When we say it’s powerful, we’re not kidding. Similarly, Emacs supports macro recording, tons of shortcuts (that you’ll have to learn to get really familiar with it), and has a ton of modules created by third parties to leverage the app for completely non-programming purposes, like project planning, calendaring, news reading, and word processing. It’s richly featured, too-Emacs can handle almost any type of text that you throw at it, handle simple documents or complex code, or be customized with startup scripts that add features or tweak the interface and shortcuts to match your project or preference. It’s had a long and storied history, but the version that most people wind up using is GNU Emacs, linked above. It has a steep learning curve, but it’s always there, ready for use. It’s not the easiest tool, but it’s definitely one of the most powerful. It’s been around for decades (since Richard Stallman and Guy Steele wrote it in 1976), and its the other major text editor to stand behind in the Holy Text Editor Grail Wars. If you’ve used an operating system with a command line interface, you’ve had Emacs available to you. It supports dozens of languages, keeps a history of your actions so you can easily repeat or undo them, supports macro recording, automatically recognizes file types, and lives-once installed-at your command line. It won’t hold your hand (although its extensive help is useful for beginners), but once you remember its keyboard shortcuts and commands, download tons of user scripts to apply to it to streamline your work, and learn your way around, it quickly becomes an essential tool.
Instead, you just have to take the time to configure it so it works the way you prefer. It’s not without good reason-Vim is cross-platform, free, and while it’s aimed squarely at programmers who want an interface they can tweak to their liking and really get some work done in, you don’t have to be a programmer to get the most use out of it. Designed to bring the simplicity of Vi to every platform and person who needed a configurable but not-too-heavy text editor, Vim is one banner of the Holy Text Editor Grail Wars to march under.
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