Re: Emacs's popularity

[Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com>]

"Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi> wrote:
>> But Vim is not only installed; it's really used a lot. In Debian Vim has
>> always been a bit more popular than Emacs but in the first half of 2007
>> Vim really got popular (around Vim 7.1 and Debian 4.0 release). This
>> "used actively" graph compares vim-common, emacs21-bin-common and
>> emacs22-bin-common packages:
>>
>>    http://preview.tinyurl.com/5thmmx
>
> That is a bit strange since the vi emulator Viper in Emacs is now so good.
>

Not strange at all Lennart, Why would someone run the Emacs OS to run
emulated vim  when they can run the real thing in 100th of the
footprint?

The big problem is simply that Emacs is far less approachable than
Vim. No matter what people say, I know from personal experience that
people balk at the Tutorial which still emphasises center keys as
opposed to arrows keys. It might appear minor to the seasoned emacs user
but its not to the average new adopter who is used to standard Windows
type CUA editors. I consider myself a pretty decent Emacs user now and I
use the arrow keys ... 

In addition, and importantly, the type which stick with Emacs and know
how it works are far less likely to by flag waving fan boys - something
Vi/m has always had an abundance of....


-- 
 important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.  ~Dennis Gabor, Innovations:  Scientific, Technological and Social, 1970