I started using vi when I had an AT&T Unix PC (68010 with attached monitor, 20 Mb hard drive, SVR about 2) and vi was the only (reasonable) game in town. When I got a job using VMS (the Very Malevolent System) in about 1992, I asked on comp.editors what was workable as a vi clone. (Eve vi emulation was a travesty, but then, I was using VMS anyhow.) One reply came from Paul Fox telling me about vile, which had been ported to both VMS and DOS.

I started using vile and loved it. It was based on microEmacs, and still had the same extension language. I then spent about 1.5 years on the Dark Side (GNU Emacs ), but decided I most needed an editor, not a complete user environment.

In my idle time, I started tinkering with vim, which is what I use now. Even after over 10 years with vile, vim seems a little more natural now.

BTW, I usually keep copies of wily and sam around --- they are irritatingly useful at times. And I occasionally use emacs when I need a more interactive debugger for Perl or Ruby.