Editor war

The editor war is an ongoing debate about which text editor is best. The two largest camps are those favoring vi and those favoring Emacs.

Related Topics:
Text editor - Vi - Emacs

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The hacker community has a tradition of treating their favored piece of software with a reverence bordering on religious fanaticism, and few pieces of software are more universal than text editors. Many flame wars have been fought between groups insisting that their editor of choice is the paragon of editing perfection, and insulting the others. Most participants in these arguments recognize that it is (mostly) tongue-in-cheek. There are related wars over operating systems and programming languages, all the way down to such 'trivial' things as source code indent style.

Related Topics:
Hacker community - Flame war - Operating systems - Programming language - Indent style

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Editor wars are usually fought between the devotees of Emacs and vi, the two most popular editors on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Most *nix users and programmers use one or the other of these editors. Many are familiar with both, at least enough to get around, and so feel they are well-placed to make judgment calls as to which is "better".

Related Topics:
Unix - *nix

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Frequently at some point in the discussion, someone will point out that ed is the standard text editor.

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The Church of Emacs formed by Richard Stallman is a joke, and while it refers to vi vi vi (which is 666 in roman numerals) as the "editor of the beast", it does not oppose the use of vi; rather, it calls proprietary software anathema. ("Using a free software version of vi is not a sin, it is a penance.") It has its own newsgroup, alt.religion.emacs. Stallman has jokingly declared himself to be St IGNUcius, a Saint in the Church of Emacs.

Related Topics:
Richard Stallman - Proprietary software - Free software - Newsgroup

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vi lovers have created an opposing Cult of vi, which some Emacs users call, "Clearly a miserable attempt to ape their betters."

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