Emacs is one of those software systems I'm really grateful for. My life is significantly better because I'm in a world where it exists - "better" meaning more joyful, more positively productive, and more enabled to be of service (since I use it for writing articles and opensource software, etc. Not to mention the code behind my company, so it's even helping me create jobs.)
I really, really want to use Emacs. I like the ideas, I like the addons, I like the lispiness. What I can't get over, though, is the pinky contortions and multiple chords required to accomplish things in the editor itself.
I'm not a big fan of vimscript, and the addons seem more clunky, but being able to hit a single key, rather than a chord, or series of chords, to accomplish the basic text manipulations, makes it really hard for me to stop using vim and use emacs for more than a few days.
The Kinesis contour keyboard moves the modifier keys to under your thumbs. Makes a huge difference for Emacs. It makes for a significant amount of retraining, though, too, and vim might still be for you.
I can understand! I actually also use vim a whole lot, which is absolutely wonderful as well. For the pinky/chords thing in emacs, I've be able to adapt by actually using other fingers quite a bit (shifting my hand so I can hold control with my ring or even pointer); and I really don't use multichord combos that much, usually using longer sequences instead (e.g. for indent-region, I hit Esc, then type C-\ rather than typing Alt-Ctrl-\ .) Fortunately this has worked well for me and my hands over time.
> I've be able to adapt by actually using other fingers quite a bit
I actually use the part of my palm directly underneath my pinky to hit the Ctrl key. It works quite well on a ThinkPad keyboard (for my hand shape/size, anyway).
You can avoid somewhat of that with some considered keymappings.
For instance, I remap Control to Alt a ton in emacs. It's very easy for me to thumb-key instead of pinky-key. YMMV, depending on keyboard and hand-size.
As a vim user, I very much lament the fact that there's no good way to run an interactive shell or REPL in vim. The screen hack, Conque, the vim-shell patch, etc., don't match Emacs' REPL functionality.
Seconded. Even after years of using Emacs, I still have to stop for a moment every now and then and think: holy shit, what a motherflippin' piece of software!
