[Tutor] Tabbing with vi (vim) and Python

[Erik Price]

Scot Stevenson wrote:

> Manditory comment on the Vi-Emacs-War: If you are a touch-typist, go with vi, 
> nothing is better: You will only have to learn one editor your whole life, 
> and with a bit of practice, you'll slaughter everybody else on speed. If you 
> hunt-and-peck with two fingers, you're might just possibly be better off with 
> Emacs - I think somebody is working on a Emacs that uses Python as a 
> scripting language instead of Lisp.

Quick comment on your comment -- I am a touch typist and prefer Emacs 
(simply because that is what I am most used to, not out of any 
perception that it is better or worse than vi).  The biggest advantage 
I've discovered to having gotten used to Emacs' navigational keybindings 
(the ones that move the cursor around like an arrow key would, except 
they are not arrow keys, and the "kill to end of line", "jump to end of 
line", "jump to beginning of line" and "kill next character") is that 
they all work in Cocoa applications.  If you are a Win/Linux/BSD-only 
person, then this totally doesn't apply to you, but if you are a Mac 
user, you can reap the benefits of these power keys.

They have become so ingrained in my typing that it is significantly 
debilitating to come to work and use my Win32 machine and not have 
instant access to these handy shortcuts.


Erik

PS: more editors and IDEs will support emacs-style nav keybindings than 
vi-style nav keybindings, I've discovered (because vi's are modal). 
Conversely, you are more likely to find vi than emacs on unix machines 
that are not amped out with software, so it's good to know a little of 
that at least.