Emacs/Vim/Vi - do they have a place in modern software development ecosystem? [closed]
- by Anton Gogolev
Watching all those screencasts (and listening all those podcasts) with more-or-less famous hackers/programmers I hear that many of those use emacs/vi(m) for their daily work.
Now, I myself tried using both emacs and vim, and I honestly cannot understand why would anybody use these for any kind of serious development.
The most advertised feature is something along the lines of "you'll be able to work with text (meaning cutting, pasting, duplicating, moving, etc) up to ten times faster than with conventional IDEs", but I don't buy that. When has the success of a software project been defined by how fast a programmer can juggle lines in a text editor or by saving a couple of keystrokes here and there?
Plugins and extensions? I bet nothing comes close to R# or IDEA in terms of refactoring support ("Rename" refactoring implemented by means of "Search and Replace" is not a refactoring IMO); others are trivial.
Ubiquitous and available everywhere? So what? How often do you find yourself editing files over a 300 baud connection on an esoteric *nix installation without a VCS?
So here goes: do said editors have a justified place in a modern software development ecosystem?
