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what editor do you use?

Christopher T King squirrel at WPI.EDU
Mon Jun 28 11:51:49 EDT 2004 
On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, Steven Rumbalski wrote:

> Michael Anckaert wrote:
> 
> > A friend of mine uses emacs and we held a 'speedcontest', we had
> > to edit a file with our editors and write some code. Me and vim were
> > about 50% faster than him and emacs.
> > But I don't want to start any vim vs. emacs flamewar :-)
> > 
> I suspect you would be 50% faster even if you both used notepad.  This
> comparison is meaningless without a baseline comparison in an unfamiliar
> editor.  Perhaps you are simply a faster typist.  Perhaps code flows more
> quickly from your brain.  Perhaps you were more familiar with the file to
> be edited and the problem domain.  We cannot know the reason that you
> performed this particular test more quickly.

A better comparison would be to perform weird editing tasks, since all 
editors let you type code at about the same speed. Example:

One of my friends was trying to cut and paste columnar values in EMACS.
The task took him about five minutes. I showed him JOE's rectangle
selection mode. He was then able to use that feature to accomplish the
same task with (literally) a couple of keystrokes.

Of course, there are tasks which will be more efficient in EMACS due to 
its scriptability. It all boils down to a question of which editor 
provides more practical features.
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