The past 7-8 years I've pretty much used every text editor under the sun certain amount of time. If I had to break it down in order of longest used, it would be: Emacs, Vim/NeoVim, Intellj, Sublime Text, Atom, VSCode and the list go's on.
When I started programming, my attitude towards editors were for the most part neutral. I was using my mouse to click and select things without a care in the world. I only used a couple shortcuts to find files or run commands, and the arrow keys were my best friends. It was was all very simple.
But then, Vim and Emacs entered the chat and my mindset started to change. Now a text editor became more than just a tool to edit text with. It was now something I could mold, configure and tweak to meet my needs. This might sound totally insane but Emacs became a part of my identity, I basically married that tool. I masted all its default key bindings and even learned E-Lisp so I could write my own extensions. I'm basically an Emacs master now.
And as a result of this, I find it difficult to use other tools, I'm kinda chained down, boxed into. Every tool has its own philosophy, but most follow generic norms. Emacs and Vim/NeoVim does not, their philosophies are distinct and vast. And so once you adopt one it becomes difficult to leave. That is why almost every editor today has support form Vim bindings, its there to cater to the people who accepted the Vim philosophy on doing things. But in that sense Vim/NeoVim users also very lucky to have such great support out there.
Unfortunately for me Emacs is even more niche. Most other tools can't emulate Emacs features such as the marks, kill ring, i-search, occur, bookmarks, dired... This leaves me in a predicament, do I stick with Emacs for the rest of my career or do I cut ties now and move on to something a little bit more generic, like Intellj or the new kid on the block Zed?
