 I am a very passionate Vim user and if you've watched this channel for any amount of time you know that to be the truth. I really like Vim and I have tried many other text editors over the course of the last few years and I've always come crawling back to Vim because Vim is just the best text editor for me. And I've talked about this many times on the channel before why I think Vim is great, why it's the best text editor for me, why I've spent so much time learning Vim and I've also talked about some of the downsides of Vim too. I'm not a rose-colored glasses kind of guy. I can easily see the flaws in all the things that I use and point them out and make videos about them. So I'm not the kind of guy who was like, rah rah, everything is great about this thing that I use and there's no bad things about it. That's just not the way I am. There is one program that is somewhat similar to Vim that gets a lot of talk in my comment sections and that is Emacs. Now, I have tried Emacs many times over the course of the last two years, probably five times actually and these aren't like, I only tried them for like five minutes and said screw this. I mean, I've tried them in significant portions of time. So at one point I used it for a whole month and I think I've actually done that a couple times and I've even gone so far as the last Emacs video I made saying that I'm never going to use Emacs again. This is my last Emacs video. I've said that before. Now, it turns out that that last video where I said that I was never going to make an Emacs video again. Yeah, that's kind of a lie. I did make an Emacs video again. I'm going to make one today. So today, what I'm going to do is talk about five reasons why you should use Emacs and this is coming from a perspective of a guy who doesn't use Emacs and then I'm going to give you one reason why you shouldn't. So balance that out however you will and we'll just go ahead and jump in. So number five, we're actually going to count these things down is that Emacs is primarily a GUI application. So you're going to run this in an application that has capabilities that them does not. And the biggest one is going to be variable font sizes. And that means you can do things like have it so that your markdown actually shows what markdown looks like. So you'll have big headers and links that will look like links and images and things like that. All that stuff is possible inside of Emacs. It's not possible inside of regular VIM or even Neo VIM. So with Emacs being a GUI application or primarily a GUI application, you can do things inside of it that you can't really do inside of them. So that is number five on the list. It's very simple and it does apply to a lot of people because markdown is one of the primary reasons why I would ever use Emacs. And I know a lot of people are like that too. And there are other applications for variable font sizes than just markdown. Of course, number four on the list is that if you use something like do me max and it seems to be fairly popular, it comes out of the box very close to what you would get with an ID. It has very good language support for things like C C plus plus Python Lisp, obviously, Lua, things like that. So if you are a developer and you want to have a IDE experience, Emacs does a better job of that out of the box than VIM does. It's not even really all that close. And that is especially true if you're using something like do me max, which has a lot of stuff enabled that vanilla Emacs doesn't. And obviously it has way more stuff built in to help you program than VIM does. Now, it doesn't mean you can't do all the same stuff inside of VIM when it comes to having language support and having linters and things like that. All that stuff is 100 percent possible in VIM, but you have to build it in with plugins or whatever. It doesn't come out of the box. So number three on the list is that it has great buffer management. Now, VIM also does a good job with managing buffers. So first, let's just explain. A buffer is simply an open document of some kind, whether it's a configuration file or it's a, you know, a project file, whatever. And for a buffer to be a buffer, it has to be part of the same same session. So with VIM, it's very easy to open up a new buffer in a new tab. Or even if you don't use a new tab, it's just open and you can switch between the buffers. You know, you can very easily manage your buffers inside of them. And there are obviously a lot of plugins that help you with this as well. If you want to have more discreet and obvious control over your buffer situation in VIM. In Emacs, all that stuff is built in. You can very easily switch between buffers. You can do tabs if you want to use tabs. You can manage your buffers outside of the buffer that you're in. So if you want to kill a random buffer down the line, you could do so very easily with a key binding. Buffer management is just really good in Emacs, and it has been for a very long time. Now, obviously, in order to do all that stuff, you have to learn the key bindings, but I can't really doc Emacs points simply because it has a lot of key bindings to learn because VIM is the same way. You have to learn a certain amount of key bindings in both Emacs and VIM in order to be comfortable at all, and it's just kind of the way things go. Number two on the list is also one that kind of applies to both VIM and Emacs. But I think Emacs does it better in a lot of ways. So and that is that Emacs is very keyboard-centric. Now, I know what you VIM guys are saying, VIM is also very keyboard-centric. So they're both very much like this. But where Emacs wins, and this is just my opinion, is that it wins in support for key cords. So both of them support key cords, but out of the box, Emacs just does it better. It has a lot of them pre-configured. It has the ability to have a lot of key bindings associated with other key bindings. And you get to learn different combinations, and they're all kind of pre-setup for you, especially if you're going to, again, use something like Doom Emacs. A lot of the bindings that you'll learn are key cords. Vinyl Emacs also has a lot of key cords in it, as well, obviously. So if you like to have very minute control over how your text editor slash ID slash whatever works, key cords will allow you to do that much more effectively and efficiently than you would without them. Now, like I said, VIM does support key cords out of the box, but most of the key bindings that you'll find in VIM are just simple key bindings. There are some key cords set up out of the box, but for the most part, you'll just find regular key bindings and setting them up in Emacs through configuration. I don't know why it feels this way to me, but it's just a little bit easier inside of Emacs than it is in VIM. So I enjoy the key cord situation on Emacs better than I do in VIM. It's pretty close, but it's still I prefer on the Emacs side. Now, the number one reason why you should use Emacs instead of VIM is org mode. Now, this is something that I've not tried all that much. And a lot of my awe and interest in org mode is based on the reputation that it has from other YouTubers and other Emacs users. Org mode basically allows you to do anything that you want to do. It can help you build a website. It can help you organize your configuration files. It will help you if you write a lot of like a novel or something like that. If you write markdown regularly, it does a ton of stuff and allows you to, as the name implies, organize the files that you play around in. It does a very good. It's kind of like VIM Wiki on the VIM side, although it's much more powerful than VIM Wiki. Basically, what it allows you to do on the base level, at least I'm sure it does a lot more, but it allows you to create a hierarchy of links to inside of your document, outside of your document. And it just kind of organizes everything inside of a document or a file. And that means that you can do any number of things. It also has things like code blocks and the ability to compile from an org mode. So if you were to, say, create a program or a website or whatever, you could translate all of your organized document, which is basically just like a markdown document into an HTML document very easily. So org mode is very, very powerful. And I'm sure I'm not doing a very good job of explaining why it's so good. But there are tons of tutorials and stuff like that on the YouTube, on the internet elsewhere, explaining the power and joy of org mode. And it's just not really anything that VIM can compete with without doing a ton of extra work. OK, so those are the five reasons why you should try Emacs. There are probably several other ones out there that I didn't mention. Some of the things that I've read about Emacs will say that it's faster than them. I don't know that that's actually true or not. I haven't really seen a big speed difference. Some things that I've read say that Emacs is more customizable than them. I'm not sure that that's even true, simply because both have very robust plug-in systems. And you can basically do anything with a plug-in on either side. Now, obviously, you have the ability to do things in a GUI that you don't in a terminal. So, you know, Emacs does have that advantage, but still both are very customizable. So I don't think one wins over another there. So there are other things that I could have added to this list, but I chose these five. So let's move on to the last part of the video. The one reason why I don't think you should use Emacs. And this is one that I've talked about before, so this is not going to come as a surprise to anybody. But the one reason why you should not use Emacs is that it's bloated. Now, hold on, Emacs, guys. I know that that's not the right term, because Emacs isn't technically bloated. It's a Elisp interpreter. That's what it does. That's really all it does. And then the people who have developed Emacs have built stuff on top of it. That's what they've done. And Emacs is a suite of the stuff that has been built on top of this interpreter. That's the way it is, right? It's kind of, it's not a perfect metaphor, but it's kind of like system D. System D is a collection of stuff. Emacs is also a collection of stuff. You can kind of compare those two things, but that's beside the point. Really the better way to put this, other than the whole bloat argument, is that Emacs comes with a lot of stuff. And if all you're looking for is a text editor, if that's really all you're truly looking for, then Emacs is going to be way more than you'll ever need. It has a ton of extra development stuff in there that you're never going to probably need. And it has a ton of plugins and stuff like that that are available to you that you'll never need. It has games in there that you'll never need. It has an email client. It has a torrent client, stuff like that. Now, obviously a lot of that stuff you have to turn on, but it's there, right? And it has capabilities far beyond just a text editor. So when it comes to if you are just a person looking for a text editor, Emacs may be a little bit heavy for you. And it also might have a learning curve that is more intensive than what you're looking for. So Emacs may not be for you if all you're looking for is a text editor. Now, if I'm being objective here, Vim has some of the same complaints. Now, I am 100% on the side of saying that Vim out of the box is way less encumbered with features than Emacs is. If all you're using is regular Vim out of the box with no plugins, it doesn't have all the frills and development stuff that Emacs has out of the box. It just doesn't. So if you're looking for something that is more minimal right out of the box, Vim is there. But a lot of the things that I can plan about Emacs with, the email client and the torrent client and all this stuff, a lot of that stuff has to be enabled, right? So you can consider them plugins. They're basically plugins. And while they're not exactly the same thing as a Vim plugin, Vim also has those things that you can enable. Now, I don't think that there's an email client in Vim. I don't think that there's a torrent client in Vim, but it has a similar ecosystem of stuff that you could add on to it. So in theory, you could compare them and say that they both have the equal chance to have extra stuff on top of them that you don't really need. And I suppose that that is an okay argument. I would probably argue that because Vim is more simple out of the box in terms of not having extra features, it probably wins the crown of being better for new users. But I'm super biased there because I like Vim. The real argument for this, if you're just a simple person looking for a simple text editor, neither of these two is probably your better option. You'll probably want to go with something like Micro or something like Nano. Both of those are very, very simple text editors that don't have all the cruft that both Emacs and Vim have along with them, even just out of the box. Now, neither one of them is as extensible as Vim or Emacs. So if you're looking to do some more development work, Micro and Nano may not be your best choice, but they are really good choices if all you're looking for is a text editor. And I know that I make fun of people who use Nano. That's just me trying to be funny, not succeeding at being funny. Nano is a perfectly fine text editor and if that's all you need, Nano is a good option. Also Micro is a more advanced version of Nano. So if you're looking for something that's a little bit more than Nano, but less than Vim or Emacs, Micro might be a good option for you as well. So those are the reasons on both sides. And the question then comes down to Matt, are you switching to Emacs again? To answer that it's no, I'm not switching to Emacs again. I just, Emacs is like a pretty girl. Now, this is a really weird metaphor. I'm sorry about this, but it's a pretty girl that you know is really unattainable, right? Like you know that you're never gonna be with that girl, but you wanna be. Like Emacs is very attractive, mostly because of org mode. Org mode has such a reputation around it as being so amazing that you wanna go use it. But then you realize she's also really high maintenance. She needs a six figure income from her man in order to be happy with the lifestyle that she wants to lead. So yeah, she's unattainable for me. That's the reason why I don't choose Emacs. That is either it's either the best metaphor I've ever come up with or the worst. I'm not sure which one. You let me know in the comments section. I'd love to hear from you. I know that this is going to be a very interesting comment section. So you Emacs guys and you VIM guys have at it in the comment section below. I'd love to hear from you. You guys can follow me on Mastodon or Odyssey if you want to challenge me to a duel over Emacs or VIM. You can probably better do that on Mastodon. So head on over there and follow me. 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