Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Goodbye Daily Vim, Hello Emacs

After some careful consideration, I've come to realize that it's time to switch editors. Vim has been a good friend, but like an old horse with a broken leg, it's time to put it down. A few days ago, a strange thing happened. Richard Stallman caught wind of this blog and sent me a DMCA takedown notice for documenting patented proprietary Emacs features (copy and paste). I tried to explain that these features were part of Vim as well, but he insisted that Emacs had prior art (implemented in 1953) and that the blog must be taken down at once. Determined to fight back, I decided to take a hard look at the Emacs internals to find some hidden weakness. After days of wanding through the Elisp forest, it happened... I fell in LOVE! Who would've thought that I could send email, surf the web, and play tetris all inside of my text editor? ZOMFG! I'm sorry folks, but if I would've realized what we've been missing, I wouldn't have wasted your time with all these silly Vim tips. This being said, I'll be shutting down this blog in the next 24 hours and dedicating my life to the Church of Emacs. I feel so seriously about this that I'm quitting my job here at Grooveshark and focusing my professional career on writing Emacs kernel modules and improving Emacs boot time. To any earthings that might be reading this, I've enjoyed my time on your planet, but the spaceship has landed, and I must return home. Farewell.

21 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice April fools joke, but you made it too obvious by saying you were switching to Emacs.

Owen said...

Oh noes! I can't believe that your switching to the evil emacs. Anyhow happy April 1st.

fuxter said...

man, you really gave me a scare! until i read the comments. just forgot what a day is today. i took it seriously to the end of the post. with all this richard talking...

Anonymous said...

Damn, I ALWAYS fall for april 1 jokes... :-O

burner said...

good one :]

Unknown said...

Dude. For a second there I was getting ready to sharpen my arsenal to hunt you down. I kid, I kid. But a good one.

Unknown said...

Lol c'est trop gros !

Vim users NEVER switch to Emacs cuz' they find unecessary to have like 4 hands with 20 fingers to use a text editor.
Uh, one of the fonctionality of Emacs is to edit texts, isn't it ?

AP said...

good try.

timhoa said...

Oh no! What is wrong with vim. I was just beginning to enjoy this editor.

Thanks to the comments I know vim is still the best. Very good joke.

Yu-Jie Lin said...

nice April 1st joke! I like it!

AmirWatad said...

Hahaha.
Man, As I read this post, I unsubscribed from your RSS feed. Resubscibed after reading the comments. A strong one!

Douglas said...

Fantastic! I laughed aloud.

Sterling "Chip" Camden said...

Best April Fool's joke I've read today. Emacs. Good one.

said...

Well, I should admit that you got me before the last sentences. I was about to say sorry to you until I read something like spaceship. Anyhow, happy April 1st, though it is already April 2nd here in China. :)

Leslie P. Polzer said...

Great AFJ! :)

Anonymous said...

ah, i'm fall too.
I was upset thinking
"He got a big money developing for Emacs and comes with that talk"

JuanPablo said...

Well, let me tell you something, funny boy ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zePQavforA

Porwah said...

+1 for being scared. "Oh! No! WT..."

Alan Haggai Alavi said...

Hi,

Nice joke. I was wondering why someone who wrote much about vim suddenly considered changing to emacs. I did not get the joke until at the end, and the comments helped. Haha.

Regards.

Anonymous said...

Glad i've noticed the date! )))

Good catch!)

Anonymous said...

Haha "improving Emacs boot time". LOL


I've love to try Emacs but I'm not sure if you can dual-boot it and Vista.