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Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#21

Post by eliah-lakhin »

dmm wrote: post #19
eliah-lakhin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that these buttons work too. But this is not a convenient way of using Emacs.

You said: > I would like to use "page-down" instead. So just use page-down. What's the problem? Why isn't it convenient?

I prefer to follow design principals and product's phylosophy that laid down to the product by it's developers. If I find the principles inappropriate for me I prefer to find something different, than modding the product using any sort of plugins. Including keyboard's extension keys that I would call "plugin" too in this context.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#22

Post by dmm »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #21
dmm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said: > I would like to use "page-down" instead. So just use page-down. What's the problem? Why isn't it convenient?

I prefer to follow design principals and product's phylosophy that laid down to the product by it's developers. If I find the principles inappropriate for me I prefer to find something different, than modding the product using any sort of plugins. Including keyboard's extension keys that I would call "plugin" too in this context.

Searching around for the perfect tool is so much easier than actually doing something, isn't it?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#23

Post by eliah-lakhin »

auganov wrote: post #12
eliah-lakhin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, comeone! I didn't say I can't/don't want to learn anything. I just said that learning barrier in case of Emacs specificially is too high for me. I don't want to spend that much time on code editor. But it doesn't mean I don't want to learn at all. To be more specific, if Emacs would have more familiar keybindings for Windows/Mac users I probably use it. For example from the manual http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/co…

You might like http://www.ergoemacs.org/ Anyways there's probably tons of plugins that would change key bindings to something that you'd like more. Might also want to look into cua-mode. Maybe you can tell us why you need it to work in a console. Do you only want to edit files over there? Could try sshfs. If you're able to use X11 on your servers you might look into X11 forwarding through ssh to use Sublime too.

> Maybe you can tell us why you need it to work in a console. Do you only want to edit files over there?

Well, I'm using Windows on my primary machine when I'm at home, and Mac when I'm outside. It's not a secret that Windows is bad as a development environment. Even it's file system has issues in mapping to unix fs. So I prefer to keep all my development things on remote Linux machine, and work through the SSH. That's why I'm interesting in terminal-based editors.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#24

Post by eliah-lakhin »

dmm wrote: post #22
eliah-lakhin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to follow design principals and product's phylosophy that laid down to the product by it's developers. If I find the principles inappropriate for me I prefer to find something different, than modding the product using any sort of plugins. Including keyboard's extension keys that I would call "plugin" too in this context.

Searching around for the perfect tool is so much easier than actually doing something, isn't it?

True! :) In fact I already have a good code editor(not terminal-based) that I used to use. I just want to find something that may improve my experience.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#25

Post by thenerdfiles »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #6
thenerdfiles wrote: post #5

vim-spf13 is the way to go. I cannot believe how beautifully easy it is to hit the ground running. Incomparable. Except for maybe LightTable, but I'm constantly running into PATH issues. So I will settle (is it really "settling"?) for PythonMode in vim.

I will take a look. Thank you! I suppose keybindings and modes are the same as in vanilla vim?

Keybindings are the same, motions the same — but you should expect more motions (vim-easymotion), a lot of other great plugins, and a very enhanced -space.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#26

Post by auganov »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #23
auganov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like http://www.ergoemacs.org/ Anyways there's probably tons of plugins that would change key bindings to something that you'd like more. Might also want to look into cua-mode. Maybe you can tell us why you need it to work in a console. Do you only want to edit files over there? Could try sshfs. If you're able to use X11 on your servers you might look into X11 forwarding through ssh to use Sublime too.

> Maybe you can tell us why you need it to work in a console. Do you only want to edit files over there? Well, I'm using Windows on my primary machine when I'm at home, and Mac when I'm outside. It's not a secret that Windows is bad as a development environment. Even it's file system has issues in mapping to unix fs. So I prefer to keep all my development things on remote Linux machine, and work through the SSH. That…

I see. I tried using a remote server as my dev environment. Most of the time it ALMOST works. But there's so many edge cases where it gets annoying. It never really worked out. I'm on Windows too and I did manage to make it into a decent environment. Yes it does take time and effort. But I'm so so glad I did, it's really worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#27

Post by todd8 »

Sublime Text is pretty and fairly easy to use. I own a copy. However, I would seriously recommend that you take the time to learn Vim or Emacs. I've used both, extensively, and can recommend either without reservation. They have slightly different strengths and weaknesses that lead to endless comparisons, but neither one would be a mistake to learn and use as your primary development editor. I currently use Emacs.

Both Emacs and Vim require an investment in time to become productive. The break even point, where using the new editor is finally not too frustrating to use, is a few days for either one. Make that investment in time. After a few weeks the power that these editors provide will start to open up, and after a year, you will feel like no other tool for editing that can touch what you can do with these thoroughly professional tools. If you care about your craft, take the dive and learn a first class tool. They are open source and run on almost anything.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#28

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #8
ftomassetti wrote: post #7

What about Sublime Text?

There are some pitfalls, but generally I like it. The only reason I don't use it as my main editor - it is not terminal based. I mean, for example I want to run the editor remotely connecting to remote server through SSH. And the editor should work with the remote file system natively. I can't do it with Sublime Text(or not?).

Nah, it's going to be between vim and emacs if you want to do that seamlessly. Try installing tmux though.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#29

Post by eliah-lakhin »

todd8 wrote: post #27

Sublime Text is pretty and fairly easy to use. I own a copy. However, I would seriously recommend that you take the time to learn Vim or Emacs. I've used both, extensively, and can recommend either without reservation. They have slightly different strengths and weaknesses that lead to endless comparisons, but neither one would be a mistake to learn and use as your primary development editor. I currently use Emacs. Bo…

Hm... What can you say about Textadept? For the first glance it seems like a good alternative with lesser entry barriers. At least comparing with vanilla vim and emacs.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#30

Post by snogglethorpe »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #11
eliah-lakhin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, comeone! I didn't say I can't/don't want to learn anything. I just said that learning barrier in case of Emacs specificially is too high for me. I don't want to spend that much time on code editor. But it doesn't mean I don't want to learn at all. To be more specific, if Emacs would have more familiar keybindings for Windows/Mac users I probably use it. For example from the manual http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/co…

I suggest learning Emacs because of the extensibility and the huge amount of plugins available. I don't think it would take more than a few hours to get accustomed to basic editing in Emacs (moving with C-n C-p C-f C-f, and searching as a way of navigating the file, also opening and closing files -- this should be enough to get you started). I just tried the keys you mentioned in Emacs: they all worked (except for se…

> I just tried the keys you mentioned in Emacs: they all worked (except for selecting with Shift).

Selecting-with-shift works in Emacs too.

[It was added a few years ago so might not work if you've got an ancient version installed...]

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