Linux Programming: The New Programmer's Road Map: Choosing an Editor

[ Thanks to Kevin Reichard for this link. ]

"There is a silent holy war--among many thousands, to be sure--on the Internet. It can be found waging in newsgroups, chat rooms, Web forums, and the like. It is about the editor of choice. Some will say it is vi, while others will insist the end-all editor (and environment, in some cases) is emacs. I would say the choice is yours, but first let me explain the two."

"Initially built by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, the vi editor represents simplicity and elegance. It has a wide range of commands and can have macros. The vi editor is best known for being light. It normally has only a terminal interface, but there are clones out there that can run in X Window mode. A very thorough tutorial on the vi editor can be found at the Engineering Computing Network of Purdue University's vi tutorial."

"On the other side is emacs from Richard M. Stallman, founder of the GNU Project. Emacs has an intense array of commands, extensions, and tools to help a programmer. In fact, emacs is similar in nature to an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), but better. One can also use mail utilities, play games, download files, and participate in newsgroups with it as well. The trade-off for some might be the time it takes to reap the full benefit of all things emacs can do. A full compliment of emacs reference material can be found at the Geek Girl's Emacs reference materials page."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• O'Reilly Network: Living Linux: The Writer's Workbench(May 06, 2000)
• LinuxPlanet: Word to the Wise... A Few Others Worth Considering: Emacs, LaTeX, and Vigor(May 04, 2000)
• RootPrompt.org: Emacs Beginner's Tutorial(Apr 19, 2000)
• AboutLinux.com: Introduction to NEdit 5.1(Apr 01, 2000)
• Emacs Beginner's HOWTO(Apr 24, 1999)
• DevShed.com: HUMOR: Vi 201 [Advanced Usage of The Vi Text Editor](May 13, 2000)
• RootPrompt.org: The VI Editor [Tutorial](Apr 05, 2000)
• Linux.ie: vi Tutorial(Sep 22, 1999)
• Linux HTML Editors(May 09, 1999)