I saw this tweet:
Editors I use:#vim – git commits#emacs – org mode#atomeditor– work dev#vscode – side project dev (new thing)
— Thomas Mattacchione (@tmkjone) February 20, 2018
and recoiled in horror. It’s not that I think Mattacchione is doing something wrong or that I doubt he’s a good developer, it’s just that I know I couldn’t work that way.
I appreciate the idea of picking the best tool for the task at hand and it may be that Mattacchione’s choices are exactly that but I keep thinking, “How in the world does he cope with muscle memory?” I’ve been using Emacs for a decade and before that I used Vi/Vim for even longer. Only recently have I stopped doing things like using Ctrl+k to scroll back a line. That’s the result of using only two editors, not even at the same time, over several decades.
I’m sure all this says something uncomplimentary about my flexibility but it is, nevertheless, reality for me. I don’t know what I’d do if I were working in something like Java that requires—I’ve heard—an IDE to use productively.
Anyway, the tweet got me wondering about other people. Do you, like Mattacchione, use several different editors depending on what you’re doing or do you, like me, stick with one editor for all your text-based work? If you use more than one editor, do you find that muscle memory gets in the way? If you have opinions on the matter, leave a comment.