After writing yesterday’s post on Vim vs. Emacs, I serendipitously saw a tweet pointing at the Wikipedia article on the Editor War. It describes our holiest of holy wars and gives a pretty thorough analysis of both sides’ views.
The article is also useful as a comparison of Vim and Emacs. It lists the strengths and weaknesses of both editors as well as the jokes the partisans make about them. If you worship in the Church of Emacs, you’ll probably enjoy Bill Joy’s 1999 comment that vi was written for a world that doesn’t exist anymore and that Emacs was written on and for much more capable machines. There’s a bit more to the quote that’s worth taking a look at.
Both Vimmers and Emacsers will take comfort in the article’s noting that one of the major arguments in favor of vi, its much smaller footprint, is pretty much moot because both Vi(m) and Emacs can be considered light weight compared to modern monstrosities such as Eclipse.
As I said in yesterday’s post, no one takes the argument seriously anymore other than for its entertainment value but the Wikipedia article gives a nice history of the war and its major points. It was fun to read it. If you have a couple of minutes, take a look and enjoy one of the sillier parts of our shared history.