Emacs is a better IDE than vim, but vim is a better editor than emacs.

Emacs is far easier to script and plays nicer with other programs so there are more, more useful extensions for working in various languages. On the other hand, I find vim's modal interface faster and easier on my hands than emac's chording interface. viper-mode in emacs might be ideal.

as a textmate to vim to emacs user, I'd say that vim is to textmate as emacs is to vim. Vim is awesome, but it's still just an editor. Emacs is an operating system that's built around editing text. You start with a powerful editing paradigm and then apply it to pretty much anything you need to do as a programmer...it's about the best editing experience I've ever had. My shell, source control, organiser, messaging, documentation, directory browsing, irc, document viewing etc is all done from within my text editor with all the awesome editing capability that 23 versions brings with it...also you can run vim from within emacs...

Vim uses a similar paradigm of leveraging an operating system for editing. But it leverages Unix instead of coming up with its own half-baked OS.

(Disclaimer: I do use Emacs, mostly.)

Exactly. Emacs didn't start on Unix IIRC and seems to prefer to have everything built in. vi was created by Bill Joy on Unix and wanted to work with the rich language of shell commands from the start, as ed(1) did, so it concentrated on editing text well and integrating with Unix well. To see some Emacs users you wonder why they're even bothering to run on Unix. ;-)

Emacs has VIPER mode, which uses the Vim keybindings in Emacs.

Haven't tried learning the keybindings yet myself, and I've heard VIPER isn't the complete Vim.

If you want something closer to Vim keybindings in Emacs, try vimpulse:

http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/vimpulse

> Emacs is an operating system that's built around editing text.

It amuses me that people actually think that's just a joke.

it's a joke because it's almost true.

Avid emacs user here.

Ergonomics. There's an emacs key chord for everything, but many of them involve two or three modifier keys.

i.e. search and replace is Alt+Shift+5, indent block is Ctrl+Alt+\

These require some finger contortions. I haven't used vim, but the impression I get is that similar commands in vim are all closer to home row so you don't have to contort your hands as much.

Yup. I'm an avid vim user, but I tried emacs for a few weeks, and my hands were always sore.

search & replace is % indent is > (auto-indent is =)

Emacs seems really neat, and I'd like to try out some other editors, but none of them compare to the ease of vim's modal style.

I use emacs for most of my text editing. I hate using vim because I find all the mode switching to be really annoying. I like how keys always mean one thing in emacs, even if it results in the occasional bit of emacs pinky.

You can always re-map. I use Tab for indent-region, instead of bothering with indent-block.