{"id":903,"date":"2013-11-22T23:26:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T05:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alandmoore.com\/blog\/?p=903"},"modified":"2013-11-23T11:07:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T17:07:59","slug":"when-you-mention-emacs-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/22\/when-you-mention-emacs-on-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"When you mention Emacs on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> When you mention Emacs on the Internet &#x2013; be it on a blog, forum, mailing list, IRC channel, reddit thread, or tweet &#x2013; certain responses must inevitably follow.   <\/p>\n<p> You were just sharing a bit of news, or asking a question about a feature, or plugging your new <code>webkit-buffers.el<\/code> library that allows Emacs to really browse the web (somebody write this, please?); but it doesn&#8217;t matter.  The same responses must always follow: <\/p>\n<ul class=\"org-ul\">\n<li>Someone must say &#8220;Emacs is a great OS.  It just needs a good text editor.&#8221; <\/li>\n<li>Someone must post a link to the XKCD comic about Emacs.  You know, the &#8220;M-x butterflies&#8221; one.  No, I&#8217;m not giving you a link to it. <\/li>\n<li>Some obviously lost and confused person who has been raised on Visual Studio \/ Eclipse \/ XCode or some other bloated IDE wonders incredulously that people still use &#8220;those old text editors&#8221; for serious development. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> And then, of course, the Vi(m) users descend.  I don&#8217;t know why.  I have never, as an Emacs user\/fan, butted into a discussion of Vi(m) stuff with my sanctified opinions about it, but like turkey vultures to a possum carcass, Vi(m) fanboys descend on every mention of Emacs with predictable regularity.  Their comments vary: <\/p>\n<ul class=\"org-ul\">\n<li>Some post lengthy walls of text about how they once tried Emacs and it gave them boils which were only cured by switching to Vim. <\/li>\n<li>Some just say pointless junk like &#8220;Vim is better&#8221; or &#8220;Vim FTW!&#8221; <\/li>\n<li>Some just type &#8220;Vim&#8221; or &#8220;Vi&#8221;.  Nothing else, no explanation, just that.  I don&#8217;t get this; it&#8217;s as if balance can only be achieved if every mention of Emacs is countered with a mention of Vim.  Or maybe it&#8217;s some kind of insect-brained knee-jerk response: &#8220;I see word Emacs.  Must type word &#8216;Vim'&#8221; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"figure\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/wpid-bb_emacs_vim.jpg\" alt=\"bb_emacs_vim.jpg\" \/> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> If anyone takes the bait (and someone usually does), flame wars ensue that span the gamut from Richard Stallman&#8217;s personal hygiene issues to RSI horror stories to &#8220;the year of the Linux desktop&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p> Then some clever person comes along and posts a link to that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/fun\/jokes\/ed-msg.html\">rant about &#8220;ed&#8221;<\/a>, at which point the thread is locked, comments are disabled, or everyone just agrees they&#8217;ve got better things to do. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Semi-rant about mentioning Emacs on the &#8216;net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[12,71,13,69],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-floss","category-technology","tag-emacs","tag-humour","tag-pointless-geekery","tag-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":905,"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alandmoore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}