Recently I have noticed a changing trend in the choice of text editor/IDE among my colleagues. From 100% Eclipse users a few months back, today we have -

6 Sublime Text 2 Users
3 Eclipse Users
1 Vim User
1 Emacs User

I am the lone emacs user which you would already guessed from the tagline of this blog. This post is not about emacs though. I used Eclipse for a long time until I discovered Emacs which was about 1 year ago. I don't regret switching to emacs, but looking back, I admit that I wasn't a good eclipse user then because I never really used it beyond writing code and using it's subversion client for version control. So, while it's good to see people moving to Sublime Text2 (a fine editor) and Vim (an awesome editor) from IDEs which I personally hate, it's important to realize that an editor will work wonders for your productivity only when you learn to use it to it's full potential and it's only then that you can appreciate the awesomeness of it.

The point I am trying to make here is that whichever editor/IDE you choose to use, you must use it like YOU OWN IT! If you are a programmer, then the editor is your primary toolkit because you spend more than 60% of your time inside it and so there is no reason for not trying to master it.

This post is about what you must look for in an editor for efficient and enjoyable editing and it will also try to cover some of the must know tricks irrespective of which editor you use. Your editor may not support all these features but there is a good chance that they do and you haven't yet had the time or reason to discover them. So if you think that you are only complacently using your editor and not getting the most out of it, I think this post will show you some direction.

A few important points first

Firstly, I don't claim to be an emacs guru although I am a passionate user. Secondly, in this post, you will find that I have mentioned emacs a lot of times although having said that the post is not about it. The intention is not to annoy the readers. Wherever applicable, I have mentioned how to do a particular thing in emacs or the term used for it so you can then easily google it up for some other editor as in "abc equivalent of emacs in X editor" or "How to do abc in editor X?".

Terminology

Like many other things, before you can dive deep into something, it's very important to have an understanding of the terms that other folks in the community use to describe different things related to the editor. Unless you are familiar with the terms and their meanings you will not be able to communicate on mailing lists and forums where there are a lot of people with talent and readiness to help you out. So get yourself familiar with atleast some of the basic terminology first.

Shortcuts and mouse-less editing

Knowing and using shortcuts is a key to faster editing. As a quick example, it's obviously faster to type ctrl-s than clicking on File > Save. A killer thing about text editors such as vim and emacs is economy of motion, which means that the shortcuts and key sequences are specifically designed in such a fashion that it's easier and faster for the fingers to type. Well this makes them time consuming to learn and get used to initially, but if you make a determined effort then very soon they are registered into muscle memory and you hardly have to think while using them.

Another thing is that using mouse is not particularly efficient while writing code so you should avoid that as much as possible. Learning shortcuts fixes this. In the rest of this post, when I say "learn how to do x" I always mean learn the shortcut or the command to do it.

Moving around

Imagine how much time you could save if you were able to go back to the line of code where you want to paste stuff that you just copied or open the file where a particular function is defined. Invest some time in learning how to move across code and files fast and with minimum effort.

Searching

If you are using vim or emacs, then you will quickly realize that searching is an efficient way of moving around. A good editor treats files, directory listing, configuration interface etc consistently which means that you can move around these interfaces in the same way as you do in files. Search in files (rgrep in emacs) is a handy tool as well.

Cut/Copy/Paste and the "kill ring"

It's indeed convenient if the editor remembers what all things were cut or copied in current session and doesn't lose them the moment something else is copied to the clipboard. It's also important that you are able to quickly move around the clipboard contents. In emacs there is a kill ring where anything that's cut or killed goes and anything that's pasted or yanked comes from.

Lines

As programmers we deal with lines of code, so we must know how to work with lines. For eg. deleting to end of line, deleting a line (moving up the next one), adding a line after the current one (from any position in the current line) taking the cursor there ready to type, adding a line before the current one and moving to it to quickly add a doc string, going to the next line respecting the indent (electric return), swapping two lines and a lot of other things.

Region

It helps to know how to work on a region of code or text. For eg. indenting a region to right/left, Commenting/uncommenting a region and doing things that you normally do in files only on this region such as search/replace in region, undo/redo in region (yes this is possible in emacs)

File Browsing

Do you have to click on File > Open > Select > Open to open a file in the editor? If yes, you should change your editor! Other file operations such as new file, delete, move, delete directory recursively are similarly important. Added bonus if it also allows chmod and chown. In emacs, all these things are possible in the dired buffer.

Screen Splitting

Often we need to go back and forth between many files to refer to function definitions, example usage, tests, shell sessions etc. A handy feature to have in this case is to be able to view many files at a time on the screen. Most editors support screen splitting in a number of ways. Find out which one works for you and use it to reduce effort of moving between files.

Jump to function definition

Most editors provide a better and faster way for this than searching in files. In emacs this can be achieved by generating a TAG table which is basically just a file that acts as an index.

Autocomplete

In a single editor, there can be many types of autocompletion implementations and most of them are very handy and would probably be the most used in day to day editng. For eg. in emacs we can define abbreviations which are stored in files and can be expanded by TAB key. Then there are dynamic abbreviations (M-/) or more sophisticated Yasnippets which are capable of expanding to commonly used code templates. I am not a Yasnippets user although I use the other two types all the time.

Polyglot friendliness

If you use multiple languages, learn how to configure the editor differently for various languages for eg. I use 4 spaces indent for python, php and javascript whereas 2 spaces for ruby and html.

Source Control from editor

As a Git user, I am happy with the command line and don't use any emacs git mode myself. But I think it is something worth learning and considering trying out Magit since a long time but haven't had the time yet.

Running Shell inside the editor

This is a powerful and must have feature for any editor. I personally use it a lot when I am trying out stuff in python or scheme. You can even evaluate a region.

Plugins and Extending the editor

Usually, editors have a good plugin ecosystem. If you use an opensource editor, you can even search github repositories for plugins that you wouldn't have imagined could exist. Learn how to install or set them up and also aim towards learning how to write them yourself and give back to the community.

Syntax Checking and Lint

Any decent editor supports on the fly syntax checking of code. This would typically be packaged as a plugin or a mode. There are also tools that help you find out on the fly whether your code is code style compatible for eg. whether your python code is PEP 8 compliant or not.

Support for non-programming formats

Chances are that your editor has support for editing files other than programming languages. For eg. markdown or restructured text. It's very handy to have such a feature as it makes editing documentation convenient.

Macros

Macros provide a way to record a set of actions so that they can be replayed again. As an example, the first non-trivial macros I had used was for converting a paypal integration form in html to a python dictionary of parameters to be posted to paypal. It took me around 5 mins to record it and 1 min to repeat it on all the form fields clearly saving me a lot of time and shit work.

Have fun

It's fun to be able to use your editor for a things for which other people use softwares that flood the screen with popouts such as email, irc or even twitter clients, note taking apps or even games.

So this is all I can think of right now. It's definitely by no means an exhaustive list but I hope this helps you get started with fast, efficient and enjoyable editing.