Ask HN: Why do you love your text editor?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552762

by tvorryn • 15 years ago

7 13 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Or IDE? What features do you rely on the most? Less than obvious answers would be great. What I'm wondering is what the next great editor/IDE needs to do well in order to succeed.

madhouse• 15 years ago

I'm an Emacs user. I love my editor (or OS, as some would think of it) because it has everything I need to do at my fingertips: no matter what I do, I hardly ever need to leave it, if at all. That way, I have familiar keybindings all over the place, it's scriptable and extensible, and documented better and more extensively than anything else I've ever seen.

I can browse a projects git history, and follow bugzilla links, for example (it's even possible to set things up so that different projects will lead to different bug trackers). I can also easily poke around in said history. I can find functions defined in a whole other area of the projects by using etags. I have an integrated debugger, which shows everything I need, and more. I have an email client with a ton of goodies (gnus threading is awesome, so is scoring and a lot of other things).

And I could continue virtually forever, but in the end, the reason I like Emacs is that it provides a familiar and integrated environment for every single task I can think of, and it lets me extend and enhance it at my heart's content.

HedgeMage• 15 years ago

It bears repeating that emacs grows with you. You don't have to learn and customize a new editor when you take on a new type of task.

From the time I wrote my first Linux config file, to when I started coding in C (and through the next dozen languages I learned), from using RCS to CVS to SVN to git and hg, when I was a security geek, a nuts-and-bolts coder, a web developer, and a typesetter... I stuck with emacs.

I know folks who learned only a fraction of that breadth of computing tasks, yet passed through six or seven editing environments, revision control front-ends, and so on doing it. There was this extra thing they had to do -- audition appropriate IDEs and customize on to their liking -- every time they learned something new. I'm confident I can pick up whatever language I like without that overhead.

qjz• 15 years ago

I like vim because my primary user interface is 6 rows of approximately a dozen buttons each. Vim lets me use them efficiently and to maximum effect, without getting my fingers tangled in a game of keyboard Twister (sorry, emacs).

sixtofour• 15 years ago

Vim.

I'm used to it (20+ years including vi).

Finger memory. Sometimes I don't know how I do things, they just get done when I think about it. When I show someone something in Vim I sometimes have to slow down and show myself first.

There's always something new to learn. That keeps it fun.

Emacs and Vim can do the same things, differently. Long use is what makes a good editor, or IDE.

tompickles• 15 years ago

I like that avoidance of the vi v Emacs war; but I do agree. You do good work in the editor which you both know and have used.

sc68cal• 15 years ago

I'm addicted to Vim's modes & shortcuts. If use an IDE, I end up installing Vim emulators in VS2010, Eclipse, or NetBeans.

jawns• 15 years ago

Because I built it myself :)

taphangum• 15 years ago

gEdit. Becuase it's simple.

LarryA• 15 years ago

I use a few, usually I am working most with Kate via Quanta and Gedit.

Things I like about them - they are fast - to load up and fast to do search/replace on large files.

- in the case of Gedit it works with the filesystem which works with FTP so I could do a quick edit on-line just by logging in and right-clicking a file - very convenient.

- Syntax Highlighting

- In the case of Kate also auto indent and in Quanta the autocomplete and highlighting open/close parenthesis, brace, bracket pairs.

What I would like to see is some editor that helps flag non-ISO-8859 characters.

CyberFonic• 15 years ago

I'm with sixtofour, once you don't have to think about what to do, you speed up massively. Personally I prefer vi only because I've learnt it. Changing slows me down for very little gain.

For me, vi + git + make works well. Have tried most IDEs and keep coming back to this combination. Use a second screen to refer to APIs etc.

subsection1h• 15 years ago

What I love most about Emacs is Org mode.

http://orgmode.org/

Flam• 15 years ago

SciTE because it is blazingly fast and 100% dependable. Use it for everthing.

rshom• 15 years ago

I use emacs. I love that I don't have to move much to do anything. Sorry vim, but pressing esc before I execute a command is a pain in the neck. I also use the no X version so that I can be browsing in the terminal and pop something up really fast. Its wonderful.

Ask HN: Why do you love your text editor?

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