Emacs Users: I'm Okay, I Promise
I wanted to put a few comments down about what people should understand about my switching from Emacs to Vim. I often get into arguments with people online about this issue. Most recently this came up when I discussed my Vim set-up for developing Common Lisp. I thought that putting something down in my blog might help me settle my opinion for others to read in full so that I can save time by giving them the link to this article next time.
I learned Vim on my own as a child. When my Dad told me he used it in college, I wanted to learn what he knew. I used it up until about 2012, 3 years or so into my professional computing career.
A lot of my friends knew Emacs, so I decided to learn it. I learned it. I was very fast in it. I did a lot of good in it. Magit, eshell, SLIME, Org Mode, the whole nine yards. Then and around 2015 I started to get repetitive strain injury (despite having remapped the capslock key). It took me years to fix the injury, using stretches I found online and ditching my mechanical keyboard in favor of rubber top keys. I found however that no matter how hard I tried to go back, I had to ditch Emacs if my injuries were to improve. I already knew Vim, so it was mostly easy to go back. I did have to reorient some of my tools; I missed org mode the most. Later on, I did get my workflow back up to scratch with markdown using some interesting keybindings.
At this point in the story Emacs users come out of the woodwork to suggest things that could help me come back to Emacs. Remapping capslock key (I already did), don't forget right-control (trying), use Evil (eh, I already know vim pretty well). They assume that I am "not okay", that I would be so much happier if I could go back. They believe that Emacs is better than Vim.
