I am looking for tips for learning Vim or Emacs the smart way

Question

I am a quite happy user of Eclipse (I mostly develop in PHP and Python), however I found the answers to \"What specific productivity gains does Vim/Emacs provide over GUI text e

Answer 1

I have the general feeling that vim and emacs are not the kind of editor you learn by "playing with it" though.

My experience with emacs is actually quite the opposite. I tried going through the tutorial, but it didn't seem to help much. The way I ultimately ended up learning is with a reference card and just forced myself to use emacs on my code until I got it correct*. Then again, I do also have a screw loose. Your milage may vary. Offer void where prohibited. You get the idea.

One other piece of advice I recall reading somewhere is to try writing down a list of about 10 commands you want to learn and keep it by you while coding. Once you've mastered those commands, make another list of 10 more. Keep doing this until you've got a big enough chunk of the editor committed to memory.

*Note that the linked reference card is out-of-date. If you google, you can get a more up-to-date reference card.

knowing that I have no prior experience whatsoever on any of the two, and that I use and develop (mostly PHP and Python) on GNU/linux systems (ubuntu, archlinux), is there any of the two which would represent a better option to start with?

I'm an emacs guy, so my opinion should be obvious. That said, you're likely best trying out the one that more people you know seem to use. Having someone who's experienced with emacs (and I'd assume vim) is a great help.

If you don't know anyone who uses either one, choose whichever one you feel is the prettiest or has the coolest name. You won't know enough to know which one you'll like, so you might as well choose arbitrarily.