Apropos of yesterday’s post on learning ancient editors, tareefdev has a post on the Emacs subreddit on why and how he moved from one of those “modern” electron-based editors to Emacs. His problem was a simple one: he had a 6.3 MB file and couldn’t open it with his editor. Say what you will about Emacs and large files, it can easily handle files of that size as tareefdev discovered when he opened his file in Emacs with no problems. As his expertise with Emacs grew, he discovered that he could use it for more and more of his tasks and that it made his life easier.
This is a quotidian story that normally wouldn’t be worth writing about except in light of the argument discussed in yesterday’s post that young developers shouldn’t waste their time learning ancient editors like Vim and Emacs. Just stick with that flashy new editor that’s easy to learn and has a glitzy UI. Except then you find it isn’t up to the job and you have to revert to one of those dusty old editors that folks were telling you weren’t worth your time.
If you’re lucky—and smart—like tareefdev, you may find that your problem was actually an opportunity to begin a life-long relationship with a powerful tool that can lessen your workload in many ways.