Using Emacs as a front-end for R
From the post:
Back when I was a grad student, I was a devoted Emacs user. I basically used it like an operating system: it wasn’t just my text editor, but also my mail reader, my Web browser, my news reader, and so much more. (I once even asked our sysadmin to change my default shell to /usr/bin/emacs. He refused.) So when I started doing development in the S language, it was inevitable for me to think I could tweak some existing Emacs scripts and make it easier for me to edit S code. Sure enough, this turned into a major project (S-mode) with several collaborators, that culminated in being able to run the S interpreter within Emacs, and get (then-radical) features like command history and transcript management. When R came along, a new team adapted S-mode for R, and ESS — Emacs Speaks Statistics — was born.
Whether you are a grad student or no, if you use Emacs, you really need to take a look at this post.