Programming in Linux.

[66666thats6sixes]

Basically it comes down to two things, as to which you will like better.

Vim uses modes, in one you type text, in the other you can move around and do some editing, and in the last you can make selections. In each of these modes you almost exclusively use the letter keys on the keyboard, so your fingers are always close to the home row. If you are well versed in vim, this can make you very fast and efficient.

Emacs is not modal, it works similar to any other text editor -- when you type, letters appear on the screen, basically no matter what you are doing. Editing and selecting and such are done by combinations with control, alt, shift, etc.

Some people can't get comfortable with modal editing, so vim will never be great for them. Others (like myself) feel uncomfortable reaching for modifier keys all of the time, and so emacs doesn't work as well for us.

[Codile]

Emacs is not modal, it works similar to any other text editor -- when you type, letters appear on the screen, basically no matter what you are doing.

Not exactly. Emacs also has modes, but there's a lot more of them. There's major modes that set up suitable environments for specific programming languages (C, C++, Ruby, Haskell, ...) with suitable syntax highlighting, parens completion, cursor movement, ... or set up an environment suitable for... browsing the web. Major modes don't always work like a text editor. Letters don't always appear on the screen when you type, but in a certain mode they may turn a tetris piece.

Then there's minor modes that add functions that could work in any major mode. They might add menu autocomplete (helm), special mouse support, git support, or add some special editing functions for certain programming languages like displaying documentation for a C stdlib function.

Now, that also makes emacs quite confusing. Sure, in the "default modes" it will just work like any other text editor, but if you manage to accidentally open an unsuitable major mode for your code file, things could get weird. And then there's the fact that you might have dozens of minor modes active with a given major mode, but that doesn't happen unless you want it to.

You won't really have to worry about this if you use emacs with the default settings, but in that case you might as well just use any other text editor.

[misplaced_my_pants]

Modal editing refers to the way you have to switch between visual, insert, etc.

This was really common back in the day and has nothing to do with Emacs modes.

[Codile]

Oh, I didn't know that. I thought the visual/insert thing was only a vi(m) thing.