environments with different UIs, different hotkeys, subtly different jargon, etc.
Maybe that's the difference. I'm not a productive multitasker. When I have some Python to work on, that's all I'm doing for the next day or two. I'm not jumping from Word to PyCharm to Vim all day.
Personally, mapping Caps Lock to Ctrl (which I do anyway) and using Ctrl-C works best. I use vim and IntelliJ's vim emulation on an international keyboard where Ctrl-[ won't work.
Got it. Thanks.
If you think that places me on the other side of the argument (it doesn't), that's on you. It simply puts me in the middle.
This is misleading. In the era of JetBrains and its perpetual licensing and Steam and whatnot, it's worth pointing out that ST3 is a binary that you download and have complete access to, so of course it will be there next year.
You're probably getting at the fact that development may stop on it next year, and that's true, but the product is still pretty polished and useful now.
I also don't have your confidence that Emacs will always be there. I don't have statistics - but have contributions been increasing or decreasing in the last decade? In any case, I hope that Emacs fades away: text editing is great, but I think there's still plenty of room to advance our craft. Things like Lamdu and Eve (nee Light Table) are interesting explorations.
Here are some screenshots: https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm/wiki/Screenshots
All you need to do is to set up a couple of hotkeys for things that Emacs cannot do (yet), like (start-process "" nil "xdg-open" "http://some.flashy.javascript.website")
This is not "being there." Popular architectures change, as do operating systems. Unless you intend to freeze your current computing environment for posterity, a working executable means nothing.
But beyond that, I find that a lot more stuff Just Works in Emacs. I spend my days working in Python, and both major Python modes for Emacs are miles ahead of ST's equivalents. Things like linters work as expected and there are lot more packages available for niche things. Emacs is subjectively better, even if the UI doesn't feel as platform-native as other editors.
I don't use Emacs because I'm a graybeard afraid to learn something new. I use it because I've tried every new hotness to come along and I've yet to find something as powerful, well-supported, and ubiquitous.