Need: Code editor (and personal information management system, and the only good git ui, and an email client, and...)
Other programs I’ve tried: Sublime Text, Atom, VsCode, vim
Why emacs is the best: Emacs can be whatever you want it to be. It can do everything and anything, all in one unified space where all your keybindings work, all your plugins work, etc. There is literally nothing you can’t change about it, and people have created many “modes” for it that do a lot of things. In particular, org-mode renders all of those todo apps pointless, because it’s way better, and really the only viable option for personal information management. If you would rather a ui for git than just use the command line, magit (an emacs mode) is also your only viable option.
Don’t bother with it though if you don’t have some time to invest in learning it (same goes for any powerful tool). I also use evil mode because more thought went into vim keybindings than emacs ones. Honestly, emacs feels kind of like an accident that’s evolved over time to become amazing (think JavaScript), and so there are some terrible defaults and so on, but the roughness around the edges can be changed, so I’d recommend using Doom emacs to start, because they’ve already done the job of creating a good set of defaults.
I decided to switch to Emacs 1.5 years ago, and I feel it’s the most important computing decision I made since… starting to use a computer? I may write a more detailed post on what things I use Emacs for, but here I just wanted to endorse the above recommendation, including its caveats (“Don’t bother with it though if you don’t have some time to invest in learning it”), and emphasize that Emacs can fulfill many needs besides “code editor” (I am not a programmer myself).
Doom Emacs is also about Vim’s powerful tools like norm and :%s. It’s basically taking the best from the both world (granted, that’s subjective). Love it!
I always struggle whilst using Emacs against this feeling I’m not using it “properly”, and as such spend far too long adjusting my config to be just right. Although extremely powerful maybe I’m too prone to tinkering to use it as my primary editor, that and I was forced to use a windows computer for a prolonged period of time last year due to corporate reasons, and Emacs on windows is terribly slow, although I think the likely culprit there is git on Windows being slow also.
Software: emacs
Need: Code editor (and personal information management system, and the only good git ui, and an email client, and...)
Other programs I’ve tried: Sublime Text, Atom, VsCode, vim
Why emacs is the best: Emacs can be whatever you want it to be. It can do everything and anything, all in one unified space where all your keybindings work, all your plugins work, etc. There is literally nothing you can’t change about it, and people have created many “modes” for it that do a lot of things. In particular, org-mode renders all of those todo apps pointless, because it’s way better, and really the only viable option for personal information management. If you would rather a ui for git than just use the command line, magit (an emacs mode) is also your only viable option.
Don’t bother with it though if you don’t have some time to invest in learning it (same goes for any powerful tool). I also use evil mode because more thought went into vim keybindings than emacs ones. Honestly, emacs feels kind of like an accident that’s evolved over time to become amazing (think JavaScript), and so there are some terrible defaults and so on, but the roughness around the edges can be changed, so I’d recommend using Doom emacs to start, because they’ve already done the job of creating a good set of defaults.
+1 for doom emacs. I’m an emacs novice and doom makes it palatable to learn—not easy, but it more clearly showcases the power of emacs.
I decided to switch to Emacs 1.5 years ago, and I feel it’s the most important computing decision I made since… starting to use a computer? I may write a more detailed post on what things I use Emacs for, but here I just wanted to endorse the above recommendation, including its caveats (“Don’t bother with it though if you don’t have some time to invest in learning it”), and emphasize that Emacs can fulfill many needs besides “code editor” (I am not a programmer myself).
Doom Emacs is also about Vim’s powerful tools like norm and :%s. It’s basically taking the best from the both world (granted, that’s subjective). Love it!
I always struggle whilst using Emacs against this feeling I’m not using it “properly”, and as such spend far too long adjusting my config to be just right. Although extremely powerful maybe I’m too prone to tinkering to use it as my primary editor, that and I was forced to use a windows computer for a prolonged period of time last year due to corporate reasons, and Emacs on windows is terribly slow, although I think the likely culprit there is git on Windows being slow also.