Emacs (was: List Ettiquette)

[Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>]

On 2009-08-31 03:46 (-0500), Ron Johnson wrote:

> emacs: Eighty Megabytes And Constantly Swapping
>
> (I feel like I'm channeling 1994...)

Yes, some jokes need to be updated. My current Emacs session takes about
53 MB of memory. There are several buffers open, Gnus mail/news reader
as well as Org-mode calendar/agenda/organizer loaded. How much your text
editor, programming environment, mail/news application and calendar
application eat memory together?

Vi is probably considered the "not-heavy-weight but still powerful text
editor". Today's standard Vi-like editor is Vim so here are some
comparisons about memory consumption. A fresh Emacs GUI session (GTK)
takes 34 MB of memory; A fresh GVim session (GTK) takes 37 MB of memory.
If I start the same Emacs and Vim executables in a text terminal mode
the numbers are 27 MB for Emacs and 30 MB for Vim. So it would seem that
Emacs is a bit lighter than full-featured Vim. Both editors can be
compiled with smaller set of features which may make them even lighter.

Bottom line: Emacs and Vim are light-weight applications in today's
standards. Emacs is not heavier than a full-featured Vim.