Hacker News Reader

Interesting stats. I'd be wary however, of prematurely drawing any hard conclusions.

For example comparing vim to emacs, one should rather look at whether the bash history indicates a predominantly emacs or vim user, then isolate or compartmentalize that as a single vote.

Even then we can't be sure that it supports any grandiose claim, but it should in theory be a little more accurate.

View on HN

Agreed, also, for Vim vs. Emacs, most users of both probably use the GUI variants at this point, which leave no shell history. I still run emacs on remote terms, but then I don't make the mistake of uploading my bash history into a git repo.

Any reason you would think more people use the GUI version?

Although I obviously have a biases sample but everyone I know uses the shell version of both. The people I know who use the GUI use other editors.

OS Integration -- copy-and-paste works better, scroll works predictably (there are quirks in OSX terminal using mouse mode in vim and in emacs), sensical full-screen mode

Advanced features -- Certain things can't be done with the terminal. For example, Aquamacs lets you see inline latex previews: http://aquamacs.org/latex.shtml

Both can leave shell history.

For example, on OSX I use MacVim with the mvim script to launch a new window. I use aquamacs with the eponymous command line tool as well

Reply on news.ycombinator.com