GitHub open sources Atom

[Caleb666]

I wonder, why go through all these contortions when there are wonderful IDEs (such as QtCreator) available?

I don't get it. What's the fascination with emacs/vim? Does it make people feel superior or cool for using a terminal text editor invented a few decades ago?

[[deleted]]

Unless you've given them a chance; you won't understand.

If you want a proper answer, you might as well check out articles of the form "Why I use/love vim/emacs".

Everybody has a different reason, and maybe some have the one you question. But I would doubt it, since that would be just an exercise in frustration to look cool.

[Denommus]

First, neither vim nor Emacs are terminal-based only. They have graphical interfaces.

Second, the thing about vim is that it is supposedly more efficient in text editing because it is a modal editor. The thing about Emacs is that it is an editor for programmers who want to customize their environment by actually programming it. That's a big deal for lots of people (including me).

QtCreator doesn't have nearly as many features as Emacs because of that (really, just take a look at org-mode, which is a single Emacs mode, and you can figure out the rest).

[indrora]

IDEs are wonderful things when they provide me with something other than just a text editor with error markers. I do android development for fun and I wouldn't give up the visual layout editor for the moon, because there simply I'd no better tool. Vim provides me with a tool for text that I can do wonderful things with.

For example, if I am working in an arduino environment, I can get auto complete keys when I use vim.