Through the 90's and into the 00's I used emacs for the better part of a decade. But then as java became bigger and I 'had' to use an ide to be productive in it, I switched to Eclipse. Then when Rails came along, I switched to Textmate. Of course, TM 2 was open sourced and then I switched to Sublime Text 2. During all this, every 6-12 mos, I would download a version of emacs, play with it, then go back to work.
I know emacs can do everything including make me breakfast, and I think the happiest/productive I've been with a editor was when I could do all my java builds in emacs and run all my tests from a TM 1 window. I know emacs can do the latter - I'm sure someone has written this functionality, probably years ago.
One of the things I always missed with the current editors is split panels - I used it all the time with emacs. I never really cared for folder icons or a lot of gui chrome and I prefer never to have to use an ide. Maybe now is the time to check in again. :)
*side note: if you are building from brew, be prepared for a big compile. The emacs source is ginormous.
I know emacs can do everything including make me breakfast, and I think the happiest/productive I've been with a editor was when I could do all my java builds in emacs and run all my tests from a TM 1 window. I know emacs can do the latter - I'm sure someone has written this functionality, probably years ago.
One of the things I always missed with the current editors is split panels - I used it all the time with emacs. I never really cared for folder icons or a lot of gui chrome and I prefer never to have to use an ide. Maybe now is the time to check in again. :)
*side note: if you are building from brew, be prepared for a big compile. The emacs source is ginormous.