(以下文字是我的观点，不应被视为事实或侮辱)

With Emacs you are expected to have it open 24/7 and live inside the program, almost everything you do can be done from there. You write your own extensions, use it for note-taking, organization, games, programming, shell access, file access, listening to music, web browsing. It takes weeks and weeks till you will be happy with it and then you will learn new stuff all the time. You will be annoyed when you don't have access to it and constantly change your config. You won't be able to use other peoples emacs versions easily and it won't just be installed. It uses Lisp, which is great. You can make it into anything you want it to be. (anything, at all)

对于Vim，它几乎总是预先安装的。这是太快了。你打开一个文件做一个快速编辑，然后退出。如果您在其他人的机器上，则可以使用基本设置。它的可编辑性不是很好，但它仍然比大多数文本编辑器好得多。它能识别出你大部分时间是在阅读/编辑而不是打字，并使这部分工作更快。你的小指没有emacs症状。这并没有那么令人愤怒。这样更容易学。

即使我每天都在使用Emacs(而且喜欢它)，除非你打算在你选择的程序上花费大量时间，否则我会选择vim

Seems an answer has been selected already, but the big difference to me has always been the modal vs. non-modal. Vim is modal, which means that it makes optimizations based on a specific set of usage modes. At least that's how I've always looked at it. This makes using Vim a different experience because instead of having a work area that you type code in, you really are telling an environment to act on the text. This is why people say things like with Vim you really are learning a language. The :wq and :s/foo/bar is all part of a shell like environment that edits and reads text.

Emacs on the other hand is much closer to most editors/word processors/etc. you see today. You have a workspace that has a highly programmable interface. That is why you see things like email, irc, shells, etc. As a programmer it is easy to think in terms of saying "take the line number I'm on and do something with the information". The desire to leave the editor becomes less because instead of having to quit, open some other app/language and do things on some text, you have Emacs where you can do these things within the scope of your editor.

这两种观点并不一定是对立的，只是它们揭示了两个不同的焦点。就我个人而言，我使用Emacs，但我见过非常了解Vim的人，他们可以诚实地说，选择哪种并不重要。我首先尝试了Vim，但Emacs最终支持了我。的确，无论您选择什么，您都应该至少在一定程度上精通Vim，因为它总是可用的。

我想引用《UNIX编程的艺术》一书中的一段话:

Many people who regularly use both vi and Emacs tend to use them for different things, and find it valuable to know both. In general, vi is best for small jobs – quick replies to mail, simple tweaks to system configuration, and the like. It is especially useful when you’re using a new system (or a remote one over a network) and don’t have your Emacs customization files handy. Emacs comes into its own for extended editing sessions in which you have to handle complex tasks, modify multiple files, and use results from other programs during the session. For programmers using X on their console (which is typical on modern Unixes), it’s normal to start up Emacs shortly after login time in a large window and leave it running forever, possibly visiting dozens of files and even running programs in multiple Emacs subwindows.

我在这里真正想强调的是:“许多人发现两者都知道是有价值的。

我是一个不折不扣的Emacs迷，但我早在认识Emacs之前就认识VI了。也就是说，我让我所有的人学习VI，因为它总是可用的，在任何地方。选哪一个都不会错。

(以下文字是我的观点，不应被视为事实或侮辱)

With Emacs you are expected to have it open 24/7 and live inside the program, almost everything you do can be done from there. You write your own extensions, use it for note-taking, organization, games, programming, shell access, file access, listening to music, web browsing. It takes weeks and weeks till you will be happy with it and then you will learn new stuff all the time. You will be annoyed when you don't have access to it and constantly change your config. You won't be able to use other peoples emacs versions easily and it won't just be installed. It uses Lisp, which is great. You can make it into anything you want it to be. (anything, at all)

对于Vim，它几乎总是预先安装的。这是太快了。你打开一个文件做一个快速编辑，然后退出。如果您在其他人的机器上，则可以使用基本设置。它的可编辑性不是很好，但它仍然比大多数文本编辑器好得多。它能识别出你大部分时间是在阅读/编辑而不是打字，并使这部分工作更快。你的小指没有emacs症状。这并没有那么令人愤怒。这样更容易学。

即使我每天都在使用Emacs(而且喜欢它)，除非你打算在你选择的程序上花费大量时间，否则我会选择vim

我从vi开始，到emacs，然后到vim。我一直想试试Emacs，看看在过去五年中发生了什么变化。(说到IDE，我已经使用eclipse有一段时间了，但我更喜欢我的终端窗口连接我的mac和我(丈夫的)linux盒子)。

剪切粘贴的事最近一直困扰着我。在Vim中剪切和粘贴比在Emacs和IIRC中需要更多的步骤。从浏览器粘贴到终端窗口很烦人，除非你做了一些我不喜欢做的奇特的事情，所以我忍受了奇怪的缩进。我认为，在emacs中编辑多个文件更容易。如果两个文件都在屏幕上，至少可以从一个文件跳转到下一个文件。

我没有使用vi或emacs的花哨特性，因为我只是想开始编码的工作。我所需要的是漂亮的颜色和适当的制表符到空格的转换(对python尤其重要)。

我认为这完全取决于你是想使用:wq还是Ctrl-x Ctrl-s (IIRC)来保存文件，如果你不关心花哨的东西。

@mgb是正确的。一两个月前，我曾在Debian发行版中使用最低限度的linux来修复一些东西。Vi是唯一可用的编辑器。