Are there any reasons why a C# developer should learn Emacs/Vim?

Question

I work as a c# developer in a purely Microsoft shop.

I recently started teaching myself assembly using gas and Linux in my free time away from work. I like messing a

Answer 1

I use (and love) Emacs, but I can understand the vi folks out there (I'm always torn between minimalism and kitchen-sink-ism). What keeps me using Emacs day in and day out, and what makes me eventually leave every IDE I've ever used, is that I can write functions. And when I say functions I mean functions; I can really program the editor itself. I add a new function, eval it, and bam now it's in my editor. If I use that function a bunch, then it gets a keybinding.

I've noticed that with IDEs, they're great at a particular language (Eclipse is amazing for doing Java). I don't think Emacs is as good at any one language (Except maybe as a Lisp IDE, but I won't try and extol the virtues of that here...) as a dedicated IDE but it is better at language N, where "N" is practically any programming language that has or will be invented. It is nice, if I'm learning a new programming language (or even just hopping between any of C, PowerShell, Haskell, Lisp, Java... etc.) that my environment is comfortable and quite able. My answer then, is "yes" because Emacs (or vi, I would assume) gives you portability in your toolset. You may be doing C# today, but down the line, who knows maybe you'll be hacking on Monad#++, and if you are, you can bet there's going to be an Emacs mode for it.