Re: [MLUG] web development tools

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Michael wrote:

> > I'd be very surprised if using emacs doesn't pay off in the long run.  It 
> > may be harder to get started with emacs than with nano, but it emacs has a 
> > lot more to offer.  Much of the basic functionality is similar (i.e., nano 
> > uses many emacs keystrokes).
>
> Functionality in the editor is the enemy when coding. It adds bloat and 
> slows you down as you make quick, to the point, edits and move on.

Emacs can take about 1-2 seconds to start on a slow machine with a big 
configuration file, but it doesn't take longer on a modern computer.  You 
can run it with macros for HTML editing that definitely speed things up. 
I cannot believe that emacs is slower than nano once it is running.  Do 
you have a way of demonstrating that?  Slower at what?


> It's very rare when code would be long enough, especially in a single 
> file, to need anything fancy.

It isn't the length of the code that matters.  If there are certain kinds 
of tags that you add often, you can use a macro to speed that up.  It 
definitely helps.


> I literally have no use whatsoever for fancy features. A simple text 
> editor and normal Unix commands (w/ rpl added to let me easily replace 
> text) gives me everything I need. As powerful as Emacs is, it still 
> isn't as powerful or flexible as Unix itself and anyway I seldom need 
> much power.

Does nano do interactive regular expression search and replace?  Emacs 
does that.  That would be one example of a feature that I find useful.

Of course, text editing is done on all sorts of files, not just for web 
applications.  Emacs is a very powerful editor for many kinds of uses. 
All I am saying is that it is good to learn emacs.

When I teach students to use UNIX/Linux, I start them with Nano because it 
is so easy to use.  I tell them that emacs exists and that they should 
plan to learn to use it if they are going to continue working in a 
UNIX/Linux environment.

Mike

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