Aaron Bieber, an engineer from Wayfair, gave a great talk to the Boston Vim Meetup on his journey from Vim to Emacs. Bieber was a serious Vim user who had about 15 years experience with it. During that time he’d written and rewritten his configuration many times, built the popular plug-in Quicktask, and taught classes in Vim. He was, in short, no dilettante.
After establishing his bona fides as a Vim user, he talks about his reasons for exploring Emacs and subsequent decision to move to it. Although Vim can be a magical editor and is very fast, there are some things it just can’t do easily. When Bieber saw how well Org mode solved the same problems he was addressing with Quicktask, he decided to take a closer look. He also discovered that code navigation was better with Emacs, which was important to him because he works with a very large code base.
What made all this possible for him was Evil mode. He says that it’s an excellent Vim emulation and he felt comfortable immediately. At the end of the talk someone asked him if he thought his move was permanent and he said “yes” and mentioned again how it just felt like he was using Vim in Emacs.
About half way through the talk he gives a demonstration meant to show the (Vim using) audience some of the powers of Emacs. It was very informative and if you’re thinking about trying out Emacs, you should take a look. The entire talk is about 40 minutes so you’ll need to schedule some time.