For a very long time I had been scouring the Internets for a perfect text editor. I almost got there with gEdit and then again with TextMate, but they both had some flaws that annoyed me and impacted my productivity. One recent day, though, I stumbled upon a classic text editor that I never would’ve suspected to be so powerful.
Emacs.
This thing is even better than TextMate (yeah, really). Who would’ve thought that going back to one of the classic non-GUI editors could be such a pleasant experience? After downloading Carbon Emacs for my Mac and XEmacs for my Ubuntu PC, I was already prepared to start.
Emacs was very awkward at first; I suppose that’s why so many people stay away from it and keep with the friendly GUI editors. But after learning some quick keyboard shortcuts and getting settled in, I felt like I was coding more productively than ever before. With Emacs there is no need whatsoever to use your mouse. It’s extremely customizable and extensible, allowing for easy installation of many different sorts of things.
YASnippet, for example. I felt like I had the power of TextMate’s snippet feature when I installed this. It really impacts how you work and has some features that even the big TM is missing.
And Magit – this is a must for anyone who works with Git. When combined with EShell, all work can be done inside Emacs now – there is no reason to have to go back into a terminal. When coding with Rails I can launch the server from inside Emacs, or revert to an earlier commit.
Emacs is also cross-platform, and that really impacted me. I can get more than the power of TextMate, now, on Ubuntu and Windows for no price whatsoever. I can synchronize all of my customizations between computers and retain a seamless experience. Whatever your work environment, Emacs will be able to adapt to it. I recommend to try it, if you haven’t already. Give it more than a few days to surprise you. Start a project using it. Become accustomed to Emacs, and you will love it.
Photo by snogglethorpe.
Couldn’t agree more!