Yes! "Emacs as an application platform" is a really great way to quickly write text-focused, keyboard-controlled applications (as most developer tools are). It even has graphical support in addition to running in the terminal, so you can use it wherever you would otherwise use ncurses as a straight upgrade. (As I recommend at the end of here[0])
I've been using this mode with good results. As a developer, it is great when you can stay within emacs and/or tmux for most of your daily work activities.
No, you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that I want to use things like this and pick vim. It's that I want to use vim, but am entertained by the notion of this (you're just assuming my priorities are the other way around).
In an ideal world, I wouldn't actually want this in vim, I'd want this as a separate ncurses application.
You can use this application in Emacs without using Emacs as an editor. In fact, if what you really want is to have this as a separate ncurses application, you're in luck: That is already the case. (Though Emacs is not ncurses)
(The fact that people don't realize this baffles me. I would really like to see more people who don't use Emacs as an editor using some of the applications built on Emacs.)
That is a completely valid point, and I have considered using emacs for some other small things (e.g., org-mode). I think the reasons I haven't started down that path are 1) I still feel some influence from my days in the Editor Wars and 2) because I am too lazy to learn a new interface and paradigm.
Perhaps this might serve as enough motivation to get over my laziness. :)
Interesting, the random down-votes. Did y'all really down-vote because you hate vim? I didn't say I hated emacs, I didn't even imply that emacs was bad in any way.
Users here seem to read way more into my comments than they should…
Some readers may have downvoted the comment in the belief that it was potentially detrimental to fostering meaningful discussion. Even a kind reading would classify it is as random noise. Nobody is going to read it and come away smarter or better informed. They may however come away inflamed.
Because the strength of VIM's design stems from Unix's do-one-thing-well principle, on naive reading The comment is a technical non-starter.
Finally, on HN, a VIM versus EMACS comment stands a reasonable chance of having been read by people who fought in the editor wars. That's one of the amazing things about this community. I've been downvoted for similar comments. My advice is to write better comments - complaints about downvotes aren't better - even though it's hard work.
