I’d been a hardcore vi user since 1990 (still am), but I could adapt Emacs (actually, for some reason I opted for XEmacs at the time – can’t remember why – maybe it had better fonts) better for the job at hand. Syntax highlighting – check (vi never had this – it only arrived with vim), split buffers (top for the .h, bottom for the .cpp) – check, tab completion for finding files – check, nice macro record/playback features – check, nice search/replace – check,control behavior of tab key – check, auto replace tabs with 4 spaces check. So, after a while you can imagine I crafted a pretty customized/personal .emacs file. I even continued to use emacs for a while after switching to Java in 2000 (it wasn’t until Eclipse 2.0 before I switched to an IDE and left Emacs behind).

Then I moved on, and for some reason the .emacs file got left behind. Shame really – I haven’t really used Emacs since – it’s not the same without my .emacs file – and I don’t have the time or inclination to re-create it.