Emacs vs Visual Studio

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).

You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.

You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.

Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t.

With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.

Licensed under GNU GPL.

You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer.

Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files.

Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.

Emacs can select rectangularly.

Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects.

With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.

Dynamic word completion.

Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list.

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.

Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others.

Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin.

Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things.

Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.

You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.

Emacs is great for everything.

Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use.

If a project type or a platform is available for C#, it's available in Visual Studio. Some IDEs and code editors may cover some project types, but Microsoft always starts with VS. If you work with a cross-platform technology like ASP.NET MVC, it matters less. If you work with Windows-only technologies like UWP or WPF, you have no choice really.

Community edition is almost Pro edition, with just a few exceptions. Unlike old Express editions, it supports plugins.

The plugin development ecosystem is very mature and covers a lot of use cases. For example, it is often easy to find a plugin which allows you to have the keybindings of your preferred editor.

Code productivity tools improve code editing experience greatly, provide static code analysis, refactorings, navigation etc. They are considered by many developers as essential.

Visual Studio runs on Windows and macOS, so even if you develop on a Mac you can still develop with Visual Studio.

In agile development teams one really needs features such as product backlogs where you can assign features to team mates and track their progress on them. VS provides a web based interface for you to track your team's complete progress on the project.

Your Visual Studio Online account gives you a place to store your code, backlog, and other project data with no servers to deploy, configure, or manage.