For many years I have been an emacs editor user and have scoffed (loudly, with spittle) in the general direction of vi users. Well this weekend whilst on call I took the opportunity to learn the vim editor. ‘vi’ was my first unix editor (as it is for most people) and I’m now in a position to appreciate vim’s elegance and approach. It’s not emacs, but it’s not a hunk of junk.

In the unix / linux world ( and thus, by extension the Mac OS X universe as well ) there is much to-do made about the choice of text editors. Why Does It Matter Much of the configuration of these various systems is centered around the generation / manipulation of text-based configuration files. For example, if you’re on windows and you want to change your timezone you must go to Start Button / Control Panel / Time and Date / Timezone. On Unix / Linux / Mac OSX you simply edit a text file, change the word from PST to CDT ( or what have you ) save the file and you’re done.