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Chris Siebenmann@cks@mastodon.social (2026-09-16 07:14:34)
Can I recommend GNU Emacs to people? No, not really, but that's because I can't recommend any editor to people¹. All serious editors are A Project to actually use (because of all the learning). If you've got one that works, stick with it. Otherwise, who knows what will click or be appealing or do what you want, certainly not me.
¹ the one exception is that Unix sysadmins will benefit from learning 'basic' vi editing because vi is absolutely everywhere. What counts as basic vi may vary.
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r1w1s1@r1w1s1@snac.bsd.cafe (2026-09-17 06:30:59)
This really resonates with me. My editor journey has actually gone in the opposite direction:
vim → nvi → and now increasingly eh(https://codeberg.org/SirWumpus/eh/)
I’ve even tried forcing myself to use ed for a while. I can appreciate it, but as a daily editor today, that’s a difficult commitment. :)
nvi and eh have made me realize how little I actually need from an editor.
Funny how hardware stopped forcing us to use small tools, yet some of us are finding our way back to them by choice.
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Chris Siebenmann@cks@mastodon.social (2026-09-17 07:02:08)
@r1w1s1 One of my twitches is that multi-buffer support is absolutely necessary for any editor I'm going to genuinely like, as opposed to tolerate. I've also come to like a bunch of vim features, like visual block mode, because they're handy for various stuff I do all the time.
(I wound up in GNU Emacs too for eccentric reasons having to do with a shift in my email environment, although I also have a long history with it.)