--- title: GNU Emacs Reviews meta_title: 'GNU Emacs Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 84 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how GNU Emacs works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 84 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-06-21' parent_category: name: Editor url: https://www.g2.com/categories/editor --- # GNU Emacs Reviews **Vendor:** FreeCAD **Category:** [Text Editor Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/text-editor) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 84 ## About GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a customizable text editor that is an interpreter and dialect with extension to support text editing with content-sensitive editing modes, built-in documentation, Unicode support, and more. ## GNU Emacs Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **extensive customizability** of GNU Emacs, making it adaptable to their specific needs. (1 reviews) - Users value the **extensive customization** options of GNU Emacs, allowing them to tailor the editor to their needs. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **complexity** of GNU Emacs overwhelming, leading to a lengthy time to learn its features. (1 reviews) - Users struggle with the **steep learning curve** of GNU Emacs, finding it time-consuming to grasp its functionality. (1 reviews) ## GNU Emacs Reviews ### 1. Highly Configurable and Extensible Platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ganesh G. | Senior Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 09, 2026 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Everything is configurable and extensible **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Learning curve is very low and its take lot of time to figure out things. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Editing code requires using dedicated IDE for which a pricely license is required. This open source software allows to code without paying ### 2. Power and flexibility **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2024 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Power. Flexibility. I love to able to do everything in the same software. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Lack of interaction with other users. No availbility to install in work. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ease to write with. ### 3. A genuinely good open source text editor for Unix **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harshit G. | Freelancer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 02, 2022 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Open source, built in. It works like charm for Linux-based operating systems. It is very simple to use. It is possible to do real-time edits, a classic editor and it is very customizable as well. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** While GNU emacs is legacy software, it isn't meant for everyone, especially the new GUI-loving generation. Needless to say, it has a comparatively steeper learning curve if you are accustomed to GUI editors. Also, compared to those fancy GUI editors, its functionalities are somewhat limited. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** If you have not worked on it before, you may want to try other open-source GUI editors instead. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** GNU Emacs helps me and my organization to seamlessly edit and maintain important configuration files in our Linux server. Not only that but GNU Emacs is also a primary text editor on our Linux server thus all text editing tasks are made possible through it. ### 4. Emacs: The holy grail for code editing? **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2022 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs and VIM are the text-only editors that are commonly used across Linux environments. Sometimes when you ssh into a machine there is no GUI editors available and you often reach for an editor like this. This is what I like best about emacs. It's usually installed on every machine and makes it easy to edit a variety of file formats on a remote machine. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Some people use Emacs as a daily driver, but I do not. There are too many nice GUI features that editors like sublime, vscode have that emacs does not have out of the box. If you are on a GUI desktop I prefer not to use emacs since it is text only. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** If you are editing files a lot on remote machines you should try Emacs. It has a learning curve, but you will become very efficient the more you learn. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** The problem I solve using GNU emacs is editing files on remote Linux machines. It makes it easy to log into deployed infrastructure and edit files since it is usually installed on most Linux distros. ### 5. GNU emacs is wonderful OS , it just miss a good editor ... jk **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Phil C. | Community Volunteer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 07, 2015 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** One feature, I don't know in other editor, is the ability to run subshell inside the editor, M-x rgrep M-x compile etc ... I also enjoy using fantastic modes like org-mode to manage notes... tramp is a cool utility to visit remote filesystems (ssh, ftp). magit worth to be used if you use git. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It's unclear over version to maintain configuration, usually I split my configs files and load them on purpose. debuging inside editor is not that easy, the mail client is counter intuitive, ie If I just want to open an IMAP url , I'll have to define a bunch of variables. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** try to use xemacs or emacs with menu , until you learn the basic keystrokes, if vim user then use elvis mode which provide compatible vi key shortcuts. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I made a script to trace allocations , and share the location of the new / delete using c++ macro , then I am able to switch to one line if file to an other ... I think I could other many other tools, but as far as I know org-mode is only supported by emacs and this is a reason to keep using it. ### 6. My favorite IDE -- or I'd say OS ;) **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zhaorong M. | Programmer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2019 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Fully-configurable. You can configure anything - Theme, sytnax highlighter, checker, menu options, keyboard shortcuts. Cross-platform and consistent experience. I have a github repository with .emacs.d for emacs configuration accessible on any operation system. Active and expert community. emacs community is supportive and experienced. emacs is older than me, so are many emacs developers. :) **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** A steep learning curve at the beginning. In fact, I gave up emacs twice before I fell in love with it the third time and decided to commit to it for the foreseeable future. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** The built-in tutorial is interactive and easy to follow. Just do not get frustrated. You will be rewarded generously. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it mainly as a Python IDE, but I also use it to write NSIS scripts, C++ from time to time. I also use org-mode extensively as a TODO list and a notebook in general. It boosts my coding experience and productivity. ### 7. An Amazing Text Editor With Sub Shell **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ankit K. | Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2022 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** GNU Emacs is a powerful editor which provides the facility of an in-built sub-shell. It supports UNICODE fully. Everything can be done which can be done using any modern IDE. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It lacks good documentation. The repositories are scattered. It requires a lot of considerable time to learn working on GNU Emacs and that too, shortcuts are not easy to remember. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using Emacs to fix the small code changes and run the code in the background. In addition, we are using Emacs to make a to-do list and to make quick notes for future reference. ### 8. My go-to code editor when I SSH into a remote server **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jerry C. | Head of Bioinformatics and Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 18, 2021 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs is easy to install on a Linux machine and works great as an editor when you are logged into a remote server in a command-line Terminal. Other editors such as Atom, Sublime, Eclipse and VSCode need to use an SSH tunnel for work on a remote server, which is very inconvenient and prone to connection issues. I mostly code in Python, and Emacs has nice color coding and styling for Python code. And shortcuts are great in Emacs **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** The only drawback I see is some lack of support for newer languages and libraries. For example, I was trying to find a color-coding package for programming in VueJS, but could not find an appropriate one for Emacs. The community for Emacs is an older bunch, and doesn't always have support and updates for the newest frameworks. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Emacs solves the problem of coding when you are logged into a remote server. ### 9. powerful, extensible, not easy **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 01, 2022 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** keyboard only interaction, extensive libraries, rich macros, same keyboard shortcuts i've used for over 30 years **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** not exactly easy to learn or discover. integration with modern development systems limited or DIY **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** mostly use it to reformat and clean up tabular data so it can be imported cleanly elsewhere. macros plus rectangular selections hard to reproduce elsewhere ### 10. From the 80s - still my primary editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian L. | Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 17, 2021 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs can do anything and the lisp extensions can tune it for any programming language or coding standards **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** There is a learning curve of the better part of a day **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Of course I use it for software development but also so much more. I use emacs org mode to organize nearly everything I do and much of the information I've gathered. I use emacs key bindings for when I type in web text boxes (through the Chrome extension - edit with emacs). Basically I've used the same key bindings for everything since 1985 and there is almost no learning curve when using emacs for another application - just to learn some of the new macros like for debugging, formatting to code standards, etc. ### 11. Extreme Powertool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 16, 2022 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Everything can be done with the keyboard, without once using the mouse. An extensive amount of shortcuts are available **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Learning emacs is a steep learning curve. It requires lots of time to get into the workflow with emacs and memorizing the shortcuts. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use emacs in the org-mode to take notes, write my todo lists and manage agenda files. ### 12. Free text editor **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yoandri C. | System Software Code, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 15, 2021 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Content recognition, full Unicode support, graphical interface, support for XDG conversions and native support for JSON parsing. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Scattered repositories and configure system to integrate applications and difficult external code. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Write code, run available software and repository. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Compatible with different PC operating systems, I make code and run in the background what I need to test to improve activity. ### 13. Amazing IDE, shell, life organizer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Justin S. | DevOps Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 03, 2020 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs can do literally anything if you're determined to push past its initial learning curve. I use mine for development, shell access, and most important, for Org Mode, an organizational add-on that I use with the Getting Things Done system to turn Emacs into my personal task organizer. I'm always finding new uses for it, and Org Mode in particular has been a true lifesaver in terms of keeping me organized. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It's got an initial learning curve, and the available learning resources for Emacs are not great. Reference documentation is not the same thing as learning resources, and a lot of the time, if you want to go with vanilla Emacs, you're doing a lot of looking at ancient forum posts from days gone by. That's why I eventually went with Spacemacs, an Emacs distribution that has helped me along considerably. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Emacs for software development, administration work, and to keep myself organized through Org Mode. By consolidating these many requirements in the scope of a single tool, I feel that I've benefited considerably versus trying to cobble together my own workflow of separate tools. ### 14. If you're old, you probably love it! **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jan P. | Staff Engineer (DevOps), Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2019 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs has been around forever. It is extremely extensible. Anything you can do, you can probably do in Emacs. The old joke was that Emacs had everything but the kitchen sink, so emacstool's icon was a kitchen sink. I like that it is consistent and I've been using it so long my fingers know their way around it. I can do pretty much anything anyone can do with their fancy IDEs. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It's a little on the clunky side. You can tell it was written back in the days of the glass TTY. Sometimes it is painful to get support for your latest snazzy tool/language. You know you can, but you might have to do some hunting around and customization to get it to work/look the way you want it. It's not... polished. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** If you're old, you probably already know how to use it. If you're not, use something else. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have been using Emacs so long, I have a hard time with any other editor. It does what I need it to and otherwise stays out of my way. ### 15. Text editor for all your needs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gaspar F. | Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 07, 2019 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** It's extremelly configurable, and extensible **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** The learning curve grows very slow in the beginning. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** You need free time to start, patience and forget what hoy already know about texto editora. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** My daily work relies on coding almos all day, and Emacs makes It easier, i find the tools i need and often people launch new extensions ### 16. Emacs - just part of my daily coder life **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samuel L. | Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Extensibility. You can make Emacs do almost anything. Work in any language. Use it as a markdown note-taking tool. Develop entire applications for console, gui, or web. Even plays games. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Plugin repositories could stand to be a little more consistent, and you had better get acquainted with common Lisp. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Learn about Lisp and the many, many plugins available. Also helps to know Linux. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I code in PHP, Python, Ruby, shell script, C/C++. I also manage server config files, and keep notes in Markdown. Emacs has a handy tool to show a live MD preview in a web browser that updates as you type. ### 17. Super Editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 25, 2019 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** The rich functionality. The user interface. Ability to add custom functions to by writing scripts. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** There is nothing to dislike about gnu emacs. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I usually write code. It is easy to edit and write code in it. ### 18. You get everything when all you were looking was an editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Networking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Customizability Power Flexibility Configurability **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** The initial learning curve is high. You have to remember a lot of commands and at times will be discouraging when you are coming from an IDE like environment. You need to use key board a lot compared to vim. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Bear the initial learning curve and it is totally worth time spent. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I code. I do not need to switch windows and I can compile, run, use a calc all from the same window. I can open an editor in parallel to make notes if I want. ### 19. Lightweight text editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pedro Andrés B. | Software Engineer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** It does not consume many computational resources and all the configuration is stored on just one file. Furthermore, it allows extreme customization through the Lisp language. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It has to be said that its graphical user interface might be improved **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Do not give up learning how to use Emacs. You will love Emacs once you understand it. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Emacs allows me to quickly develop applications and modules for my company without the computational overhead and complexity of modern IDEs or editors ### 20. GNU Emacs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 03, 2019 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** flexible, minimal, extensive, works in terminal **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Sometimes complicated, I good package management **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Writing research papers, building micro services in python ### 21. nice little text editor **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexandra C. | Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** I like that emacs comes on my Mac along with vim and nano. I had an easier time getting used to it over vim or nano, though I do use nano on occasion. I personally find it more user friendly for me. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Like any other command line text editor, it takes a little getting used to. Otherwise, I don't have too many issues with emacs. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Have look around some of the basic commands before starting on emacs. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am able to edit things on the command line with ease and have used it to practice with Docker. It's been really helpful with me learning how to put together and edit Dockerfiles. ### 22. An small pice of ancient software for the modern days **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonathan G. | Software Mixologist, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs is basically a fully programming language with a build in text editor, customizable to the bones; itself emacs has one of the most loyal and active community on the free software world **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** the learning curve is the most remarkable issue with emacs, Lisp itself is a quite paradigm breaker for any newcomer **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** don't desist, the learning curve is way to high but when you get confortable with the key bindings and the language the whole power of emacs will be at your hands **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Im using emacs because it has one of the best Elixir tooling packages Alchemist also after years of training the emacs keybindings are so natural to me ### 23. Use Emacs for edit or search the files **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** chen l. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 27, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** All are command based, which means you click the keys and the result immediately show/update to you. You do not need scroll the screen. Multiple windows support, even can open for same file in different locations. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Quite old. Not see major or new features update. For me, different search pattern support, multiple windows opened for different searchings is important for me. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** If like to scan through all the search results very quickly, I definitely use Emacs, as I do not need scroll up/down the windows. ### 24. Gnu emacs **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** It is the most expansive software. Language support and navigation support superb **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Key combinations not easy for fingers. Memory usage higher than other editors. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Web browser, emails, editing files on remote computer using local emacs instance ### 25. GNU emacs is a great tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tanim I. | Design Physicist, Research, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 24, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** It is extremely versatile, and usable both in GUI and ncurses (console) mode. It is the only other tool (other being IPython) that I can use from a screen session. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Perhaps I could learn how to use an IDE emacs package, which would make GNU emacs much more useful. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Steep learning curve (probably), but extremely functional and does not use very much memory. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use GNU emacs for programmatic work, and editing most documents. ### 26. After all those years emacs is still my default editor **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** The flexibility of the editor. I'm using it for almost everything during my work day. There is support for every programming languages I tried (though with various degrees of support). Emacs is a live programming environment, I greatly enjoy to be able to evaluate my code and in the editor and get feedback in live. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Emacs lisp isn't really a good programming language. I enjoy Lisp in general but Elisp isn't at the level of Common Lisp or scheme (depending on your religion), it is painful to do some simple things. Also, the standard library can be overwhelming as it is using a lot of quite terms unique to Emacs. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Emacs makes me productive by allowing me to stay in the same environment for almost all my programming and editing work. ### 27. A feasible lightweight replacement for heavy load IDEs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pablo Francisco P. | Scala/BigData Developer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 09, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** It is lightweight, both in terms of GUI usability and computing resources. It can be used as a terminal or a windowed application in most of desktop platforms. But what brings it to excellence is how easily extensible Emacs is. The concept of mode allow getting syntax highlighting and shortcuts for most of the languages and text file formats used today, the user just have to use its great package system to fetch the language mode plugin. Besides, there are solutions such us Spacemacs or Prelude with pre-sets including most useful packages and customisations, providing a fully productive IDE solution out-of-the-box. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Emacs-LIPS is not the most expressive flavour of LISP. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Use Prelude, that will provide an enriched version of the product. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** IDE for Scala software using Prelude and Ensime+scala-refactoring. This is a powerful combination to develop Scala applications. ### 28. Steep learning curve, but worth every bit of effort! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Md Safiyat R. | Head Of Operations, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 11, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Customizability. Configurability. The power given to the user. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** The initial learning curve. It may seem daunting at first, but eases with time. Also, the huge software. Sure it has a server client architecture, but even that could do good with additional improvements. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** If you have some time at hand, and a persevering team, this product is worth a try. Using it may seem daunting at first, but once you get used to it (and ELISP), this product is wonderful to use. I would like say, this is like the Swiss knife for developers. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using Emacs as a full fledged Python IDE with the support of the elpy package. Emacs provides us with many features of commercial python IDEs like PyCharm and the likes and more, with complete control in our hands. We have written a couple of emacs packages that we use to do quality checks on our code. ### 29. One of the best text editor **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 09, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs is the one of the best text editor and it's free. It's powerful and customizable. Unlike many other editors, you could use emacs most of the systems. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Steep learning curve. You can be lost with too many packages. Keyboard shortcuts could be rather non-intuitive for some. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** General coding and debugging ### 30. Fantastic, powerful editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 23, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs is infinitely configurable and extensible. I have been using it for over 20 years and I am still learning new things every day. It is a joy to use and to learn about it. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Because the configuration is done in Emacs Lisp, its learning curve can be quite daunting, particularly for complex configuration or customization. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Emacs for all my programming and text-editing needs. ### 31. Good package for editing code and texr **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 12, 2018 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Built in commands for traversing through the long code. Complete package for downloading and installing extensions including great performance **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Average user interface Complex for beginners need to know editing commands,opening files Having indentation problems ,omitting lines when copy/paste text or code **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Good for editing large amount of code and text **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** For editing code and text for projects on large scale ### 32. Powerful and customizable **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicolas C. | Ingénieur Développeur, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs is great! It has a lot of powerful and useful features. As a programmer, it allows me to work easier and faster, on several files at the same time. But other jobs can love it too! It also has tons of plugins to enhance its functionnality, you can even write your own!! **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** When using a lot of packages, there can be incompatibility between them and that can be annoying, especially when key bindings are in conflict. Emacs is not really AZERTY-friendly. And, it is not good looking at all if you think it is a flaw. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Dont hesitate to explore existing packages, with the following command: M-x package list-package. Start to learn Lisp programming language to release all of its power by writing your own plugins!! **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a software developper, it allows to edit code quickly and do a lot of handy things. I use it along with IntelliJ IDEA, and I cannot imagine working without both of them anymore! ### 33. Everything and a text-editor for my computer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammed Ismail A. | Developer Analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** 1. Extensibility 2. Help 3. No-mouse environment 4. In no time you can make Emacs 'your own Emacs' 5. You can replace almost every single software on your computer with Emacs, one at a time 6. Emacs is style! **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** There is nothing to dislike about Emacs for it is one of the essential software a computer should have. I'm do not like Vim, neither am I a fan of Notepad++, so Emacs is everything for me. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Atom, Sublime Text, Brackets **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** A text-editor that allows the user to do many other tasks from with the same window without having to leave the screen, with key-presses and no use of mouse at all. This improves productivity by increasing speed and throughput of an individual at work or otherwise. ### 34. Great and light editor. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 11, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** I like the fact that this editor doesn't lag and leaves a good impression with it's quick functionality. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** I don't really think there is something to dislike about it. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Not much really but if a popup window can be added that stays and pins on the desktop then that would be great. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used to plot down all the quick notes I needed while using ROS in a Linux environment during my research. ### 35. Gets the job done **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Elliot F. | Senior Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 05, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** The amount of customization that you can do in emacs really gives you the ability to make it your own. With community plugins readily available and supported for countless languages and frameworks it is hard to ignore. The built in package manager is very useful. The community around emacs is mature and often is able to help you when you run into any problems. This editor is old, but has gone through decades of improvement by thousands of engineers which has left it in a really good state. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Onboarding for emacs is challenging at first, but the built in tutorial offers a soft landing. Once out of the tutorial it just takes practice and time to become comfortable with it. It is a little daunting when you first get going as there is so much you can do that figuring out first steps can be difficult. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Spend time in the tutorial and make sure you have a good understanding of how to navigate so when you get out it is not daunting. Look around at various packages that will make your life easier. Packages worth looking at include helm, projectile, flymake-(language), and multiterm. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I dislike having to switch to many places when writing code and I've been able to more or less integrate everything I do into a single place. This speeds up my day to day tasks tremendously. Also, not having to use a mouse to get around an IDE is going to pay off in the long run for carpal tunnel. ### 36. Whirringly efficient, especially if you embrace the keyboard **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John C. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 09, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Quickly develop elegant macros and keybindings **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Overhead for less tech-savvy users, cumbersome font configuration **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Writing efficient & consistent code, and formatting different kinds of files quickly ### 37. I liken Emacs to one of the best swords ever crafted **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonathan T. | Engineering, Human Resources, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** It's a classic. There is minimalism, simplicity, and elegance to it. Emacs is available as a package to install on all flavors of Linux and can be installed with one command. As they say with photography, "The best camera is the one that you have with you." If you're ever logged into a server remotely, (or for that matter, something really complex like: a firewalled server via SSH via another private subnet server via SSH via tunneling over SSH to a VPN server), you simply can't set up your IDE and have it be useful to you in Dimension X, when your IDE is only useful to you in your local environment. Emacs is ultra-lightweight and was designed to run on the crappiest computers. I can open, edit my file, save, and close it, and be off to testing/iterating on my product/feature/website/whatever I'm building before the other person has even found and navigated the file to open with his IDE. With Emacs and a sufficiently large screen, I can split-window an arbitrary number of times just by using keyboard shortcuts. I regularly work with 2-4 files open in 4 quadrants; other times I have had 6-8 files windows (called buffers in Emacs) open. Emacs is extensible with Lisp extensions, so you can get just about any new benefits of modern IDEs like code-complete, syntax and line highlighting, static checking, etc by installing plugins. I have my go-to Emacs customizations that I've been maintaining for over 15 years. (See GitHub repo: jontsai/dotemacs). There are also online communities sharing dotemacs files, e.g. http://dotemacs.de/ By being simple (unobtrusive, no fidgeting with mouse, extensive keyboard shortcuts, etc), Emacs and Vim allow you to get into the zone, that productive existence in the space-time continuum where developers can either a) code for 12 hours straight, or b) produce effective output for a day in 2 hours, cranking out code like a beast. Terminal / Command line is awesomesauce. And Emacs can run from the terminal. Does your IDE run in the terminal? No? I didn't think so. Macros in Emacs are really nice (you can record, replay macros). Emacs is an IDE, but not in the sense that people think about IDEs. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Nothing. Emacs is the best editor there ever was. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Go for it! **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Emacs is completely free and easy to set up and customize for a team. Has compatibility with EditorConfig. ### 38. A very convenient console text editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexandre M. | Full Stack Web Developer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** I've used emacs for almost 6 years now, nothing can compare with it in terms of feature and usability for a text-based environment. On server-based environment, a text editor is necessary to use and emacs clearly makes the difference with all its shortcuts. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** The lisp configuration is not easy to grasp at first but you understand it after a while. Another issue is some terminals might inject some characters sometimes at the top of some files sometimes. The shortcuts are not very easy to master for beginners, some simple tutorial is definitely required to understand how the basic functions are working (other console editors also have this problem generally). **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Just try with basic files first, it's never to late to learn! **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using a console text editor on a server is mandatory and Emacs helps me to solve that need. In the same scenario, only a basic text editor could be used and this would reduce a lot my productivity. I can just ssh into any server with emacs installed and edit any file straight away. ### 39. Emacs - a great editor, a better IDE, the best virtual OS. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Peter B. | Hands-on Engineering Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 05, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs is extremely powerful and useful out of the box. Over the 16 years that I've been using it, I have repeatedly run into examples of real-world problems (refactors, broad code changes, text-based processing) that have been too hard or too time consuming for other developers to work on; or worse, that people feel they have to write a script to solve. As an emacs user, I don't have to write a script, I just run a few built-in commands using a couple keystrokes (or record a macro) and I'm done in a few minutes. This kind of advantage over all other non-emacs-aware computer professionals has served me well - it's literally a "secret-weapon" level of advantage that emacs users have. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Emacs does have a steep learning curve. I think for a lot of people, especially in the "on-demand TV and instant iOS app store gratification" generation, this is something they struggle to understand and take the plunge on - without an instant download and default set of config, and without a seems-quick-but-slows-you-down mouse-clicking interface; they don't have the attention span required to learn something of deep and lasting value, and thus miss out on the benefits of emacs. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Dig in, stick with it, totally worth it! If you're used to an editor like vi, you can get your keyboard shortcuts integrated. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Emacs is excellent at editing and working with code and text - I've never seen another editor come anywhere close, and I've tried many. But beyond that, it is more than an editor or IDE. I run shells with unlimited lines of history and output, interactive python buffers, sending code snippets to the REPL, it runs IRC, has a full git porcelain (magit), tells me the weather... and all my familiar keyboard shortcuts work everywhere, my session is saved, I can open files on remote machines and edit or diff them seamlessly as if they're local (TRAMP backed by ssh/scp). I liken emacs to the best operating system there is - there are always more programs I can easily install using its package manager, and I can write code for it myself if I so choose. It's just beautiful. ### 40. Give it a few weeks and you won't go back **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Trevor B. | Senior Scientist, Research, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 25, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** The keyboard-based navigation is the key benefit, and only takes a few hours to get into your muscle memory. Once you get the basic movement commands and the commands for finding different files, editing text becomes natural and fast, like an extension of your thoughts. Once you can't live without the ability to edit text quickly, there are a nearly infinitely number of other things Emacs can do to make your day-to-day better. Once you start installing and using packages from MELPA, Emacs is a modern development environment for almost any language. While I haven't used it as much as I could, org-mode documents are the only way I keep todo lists now. I've easily saved a few hours of tedious button pushing with keyboard macros. I hit a key to start recording, edit a line of text as I would anyhow, hit a key to stop recording, and then I can play back those keystrokes on the next 1000 lines in no time. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** With the endless extensibility of Emacs, it's easy to spend a lot of time on meta-work rather than actual work. Often that time is well spent, and ends up saving you time in the long run, but it's easy to fall into a trap of feeling productive editing your config files in order to avoid the task you're actually supposed to be doing. Additionally, it can be frustrating to update packages and find that they no longer work the way they worked before. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Start with a "starter kit" (I used prelude) and don't touch your configuration for the first month or two, just get used to using Emacs. I constrained myself to only using Emacs for 30 days, and by the end of the second week I had no desire to go back to any other text editor. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I do a lot of my development and project management with Emacs. The ability to edit text quickly is really indispensable -- it quickly becomes frustrating to watch someone edit text with the mouse. ### 41. The last text editor / IDE you will ever need **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex K. | Director, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 01, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Completely customizable in every way. Very consistent user experience in either the terminal or as a GUI application. Switching between buffers (you'll learn about this quickly) and executing code right in Emacs is very easy. Working on a remote server, Emacs provides multiple windows (C-x 3) for sharing data between a command line and a text file that you might be editing--very cool! Emacs has been around since the late 1970's and is just as relevant to computing as it ever has been. Not many other software tools can claim this. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Rather steep learning curve to get all the key chords down but they become second nature after a while. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Don't expect to understand it right away but learning this program will help you understand computing much better. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Python programming: great formatting help, text completion and text highlighting Org-mode: fantastic note taking tool. ### 42. The editor of god **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 17, 2017 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** - You can use emacs do anything - Emacs totally configurable. - You feel better than vim user. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Emacs starts slowly. You should wait more than 10 seconds sometimes. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** I recommend every vim user to use emacs. You will feel like as a god yourself. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it to edit source code, view configuration file. I also use orgzly with emacs to schedule my calendar. ### 43. Much more than a text editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** I love Emacs, it's my default text editor, terminal manager and sometimes mail client. It's infinitely extensible, and once you activate a few packages you'll see how powerful it can be. There is obviously something of a learning curve to Emacs, but at this point I can operate more effectively in an Emacs window than anywhere else on my machine. Furthermore, many of the Emacs keybindings are also the defaults in many other apps (Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E to get to the start and end of the line for example), and so having these stored in muscle memory makes your life better. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Emacs comes with some dumb defaults (Having to type M-x goto-line to goto a given line number for example), the very first thing I do on a new Emacs install is to fix a whole bunch of these things, to the point that my .emacs.d directory contains hundreds of lines of Lisp. Protip: If you're just getting started, begin by installing something like Prelude, which is a set of Emacs configurations that fix a bunch of the insane defaults. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** If you're coming in fresh, consider whether you want to use Emacs or the more popular Vim, give both a whirl and see which makes most sense to you. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I write code every day and Emacs is my IDE, text editor and shell. It allows me to be using the same environment on my laptop and the machines that I administer. ### 44. Emacs review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** chedi t. | Consultant, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** for me emacs is the best available editor on Linux, in addition to all the fantastic packages that you can install, you have a level of customization detail unprecedented. Other reasons are some iconic packages that I cannot live without anymore like maggit, org-mode and babel. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It's sometime slow when executing heavy tasks and it for some action where io is needed the ui is blocked. The learning curve is quiet steep and no good default configuration is provided for new users (this is fixed by prelude or spacemac) **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** If you are planning to start using emacs I would recommend that you start with the spacemac emacs distribution. It has many layer of functionnalities and a new users friendly interface and community. Also, keep in mind that emacs has a rich history and some of the decisions in the ui or execution is influenced by that heritage, but the good news is that almost everything can be customized to your specific needs. Knowing elisp is always a valuable plus but not really an obligation if you intend to use emacs solely as a text editor, but no one really does that. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** General programming tasks in python, js, haskell, c/c++ and lisp Data organization and task management with org-mode Literate programming with org-mode and babel Document authoring with Latex and org mode Code source management with maggit ### 45. The editor that came from heaven! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rafik N. | Partner - 1st Guru, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** The possibility to extend it with ease, Helps and its many packages, magit, orgmode, smartparens ... The buffers management, and the mighty tab indentation! **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** The single -threading and locking... And poor support for some languages, which I honestly don't use! **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Spend time to learn it. Probability one of my most valuable IT assets. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Productivity, self-confidence, and high geekiness levels! ### 46. The best editor out there. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Miguel Angel A. | Instructor Professor, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 22, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** The best thing about emacs are how easy it is to extend it and how it has features for everything imaginable while still being a decently sized software package. It's also unobstrusive and is solid as a rock. Another good thing about Emacs is that it works exactly the same accross all it's supported platforms, down to the configuration files themselves. As a bonus, Emacs is also extensively documented and there are lots of useful information on the Web about it and it's configuration language Emacs Lisp. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It's very steep learning curve. Though it's so well documented that's not really a problem. Enabling Cua-Mode (changes key bindings so that copy/paste/cut and the like use the traditional ctrl+c/v/x instead of Emacs quite unusual key binsings) is quite obscure. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Emacs is probably the best text editor out there but it has a steep learining curve. My recommendation would be to take a couple of days to practice getting used to the key bindings and enabling Cua-mode. Another thing is that anyone using emacs should take the time to learn all abou org-mode. That's simply the best emacs feature in my opinion. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use emacs to write reports and white papers using the wonderfull and all encompasing Org-Mode. I also use it to write and debug python scripts, medium sized C/C++ programs and draw diagrams with Ditaa. Most of my academic and programming work is made with Emacs. The only thing I don't do with Emacs is Java programming, but that's mostly a problem with the language than the editor. ### 47. Emacs: a worthwhile investment in learning **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Liam B. | Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs makes me more productive as a developer. org-mode (orgmode.org) has organized my entire life. It's practically its own operating system; there's very little that emacs can't do. Having used vim, Atom, Sublime Text, Notepad++ and a variety of other editors over the years, I always come back to emacs. The history of emacs is colorful and its cult-like following (see: Saint IGNUcious). One of the best features of emacs, often going unmentioned, is that it works just as well in a console as it does in a more modern graphical environment. So even in a PuTTY console on Windows (connected to, say, an EC2 instance) I can use emacs just like I would natively on OS X's desktop. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Out of the box, it's pretty terrible. Try prelude for some better defaults: https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude The learning curve is step and seemingly almost infinite. In-depth configuration requires learning Emacs LISP. At first glance, it has an extremely unappealing color scheme and keys that will only familiar if you are using this keyboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard (what is a "Meta" key?!) and upon further inspection has some downright pathological behavior (leaving "emacs droppings", or files ending in "~" everywhere). Fortunately, these are easily resolved with one of the many "starter kits" including Prelude, mentioned above. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Set aside a few weekends and go through tutorials, particularly the Emacs official guide. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Emacs is a swiss-army chainsaw. Transforming large and numerous text files easily is a breeze, even if they reside on other machines. It's my daily-driver text editor and the first package I install on a new machine. ### 48. GNU Emacs, includes kitchen sink **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Damon B. | Senior Forensic Analyst, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 18, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs has been around forever, so has a large base of support and experience to go with it. The set of extensions is pretty extensive, though not always comprehensive. You can customize Emacs to do pretty much anything you like. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** It is overly complex, a bit on the large side, and one need to learn the LISP language to write extensions for Emacs. As a text editor, its keyboard shortcuts are fairly arcane. It uses a GUI only as an afterthought if at all, when available. It is not installed by default on many common systems (Mac OS, Linux) due to its large size and steep learning curve. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Try Vim, SublimeText, Atom, and the other more modern editors out there too. If you'd still choose Emacs over them, it might be for you. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used many text editing tools over the years, and looked for those that had at least basic understanding of different programming languages and the conventions that go along with them around tools, syntax, etc. A good text editor makes it easier to translate your thoughts into code and helps you find and organize your work. Emacs does an admirable job at these tasks, once you overcome the learning curve. However, it stands in isolation from other editing tools so if you are in an environment where you can't run Emacs, your skills don't translate well to other common editing tools. ### 49. Easy hot keys, customizable **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 13, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Nice hot key controls. Love the walkthrough tutorial that's always available, thorough enough without being overkill. Solid documentation. Great customization options. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** Took some time to get used to, but the tutorial is helpful and documentation is solid. Github defaulting to vim makes it frustrating for an emacs-dedicated user. If github defaulted to emacs, that would be awesome. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Take the time to figure out what customizations you like, then go for it and recommend the best customizations to your team. Totally worth it. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nice text editor, use it all the time for quick notes in the terminal and have used it for fairly extensive programming projects. ### 50. Emacs is a flexible, powerful editor for developers who take the time to learn it **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Clifton M. | Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2016 **What do you like best about GNU Emacs?** Emacs can be customized to fit specific needs. It provides the ability to use and assign keyboard shortcuts for many, many tasks. I like the ability to choose which plugins I use. I also like the ability to customize aesthetic aspects of my work environment, including the look and feel of Emacs. **What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?** There is a steep learning curve. This must be overcome in order to be productive. It is not always as powerful as a full-fledged IDE like IntelliJ. Debugging a running program is not nearly as full-featured as debugging in a full-fledged IDE. **Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:** Be prepared to spend a lot of time learning at the beginning, but, if you enjoy customizing your work environment and are willing to learn how to customize, Emacs can be an effective tool. **What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Emacs for software development. It is my primary editor for working in Clojure. There are language-specific plugins that make it well-suited to development and help make me productive. ## GNU Emacs Discussions - [What is GNU Emacs used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-gnu-emacs-used-for) - [Is Emacs better than Vim?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-emacs-better-than-vim) - [Is Emacs worth learning?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-emacs-worth-learning) - [What's so great about Emacs?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-s-so-great-about-emacs) - [View GNU Emacs pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/gnu-emacs/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-23+23%3A38%3A46+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=1073340b-8375-437b-b3bb-8ff4cef51a51&secure%5Btoken%5D=445a3a91d40b201b9e7e955234cba5be4eacbc3b6463dc506b449511f4b58857&format=llm_user) ## GNU Emacs Features **Coding** - Syntax highlighting - Autocompletion - Find and replace - Code folding **Editing** - Collaborative editing - Language Support - Selection Methods **Functionality** - Extensibility - Cross-platform support - Plugins and integrations - Security **Agentic AI - Landing Page Builders** - Cross-system Integration ## Top GNU Emacs Alternatives - [Visual Studio Code](https://www.g2.com/products/visual-studio-code/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (2,633 reviews) - [Notepad++](https://www.g2.com/products/notepad/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (2,412 reviews) - [Sublime Text](https://www.g2.com/products/sublime-text/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (1,748 reviews)