Luca Bruno blog

Why I'm still using Emacs

Hello,
I’m using emacs since a long time by now. Everytime I ask myself why I’m using it, given emacs certainly isn’t the easiest environment for programming. So, I often tried to replace emacs with other IDEs or editors, using several extensions and so on, but I still miss these killer features in a single editor:

  • Pressing a key (whatever it is, TAB in emacs) correctly/smartly indent the row according to the current language.

  • Split view, horizontal and vertical

  • No horizontal scrollbar, rather wrap the text

  • Opening/closing files without either opening a dialog or using the mouse

  • Search, search and replace (also with regexp variant) without opening any dialog

  • Switching between buffers using the longest-common-subsequence matching, without using the mouse (i.e. I don’t care about file tabs, but about switching among them fast)

  • Indent entire code regions

  • Vala, C, Python, Java, Shell, Autoconf/Automake, Make and Javascript support

So, I’m not using emacs because I love it, but because it’s actually the only editor with the above features.

What I’m looking for? I’m looking for a new editor/IDE, less complex, easier to customize, having the above features plus smart completion and symbol browser.
Emacs can have completion and symbol browser as well, but managing those buffers such as speedbar suck a little, things get complicated to use and to customize.

If anybody knows of such an editor, please let me know :)