I saw this tweet and it got me thinking.
The #emacs versus #vim religious conflict feels like other religious conflicts: ignored by ever more atheists. pic.twitter.com/8o8ZoKVRaD
— Charles Merriam (@charles_merriam) July 7, 2016
The tweet is, of course, snark but it raises an interesting question. Does anyone still care about the holiest of holy wars? This tweet
Vim or #Emacs: Which text editor do you prefer? #Vim with the early lead 57 to 11 https://t.co/LdLZFhuqYa
— Jeff Mackanic (@mackanic) July 21, 2016
suggests that some of us do but my sense is that Emacsers and Vimers are pretty much united against all the newcomers as exemplified by this tweet
This is so true :-p #vim #emacs #atom pic.twitter.com/hjesEgFgmo
— Sebastian Misch (@sebastianmisch) June 29, 2016
I always get in trouble when I bring this up but I think it’s true that serious developers overwhelmingly prefer either Emacs or Vim. Of course there are exceptions. There are, I’m sure, thousands of excellent developers that use something else but mostly the great developers use Emacs or Vim.
The choice between the two depends on the developer’s outlook. If you want the fastest, most composable editor and are focused on simply editing text, you will probably prefer Vim. If, on the other hand, you want an environment that subsumes editing among other things, you will probably prefer Emacs.
My point, though, is that Emacsers and Vimers have pretty much moved from fighting each other to shaking their heads in disbelief about those engineers who are using one of those other editors. So perhaps the holy war isn’t over, it’s just move to another domain.