Backed up from a local Blogger export (114305118386148543/114305118386148543.html) on 2026-01-01.

Since I seem to be somehow encouraging the usage of vi at work among my peers I figure I should alert them to the holy war to end all wars that they are unknowingly (perhaps) being drafted into.

And so I present you with a vi vs. emacs link fest:

An impartial view with good factoids on both sides. Bullet lists sucks.

An emacs guy takes some pot shots at the VI crowd. I have to wonder though did he think before he used the subheading, “Emacs: the tool of tools”? This is typical of the war-time volley, here’s a sample smithering:

“I often tell people that you only need to know one vi command: :q!. This way, if you ever accidentally start up vi, you can get right back out. You might want to follow that up with rm /bin/vi to keep it from happening again. In reality, I know just enough vi to get the system up and running and to get Emacs installed; I’ll then leave vi behind and never look back.”

The vi lovers guide If the title didn’t give you enough of a hint of the flavour perhaps this will: “I use Vim because I simply don’t know of a better editor, but, admittedly, I haven’t seriously tried anything else.” He makes up for this with a great set of links to useful information and a concise history of vi in the beginning.

A study of novice and regular users usage of the two editors. “There appears to be no advantage for a regular user of one editor to switch to the other.” However novices liked emacs better.

References to actual ‘scientific’ research into the perfect editor.Yes there are actually people trying to have a scientific discourse about this stuff.

Tim O’Reilly uses VI. I have to admit that although I’m not a big Tim supporter lately the fact that he uses VI almost makes up for his web/mix 2.0 conferences but his response here is high on the rubbish factor. Shenanigans!

A funny little rant. “Emacs is for people who desperately want to get drunk, but feel guilty doing so without a reason.”

A typical flame war.

Taking a poll of public published net opinion.

An emacs user admits that emacs key bindings make you retarded.

You can always bat for eitherside.

Conclusion: If you’re a programmer and you’ve never given your editor any serious thought it would benefit you to think about the tools you use to ply your craft. I don’t encourage people to select one editor over another but whatever you use you should invest at least some invest some time into your tools. My preference is vi, I’ve used it for 10 years and it feels like a natural extension of my brain at this point. It pains me to see people programming by using the mouse to select words from an intellisense drop down menu.