I used to love IDEs with immediate feedback on the code, and a modern VSCode setup can really shine in this regards. But these days I’m going for a minimalistic approach where I don’t want to see anything in my screen but the code. I use Neovim and while I use plugins for formatting code on save, my screen is absolutely code only. No linting hints, no function definition appearing when I hover thr mouse, nothing at all. It’s far less distracting and you also feel much less constrained, even if I unconsciously already write the code in a way that the linter doesn’t complain (too much) later. I haven’t noticed any drop in my productivity in the last year I’ve been doing this.

My whole work environment is tightly integrated ensuring I can use the same tools nearly everywhere. Things like keybindings (deleting a sentence, spellchecking a region, multiple cursors), macro’s (ad-hoc repetitive command sequences), the consistent mostly text-based visual look & feel. All of this lowers the cognitive load.

Comparing to an IDE, Emacs is more of a hyper-configurable integrated work environment. In my case, my code editor (Emacs), my knowledge base (org-roam), my tasks manager (ad-hoc on top of org-mode), my email client (mu4e), my tiling window manager (exwm), interaction with git (magit) and git issues and PRs (forge) as well as some other tools are controlled from Emacs. I call them ‘my’ because they’re sometimes slightly modified to scratch my own itches. I could integrate my calendar but Google’s webdav APIs seemed flaky at the time and FireFox only gets some consistent keybindings.

Just a few more years and Emacs will turn 50 years old. You never know what the future will bring but there’s a reasonable chance I will not have to throw away what I have learned so far.

Some examples of this integration:

• When I start developing on a project as full-stack I usually have a M-x develop-projectname command that boots up the application, arranges my windows with the right folders open, backend and frontends started, and a place for FireFox (not integrated, only uses some of the same keybindings)
• It is not uncommon for me to receive about 100 emails in a day, some just informative and some requiring action. Processing these can lead to tasks or just information. In any case, treating them and doing actual work on the same day requires focus and a smooth path from throwing it away to drafting out tasks.
• An email can lead to an action to be taken on a server. When managing a server (local or remote), I’ll outline the tasks to execute. I can execute these tasks through org-mode’s code-blocks on the remote host and have a read-back of commands and output. In this use my knowledge base becomes similar to a Jupyter Notebook but integrated with all the rest. I can also reuse the results whilst working on it and I can mail the read-back to whomever would need to have the result in a readable email.

If you want to come to the dark side and like VIm’s keybindings, you may want to use Emacs’s evil-mode and keep them. It might just be the best of both worlds.