Best Python Editor (under Linux)

[Steve Lamb]

On 3 Jan 2003 17:36:30 GMT, Mike Dean <klaatu at evertek.net> wrote:
> I've since dropped any ideas of learning Emacs completely, as, within 6
> months of learning Vim, I was able to fluently work with multiple bufferes
> and windows, multiple cut and paste registers, and was writing my own
> scripts.

    My experience is similar.  When I got a new job about 4 years ago I went
from editing scripts as a hobby into having to do it professionally.  Up until
that time joe had served me well.  I found that syntax highlighting was
something that really helped me out and set out to find an editor that had it
for the languages I expected to write in.  I had three major candidates.
Emacs, vim and jed.  

    I tried jed for a few weeks.  Had it set up for my news and email and
diddled around in code.  Couldn't get the hang of it and was constantly being
slowed down.  

    Next up, Emacs.  Same problem.  Of course Emacs was ever so helpful by
having the help pop up every time I hit backspace.  Sure, ^? or ^H (whichever
it is) /sounds/ like a neat keybinding for help but as anyone with a minute
amount of unix experience knows they are BS and DEL.  Kind of a common
character for editing text.  Needless to say that after a few hours Emacs was
forcibly ejected from my HD.

    I tried vim last for a simple reason.  I hate the idea of a modal editor.
I really do.  In fact, 4 years later, I still hate the idea of a modal editor.
But going through the tutorial I was very close to my speed in joe.  Within a
week I was going faster than in joe.  Inside two weeks I had vim as the
default editor for mail and news and had completely switched over to it for
all editing tasks.

    From joe to vim in under 2 weeks and it was the most comfortable of the
three options.  The sad part is that I had been using Wordstar-esque
keymappings for the ~14 years prior to the switch.  One would think that going
from Wordstar to Emacs would be the far easier switch.  It was not.

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
    To email: Don't despair!   |  -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
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