Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

I use Emacs with evil-mode (vim bindings) and Programmer Dvorak for my keyboard layout.

It's like anything in life, you just have to make yourself do it. There's no substitute for putting in the work and time. Sure, it's painful for the first few months, but I believe it pays off in the end.

I think the biggest thing is this: you say you try every few years to learn these editors. Don't quit next time.

I started to use Vim maybe six months ago and I found it obviously quite difficult to start with but I took it quite slow. I use Visual Studio at work and installed VsVim so I practiced VIM at work and at home on personal projects I used Vim exclusively.

To start off I used no addons at all, and didn't use any for probably a month or two. I'm a front end developer and spend most of my time in Javascript and Rails at home to give you an idea of what tasks I'd do in Vim.

Eventually I started to notice things I found hard in Vim and slowly set about finding some addons to complement my usage, maybe just two or three at a time. I still probably only use about ten addons so it's not too heavy.

Was it worth it? I'd say so, I'm still learning but I can do most things without using the keyboard although I'm certain there are more simple and elegant ways to do things in Vim heh.

Oh and the best tip I heard? Don't place anything in your .vimrc you don't understand.

My 2cents on how I picked up emacs:

Keep using your 'main' editor for coding for now.

Get a shell/terminal that you can open/close with a hotkey (iTerm2 on Mac or something like yakuake on linux)

Run the editor you want to learn (I recommend emacs) in your hotkey terminal (basically you want an 'always there' emacs that you can just pop open at the press of a shortcut key)

Spend 5 minutes learning the basic commands.

+) Move the cursor around.

+) Open a file.

+) Save a file.

+) Switch between buffers/files

Now while coding in your existing editor, use the hotkey window with the new editor as your 'scratchpad' or diary. Note down ideas, todo items, thoughts about the code your are writing etc. Google commands as you need them and you'll pick things up bit by bit.

You don't see the productivity drop because you're not using the editor for your main task of coding, but you'll be using it 'little and often' which is a great way to pick things up.

I made the full switch when after a year or so at work I found myself pseudo-coding and stubbing out methods in my scratch file in emacs and copying them to my IDE.

YMMV but hope that helps :)

If you are wondering why Kakoune and not Vim, the OP claims...

(you find following passages later in his post and they don't reflect my opinion)

> A design goal of Kakoune is to beat vim at its own game, while providing a cleaner editing model.

> Kakoune manages to beat Vim at the keystroke count game in most cases, using much more idiomatic commands.

> Kakoune provides an efficient code editing environment, both very predictible, hence scriptable, and very interactive. Its learning curve is considerably easier than Vim thanks to a more consistent design associated with strong discoverability, while still being faster (as in less keystrokes) in most use cases.

This is also quite an important difference:

> Kakoune’s grammar is object followed by verb, combined with instantaneous feedback, that means you always see the current object (In Kakoune we call that the selection) before you apply your change, which allows you to correct errors on the go.