Why don't you use Vim?

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I used (neo)vim for the longest time, but recently migrated to emacs due to a couple of reasons: 1. Graphical interface, which can render latex and images. 2. org-mode 3. Uniform computing experience -- I can basically use a single software, with uniform UI, keybindings, etc for almost any task. I still occasionally use vim, but less and less so.

I use it occasionally on servers, so I know just enough to edit config files and whatnot. I don't use it for my own purposes because there's no need, Emacs suits me perfectly.

Because emacs has evil mode ;)

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I was about to say "Who says I'm not", because I quite often use it for small edits in files that I'm familiar with or in environments where emacs is not available and I don't feel like using tramp. But as soon as it's more than just adding something to /etc/hosts or something simimarly mundane, I switch to emacs.

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Bold of you to assume I don't.

> Why don't you use Vim? Why should I? Used it for a couple of years, being misinformed that "vim is cool and true", switched to Emacs, never looked back ever since.

I don't like Vim's keybindings.

Switched to Emacs after many years using Vim. Biggest factors: Lisp experience and programmability. In Emacs Elisp is everywhere, and you can inspect and re-evaluate/adapt anything on the fly. For example, type the name of a function in scratch, say `left-char`, and hit `M-.` with the cursor over it. You see its definition, can copy and adapt it for your own functions, or simply change and re-evaluate it. I don't know any other Editor/IDE that is so programmable like this, except other Lisp IDE's (Lispworks, edwin) or Smalltalk IDE's.

I do! I even still use ed and ex occasionally out of narcism and to terrify students. Quick edit on a server of something I just need to tweak and Vim is my goto. Or I use Emacs (with evil so I’m never truly out of Vim). My reasons for using emacs are that with evil it is the best vim out there and that Org-mode and AucTeX and Slime are miles ahead of the alternatives. If emacs didn’t support Vim bindings it’d be much harder (I remember using Viper mode and it wasn’t much fun if you knew the advanced vim-tricks so I’d be more in vim); but nowadays? Yeah emacs works great.

Vim the program: because it's supposed to be extensible and yet remains limited. Vi the program: because it's supposed to be limited. I use emacs because it is a better vim than Vim itself. I think neovim is pretty cool and it has the potential to have greater potential than emacs. But right now, emacs has more potential _and_ more actuality. Thus, Emacs is the last best environment you'll ever need. Within a week of switching to emacs, I had my entire neovim setup seamlessly replaced. All the plugins for vim that are any good, have been ported to emacs. And there are many emacs plugins that are impossible to port to neovim. Namely, those that utilize emacs' graphical capabilities. Lisp is more code for smaller things, but the learning curve is much more forgiving. If you've ever tried to write a vimscript plugin with functions and UI you'll know what I mean. Instead, I find myself _wanting_ to write more elisp, writing helper functions willy-nilly, binding them to keys, hooking into background processes-- Once you know the syntax of lisp (which is about as simple as anything could be), all these things are equal.

One reason is ease of customization. Because Vim is only a text editor, Vim users combine it with many external TUI/GUI tools. It is hard (or impossible) to customize those tools to provide a consistent user experience (e.g. keybindings) and it is troublesome to maintain their configuration files to make it work across different platforms. Emacs is like a monad that provides a cross-platform work environment.

This has been removed, as it feels much more like trolling than an honest inquiry.