Sal’s

It's hard to find objective advice about text editors

It can be frustrating to try to do “research” on text editors because, in my experience, bias is so prevalent. And this makes sense.

If someone is an expert in Vim or Emacs, they probably spend a lot of time in it. That’s time they haven’t spent learning other editors. It seems plausible, then, that the more experienced someone is in a specialized editor, the less able they are to give a fully informed opinion of how it compares to some other editor. Especially given just how much time those editors take to master.

Here’s a great example from a Hacker News discussion:

[T]here are benefits to modal editing that learning all the keybindings in X can’t replicate. It’s difficult to explain and has to be experienced to fully understand.

As a quick example what are the vscode equivalents of I and A to enter insert mode in the beginning or end of a line? These small things quickly add up.

My dude (or ma’am), you’re asking about Ctrl-a (go to start of line in the Emacs-inspired, native macOS movements) and Ctrl-e (go to end of line). That is basic shit. I’m pretty sure those movements have been around since the dawn of OS X. Maybe even longer; I can’t say because I wasn’t using Macs then.

Nothing against this person, by the way. It’s just a useful example.

So, we have all manner of people pontificating about the value of this or that editor feature who don’t really understand what they’re comparing it against. That’s frustrating. It contributed to recent frustration.

I am absolutely not saying this about all experts in these editors. I’ve seen several a wise comment from a veteran who’s used Vim or Emacs for decades, loves it dearly, and then recommends newbies avoid it in favor of the far-less-costly alternatives we have these days.

We can find wisdom and objectivity. It’s just hard. Be skeptical. Trust your instincts.

#text-editors #vim #emacs #macos