Three Groups of Editors

I came across this tweet

People are categorized in 3 groups. "Almighty Emacsians", "Vim users", "Dumb-asses" :)) #emacs #vim

— lxsameer (@lxsameer) August 29, 2014

that reminded me of my slightly less controversial post on the same subject. That post was from 2 and a half years ago so it’s worth considering how things have changed.

The most obvious change is that TextMate is no longer a player. It’s apparently still available and the source code of the new version development has moved to GitHub but one hardly hears about it anymore. In terms of my original post, that leaves Emacs and Vim as the editors of choice for experienced developers. The battle between them for the top spot proceeds apace, of course, with partisans on both sides as adamant as ever.

There are a couple of new editors that are getting a lot of buzz: Sublime Text and Atom. Emacs users haven’t been much impressed and I assume the same is true of Vim users as well. Emacs and Vim are like black holes. Once you start using them you never leave¹. It may be that in the long term these editors will gain traction but in the mean time, I think it’s still true that the most experienced engineers are using Emacs or Vim.

There are lots of decent editors, each with their own champions, and plenty of experienced and talented developers who use them. Still, as a general statement I think it’s still true that the most experienced and talented engineers tend to prefer Emacs or Vim, and that to a first order approximation their use signals someone who is experienced and cares about optimizing their work flow.

On the other hand, as far as uptake goes, we have this.