I'm a comparative youngin to most of the people here, and I've never tried emacs. I'd like to learn my way around it someday, but I don't know how high of a priority I should place on it. I've managed to pick up enough vim to make my life easier, would learning my way around emacs also get me a productivity boost? How good is evil mode?
"would learning my way around emacs also get me a productivity boost?" No. Although I first used emacs roughly 22 years ago so my memory might be rusty, the learning curve was extremely steep. Its not a GUI app with low maximum performance but very short learning curve, its more like something you'll have to mess with for a month to year to wrap your brain around. Its like learning dwarf fortress vs angry birds. In t…
I beg to disagree. I learned me an emacs around the same time period (mid 90's). I don't remember the learning curve to be that steep. I started by doing the tutorial. If you download a GUI emacs (e.g. from http://emacsformacosx.com/ ), and open the program, you'll see a mouse clickable invitation to take a tutorial. Do this. Don't take shortcuts. Just spend the one or two hours and go through the entire tutorial complete with practice exercises.
Or if that's intimidating, start by reading this gist: