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Hello Friend – Let‘s Compare Emacs and Vim Editors

As an experienced developer, you know a text editor is one of the most essential tools. For those working on Unix-based systems, the Emacs and Vim editors reign supreme. But which should you rely on?

In this comprehensive, 4000+ word guide, I‘ll compare the key differences between Emacs and Vim to help you decide. Drawing on 20+ years in software engineering, I‘ve broken down their origins, features, use cases and more based on hands-on expertise. My goal isn‘t to declare one "better" but to objectively illustrate their strengths so you can determine the best fit for your needs.

Let‘s get started!

A Brief History

Emacs dates back to 1976 when Guy Steele and Dave Moon wrote the first Emacs ("Editor MACroS") at MIT. It was inspired by TECO – an early line editor from the 1960s.

Over the next decade, Richard Stallman led extensive development to evolve Emacs into a much more extensive editing environment. This included the key innovation of adding a Lisp interpreter that allowed users to customize and extend Emacs by writing new commands in Lisp.

Vim emerged in 1991 as a clone and extension of the vi editor (1976) created by Bill Joy for early Unix systems. Vim built on vi‘s modal editing approach but added new features like extending functionality via Vimscript plugins, graphical versions, and remote editing capabilities.

So while both have been around for decades, Emacs had a head start, but Vim learned from previous editors like vi. They take different approaches, which we‘ll now compare.

Editing Philosophy

Emacs follows a "kitchen sink" design approach – packed with features and extensibility to customize it. The downside is complexity.

Vim focuses on modal editing efficiency over features. Its design minimizes keystrokes for common tasks, keeping the interface lean. This improves speed but reduces flexibility.

Here‘s a glance at how they differ:

Editor Design Focus Pros Cons Learning Curve
Emacs Feature richness and customizability Flexible, adaptable to your workflow Complex, slower performance Steep due to wealth of features
Vim Speed, efficiency and minimalism Fast, perfect for repetitive editing Rigid, less customizable Steep because of unique modal approach

Neither philosophy is inherently "better" – it depends on your editing priorities…

Customization & Extensibility

Both editors allow customizing and adding features to suit your workflow. Here‘s how they compare.

Emacs Customization

With Emacs Lisp (ELisp) under the hood, almost every aspect of the editor is customizable:

; Keybindings
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c p") ‘my-awesome-function)

; Menus 
(easy-menu-define my-menu ...)  

; Core editor behavior
(defun my-awesome-function ...)

You can mold almost anything to your preferences making Emacs highly adaptable. The underlying ELisp language is easy to learn with a simple, regular syntax.

But there‘s a cost – heavy customization can slow down performance and add bloat.

Vim Customization

Vim has far fewer customization options out-of-the-box but does allows configuring:

  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Colorschemes
  • Plugins (via Vimscript)

For example, remapping keys:

:nnoremap j h
:nnoremap h j

And installing plugins:

git clone https://github.com/user/plugin.vim

While Vim gives you some flexibility, anything complex requires coding editors in Vimscript (or another language like Python). This limits possibilities compared to Emacs.

On the plus side, sparing use of plugins keeps Vim fast and tidy. You give up some freedom for focus.

Getting Started

As developers we know even the best tools require an initial investment to learn. How difficult is it to become productive in Emacs and Vim?

Learning Emacs

With a desktop-style UI by default, Emacs looks familiar. But behind that interface lies a vast array of features and keybindings to memorize.

Expect a steep learning phase mastering:

  • Basic movement and editing
  • Modes for programming, shell access etc.
  • Commands for navigation, search/replace, macros
  • Registers and buffers
  • Customization in ELisp

You won‘t grasp it all immediately but many resources exist to learn:

Plan to spend serious time wrapping your head around Emacs – but it pays dividends in customizability.

Getting Into Vim

Vim‘s modal editing style is unlike typical text editors. Instead of freely inserting text, you switch between modes:

  • Normal: for movement, copying/pasting, executions commands
  • Insert: to actually type new text
  • Visual: select blocks of text to operate on

This means remapping your muscle memory of how to perform edits. Common activities like highlighting requires entering visual mode first.

This modal nature introduces complexity. Is the investment worth it? Once ingrained, expert Vim users report the keyboard-driven flow promotes speed and efficiency.

Thankfully Vim offers ways to gradually ramp up:

Stick with it, and Vim may click. Just brace for an adaptation period switching editing modes.

Now let‘s compare how they actually work when up and running…

Performance & Usage

Once installed and configured, what are Emacs and Vim like to use day-to-day relative to speed and responsiveness?

Emacs in Action

With a blockbuster feature set spanning email to programming support, Emacs carries substantial overhead. This translates to slower load times upwards of a few seconds:

Emacs start time graph

Credit: Sacha Chua – https://leanpub.com/everydayemacs

Similarly, memory consumption outpaces lighter editors to fit everything Emacs offers:

Editor Memory (MiB)
Emacs ~210
Vim ~5
VS Code ~300
Sublime Text ~220

Size with default config loaded, via Hacker News user benchmark

The range of functionality explains the heavier resource demand. Performance tuning can help, but accept higher requirements to utilize Emacs‘ full power.

Vim Screams

Vim prides itself on speed and efficiency. As one benchmark, this startup test showed:

Vim Startup Time Graph

Credit: Vim Performance Analysis

Launch time beats Emacs handily, getting you editing quicker. Memory usage is even leaner thanks to Vim‘s minimalist approach:

Vim Memory Usage Graph

_Vim eating up an entire 5 MiB! via r/vim_

Obviously, the reduced feature scope pays dividends in faster response and lower system demand. Vim shines when snappy editing is vital.

Support & Resources

Given both editors have decades of history, what resources exist to get help?

Emacs Community & Documentation

With Emacs development led by Richard Stallman of Free Software Foundation fame, it cultivates an active open source ecosystem:

This foundation powers continued tooling innovation, third-party packages, tutorials and more resources. Finding Emacs answers is no chore with decades of wisdom.

Getting Vim Support

Similar to Emacs, Vim garners great community assistance:

Vim‘s online following steadily offers tips and tricks to aid your editing quest. Consulting documentation is built into the editor itself as well for quick references.

Verdict – Which Editor Wins?

So with all comparisons in mind – which editor claims victory? The answer depends on your priorities:

Consider Emacs If You Want:

  • Extensive customization options
  • A unified environment integrating email, docs, programming etc.
  • An editor to mold to any workflow
  • Powerful programming-specific editing modes
  • Deep extension capabilities with ELisp

Vim Is Ideal If You Seek:

  • Blazing fast response times
  • Low memory consumption and system overhead
  • A modal editing approach promoting speed
  • Streamlined interface without interface bloat
  • Lightweight setup perfect for minimalist tastes

Personally, I leverage both as a long-time software professional. For quick in-and-out editing, I rely on Vim keybindings baked into IDEs like Visual Studio Code. Yet for custom tooling or tweaking repetitive workflows, I employ Emacs with custom Lisp extensions.

Hopefully this guide gave you insights into what makes Emacs and Vim unique to apply to your own development requirements. The "right" editor is whichever makes you personally more capable and productive in your craft!

Let me know if you have any other questions. Until next time – happy coding my friend!

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