On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 04:03:41PM -0500, Chuck Cole wrote:
> In my experience (considerable: with several hundred programmers doing stuff
> ranging from supercomputing OS and language stuff, to IT to embedded and
> secure avionics, and so on... )  those who do kinda small single-thread
> stuff like I/O intensive IT stuff will prefer vi, while those (eg, MIT PhDs)
> who do huge and inter-related stuff will prefer Emacs.  Like most else, it's
> context-dependent.   No surveys, except herding such cats on aerospace
> contract projects and programs which have formal reviews, deliverables, and
> so on.
> 
> 
> Chuck

If by huge and inter-related you mean projects with 800,000+ lines of code, I definitely can attest that I've seen plenty of people use Vi on projects like that (including myself).

I'm wondering if a large bit has to do with schooling and where you work.  I know that at my school Vi (and for those who couldn't cut it, Pico) was the editor of choice of everyone because our Professors used it.  I can understand the use of Vi in the SysAdmin world because Vi is generally guaranteed to be on any Unix system, whereas Emacs isn't, but for programmers I'm betting if you go to a place out of school that is using Vi for programming, you'll probably end up using Vi.

-Adam