Re: How big is the "niche" of Emacs users?

[jadamson@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson)]

Bastien <bzg@altern.org> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I recently received an e-mail from a friend (no matter what was the
> discussion about) saying that he wanted his views to reach a lot of
> users, not only the "niche" of Emacs users.

My story: I'm one of two people that I know use Emacs, the other one
uses XEmacs.  I don't know many Unix users other than myself, however
the one really devoted one uses vi; he's been using Unix almost
exclusively since middle school (he and I are the same age, so around
1993).  Since he's a mathematician, uses LaTeX, and programs in CAML,
I entirely expected him to use Emacs, but I was wrong.

My favorite "Linux encounter" was at a holiday party I met a sysadmin
from MIT; first he gasped when I said that I love Slackware, then we
started talking about email clients and I said that use Emacs to read
my mail.  His reaction: "Oh, you're one of those."  He used vi vi vi.

This poll from last year shows vi by a large margin; Emacs is actually
third behind
Kate. <http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2006-linuxquestions.org-members-choice-awards-76/text-editor-of-the-year-514955/>

Of course, I must add that I'm always surprised by how much software
caters to Emacs; I had only thought about using Emacs when I saw on
the R FAQ "Should I run R in Emacs?"  I thought "You can do that?  I
should give Emacs another look..."  I'm currently designing some
software to interact through Emacs.  I love it and I think a lot of
other people would if they knew about it.

Joel
http://trashbird1240.blogspot.com
-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA  02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109