Emacs, Xhtml, Javascript
One of my projects for next year has Javascript and related technologies as a strong contender1. A big portion of the satisfaction that comes with programming has to be from the environment used for design and coding. Emacs does that for me.
For modifying the code behind this website, I make use of nxml-mode, css-mode, ecmascript-mode and php-mode. For embedded php, ecmascript or css code, I make use of html-inlined. I’m also going to try integrating Mozilla and emacs via MozRepl. The supposed benefit is never having to leave emacs to evaluate chunk of javascript.
Why emacs? First, I don’t really know any other tool that well. The big advantage for me is in how trivial it is to integrate different tools within the same program. I can transfer the same set of skills from writing papers, coding in C, lisp or assembly, or gasp playing Tetris. Moreover, if a feature isn’t available, it’s trivial to extend it (if you know elisp.) Now that I have my environment more or less setup, I’ll have to actually go and learn javascript…
BTW, emacs 22 is in pre-test. I built a CVS copy of emacs last week and it has been super-stable for me thus far.
- the others being C++ and Java (↩)