In Praise of Emacs
In what other editor or IDE do you have:
- Keyboard macros that you can call on a whim.
- A tab key that acts like an “align” key — aligning lines to the right and left? If this is not important to you, then you have never written anything in Python.
- Can you compile your code and go the errors directly?
- A total immersion — in fact, you can even read your mail inside Emacs. And, yes, I’ve done it.
Neal Stephenson said it best:
In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. . . .Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.