title: I am looking for tips for learning Vim or Emacs the smart way
body: <p>I am a quite happy user of Eclipse (I mostly develop in PHP and Python), however I found the answers to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1088387">"What specific productivity gains does Vim/Emacs provide over GUI text editors?"</a> interesting enough to make me wish to try out <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_%28text_editor%29" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Vim</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Emacs</a> as well and see if they would turn out to be a better solution for me.</p>
  
  <p>I have the general feeling that Vim and Emacs are not the kind of editor you learn by "playing with it" though. I have the impression you must dedicate some time and effort to "study" them a bit, before you can benefit from their power.</p>
  
  <p>So, I have two questions for the community:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>In the linked thread responders have essentially answered by commenting on Vim (often mentioning: "I'm sure Emacs has the same"). <a href="http://www.google.com/trends?q=emacs%2C+vim" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Google trends</a> seems to indicate Vim is the mostly adopted between the two, however my first question is: <strong>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, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Arch Linux</a>), is there any of the two which would represent a better option to start with?</strong> (To be clear: my question is <em>not about the quality</em> of the editors but it is about what it is <em>strategically better to learn</em> in my situation).</p></li>
  <li><p><strong>What advice would you give me on how to learn using it/them?</strong> I know this is a broad question, but it is deliberately so. Have a look at <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1791553/what-are-the-most-common-pitfalls-for-a-beginner-drupal-user/1792525#1792525">this answer</a> (unrelated topic) for an idea of the kind of information / style of answer I am looking for [but do not feel obliged to answer that way... any contribution will be welcome, in any form!]</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT (on picking the "accepted answer")</strong></p>
  
  <p>I picked one answer as the accepted one just now, but I would like to say "thank you" to <strong>all</strong> those who shared their experience and advice: almost all of it has being useful to me in some way. The thread has definitively exceeded my expectations! Thank you! :)</p>