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Comment by breck | Hacker News Reader

>For one thing, your text editor can be used to edit anything that is made of text:Python, PHP, Javascript, SQL, C, Ruby, Perl, Lisp, Haskell, Erlang, Java, shell scripts, config files, HTML,

Yes, I get that. Funny, I actually do use Excel a lot to edit a lot of these things and don't think I could improve my productivity in any of them more than 10 or 20%. My real question is how much it would help me in the language I spend 80% of my time in(Python now), versus an IDE that was built specifically to help people writing Python.

But you make a good case and I'll probably go harder into emacs(I do use vim a fair amount now, and will try TextMate when I get that mac.

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I actually do use Excel a lot to edit a lot of these things and don't think I could improve my productivity in any of them more than 10 or 20%.

Things that emacs can do for most of the languages in that list (after you install some appropriate emacs modules) that I doubt Excel can do very easily:

Syntax highlighting (the emacs term is "font-lock"). Auto-indentation based on language syntax. Auto-completion of symbols based on the contents of open files (if you've defined a constant "MECHFISH" in a file, and you type "MEC" in another file and press a keystroke, the system fills in "MECHFISH". Press the keystroke multiple times to scroll through multiple possibilities.) Snippets (type "func" and press Tab; your editor inserts the skeleton of a function definition for you). Integration with your version control system (git, in my case). Navigate from one of two dozen open files to another without moving your hands from the keyboard. Browse directory trees in panes, picking out files for editing -- or run a shell command across a bunch of selected files. Search-and-replace using regular expressions. Recursive grep through directory trees (I use emacs igrep-mode for this.)

This is by no means an exhaustive list. So suffice it to say that if you can't get more than a 10% "productivity" improvement by swapping emacs for Excel, you must be one hell of an Excel power user!

Incidentally, don't spend too much time bouncing from vim to emacs to TextMate. These editors take time to learn. Pick one and focus on it. Read some blogs and some wikis. Get really good at your editor of choice.

> Funny, I actually do use Excel a lot to edit a lot of these things

How is that even possible? I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, I seriously want to know what your workflow is. It never would have occurred to me to use Excel for editing SQL queries; and as for Lisp or config file or HTML... how?

A lot of what I do is taking data from one source(ie an HTML table) and throwing it into a database. Sometimes cutting/pasting into excel, then quickly formatting it, is easier than writing a regex to get it done.

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