The power of vim

I've been using vimprobable and vimium for a while now, and the vim UI has gotten to me a bit. At least for web browsing, the keyboard shortcuts rock. Especially on dvorak, as the j and k keys are actually in a logical position for their functions, as are the h and l keys.

Being an inveterate emacs-lover, this disturbed me. So I pacman'd vim and tried it out for the first time in years.

I now understand the real reason people use vim: the annoyance of switching modes.

Emacs is powerful because you can do anything you want in it. Anything. This naturally imposes a steep learning curve that guarantees you'll pick up emacsfu in order to get anything done.

Vim is powerful because it beeps like the Roadrunner being sodomized, any time you try to inefficiently use Insert mode. You will learn the esoteric arts of text-manipulation commands simply to prevent this unholy shrieking. The less beeps you hear, the more efficiently you're taking advantage of it.

This gave me an idea for an Editor Alike Tutorial. Simple: construct a plain text document whose editing and manipulation takes advantage of no special features of either Emacs or Vim. Then, open up a contest to see which wins.