Q: "Dr. Anasastio, can you recommend a different editor from emacs? It's so hard to work with. Can we use pico or jot?"
A: "No. Emacs is THE editor. If you plan to work in computer science, you have to know it."
Though I personally use TextMate for most coding these days, I can certainly see his point. 15 years later, emacs is still relevant and powerful (and free).
Find me another editor you can say that about, and I'll pay you $5. (vi doesn't count: it's only relevant because sysadmins could fit it on a floppy, and now it's vim anyway.)
It seems to be written by someone just getting into the world of development and they're excited about it. Not particularly neat for us older hackers.
AND, phpMyAdmin is not a mac app...