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Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

kakoune.org

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Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#151

Post by hashhar »

DigitalJack wrote: post #142
CJefferson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, in my opinion. The problem is the people who reply will be the people for whom vim and Emacs "clicked". I'm like you, and when I looked at my vim using friends, they really aren't any more efficient. Also, while your editor will "work forever", expect interesting plugins (like C++ integration via clang) to be less stable than say atom or visual studio, and to have to nice plugins every few years. Also, they don't…

I agree with saying no. Vim and Emacs will "click" for you when you want to learn them. Wanting to learn them is different than wanting to have learned them. It's the difference between wanting to write a novel and wanting to have written a novel. Personally I would nominate emacs using spacemacs[0], but I knew both already going in. I have a hard time understanding what people find hard about Vim, but I've used it f…

Exactly. The only thing needed to configure when starting out is disabling of arrow keys and low keyboard repeat rate so that you don't do wrong things like holding down keys (arrow keys, delete, backspace etc.). Holding down keys is a Vim anti-pattern.

[1]: https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/vim-anti-patterns/

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#152

Post by SatvikBeri »

_skel wrote: post #149

One of the nice things about being an Emacs user (hang in there, I have a real point about Vim to make) is that the concepts (especially non-modal editing) and the keyboard shortcuts map well to newer IDEs. I switch between IntelliJ and Emacs all day, and all I had to do to become comfortable is choose the Emacs keyboard preset in the IntelliJ preferences. The same is true for Eclipse and Visual Studio. The Emacs par…

FWIW, I'm a 6-year Vim user, I have the same great experience using Jetbrains IDEs with the Vim presets.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#153

Post by castle-bravo »

ncd wrote: post #10

This looks awesome (although I think the name could use a little work). It also brings up a question I have for HN: Every few years, I make an attempt to learn to use one of the classic editors like vim or emacs, and inevitably give up after the enormous productivity drop I suffer when writing code. I just can't seem to pick up the muscle memory required to become fast with these tools, and the overwhelming array of…

Yes. Learning Emacs is 100% worth it. I feel like everything else is a joke by comparison (no offense).

Emacs, IMO isn't like any other editor. You can't just install it and have it work for you out of the box. Another poster suggested that there would be people for whom Emacs and vi 'just click', but I don't think that's how anyone learns to use emacs. You need to customize the editor in order to make it useful. It's not about memorizing key combinations (that'll come with use over a long period of time), it's about employing the ridiculously powerful tools that come with Emacs or can be downloaded from the package repositories. With Emacs, you can do anything you want. When I first started using Emacs, it felt like I was laying siege to a fortress. Doing basic things like saving a file involved looking up a key combination. Now anything else feels not much better than notepad.

To learn emacs, I think that the best place to start (after giving up on the tutorial) is to read other people's init.el files. You can find these all over github. You should read through them and any customization or function that you think you'd like to have for yourself, copy (the key combination for paste is C-y FYI) that into your init.el file (~/.emacs by default). As you read through the init files, you'll find out more and more about what Emacs can do for you, and you'll build an editor that's comfortable for you. IMO, without a custom init file, Emacs isn't really Emacs. Treat it like a side project for the first month or so, and I believe that eventually you'll move over completely. Have fun!

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#154

Post by QuadrupleA »

_skel wrote: post #149

One of the nice things about being an Emacs user (hang in there, I have a real point about Vim to make) is that the concepts (especially non-modal editing) and the keyboard shortcuts map well to newer IDEs. I switch between IntelliJ and Emacs all day, and all I had to do to become comfortable is choose the Emacs keyboard preset in the IntelliJ preferences. The same is true for Eclipse and Visual Studio. The Emacs par…

Just a quick note that I've been using Visual Studio and the VsVim plugin happily for years. They work great together. All the Vim-fu plus real keyword completion, jumping to definitions, instant renaming of any function/variable (VAX plugin) etc.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#155

Post by jxy »

haldean wrote: post #134
DennisP wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I tend to use visual mode. It sounds like Kakoune is basically visual mode by default, which is cool but not that different. This example was a bit silly: "dtf will delete to next f, if you then realize that was one f before the one you targeted, you need to undo, go back to your initial position, and try again with d2tf." There's no need to undo. Just follow up with a dot and you're done. Which pretty muc…

If you just replace 'd' with 'y', though, the example is a good one: hitting period would just yank the same thing again. Edit: the yank example is actually way better, because you don't find out that you did something wrong until you go off and paste it somewhere else.

If you aren't sure where you'll end up with, do, in this case

   mmffffy`m
Why would this be better? Because it works in macros too. In vim, you can record it as you go. In vi(nvi), I write it somewhere in the file, basically after I did it once, I would do

   Ommffffy`m^[0"wDdd
and use

   @W
later.

You can of course use vim's visual mode, but in this simple case, there's not much difference.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#156

Post by wtetzner »

reitanqild wrote: post #65
notheguyouthink wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said I suspect most people would be better off learning a good IDE properly, including but not limited to: To be clear, do you think a "good IDE" is inherently better than Vim/Kako for most people? Personally i don't see a difference in a GUI based editor and a text based editor. In fact, i quite prefer text based, because it forces an editor to treat the keyboard as a first class citizen - GUI IDEs can get la…

To be clear, do you think a "good IDE" is inherently better than Vim/Kako for most people? Right now, for most people: very much yes. Personally i don't see a difference in a GUI based editor and a text based editor. In fact, i quite prefer text based, because it forces an editor to treat the keyboard as a first class citizen - GUI IDEs can get lazy and revert to mouse whenever they please. Fair point. However: Betwe…

> Here is where I'll argue that the main advantage of the big IDEs are that they have focused on UX for years.

You say that, but somehow I still find the UX of every IDE I've tried to be lacking. I much prefer the UX of Emacs.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#157

Post by scaryclam »

_skel wrote: post #149

One of the nice things about being an Emacs user (hang in there, I have a real point about Vim to make) is that the concepts (especially non-modal editing) and the keyboard shortcuts map well to newer IDEs. I switch between IntelliJ and Emacs all day, and all I had to do to become comfortable is choose the Emacs keyboard preset in the IntelliJ preferences. The same is true for Eclipse and Visual Studio. The Emacs par…

I find that nearly all editors have VIM "mode" that will allow you to just use the vim key bindings, so it's not really a problem swapping between two editors. They tend to have an emacs mode as well, in case you're interested in using your emacs keys.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#158

Post by Phlogistique »

billconan wrote: post #148

I will give this a try. I had been a long time vim/emacs rejector. I used ide and sublime text for most of the time. But few weeks ago, I needed to program a server for deep learning. Because of the graphics driver on that server, there is really no option to run a gui application. So I had to learn vim. It turned out to be not that difficult to get used to it. The only complain I have is code navigation. The font si…

You might like the '*' and '#' keys, as well as marks, particularly "'.".

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#159

Post by wtetzner »

marktangotango wrote: post #103
notheguyouthink wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said I suspect most people would be better off learning a good IDE properly, including but not limited to: To be clear, do you think a "good IDE" is inherently better than Vim/Kako for most people? Personally i don't see a difference in a GUI based editor and a text based editor. In fact, i quite prefer text based, because it forces an editor to treat the keyboard as a first class citizen - GUI IDEs can get la…

The core "IDE" features you don't normally get with an editor are things like project views, intellisense, code completion as you type, real time parsing and error highlight, code navigation. Sure you can get most all of this by wrangling plugins for vim (or which ever editor you choose) but in an IDE like eclipse, netbeans, intellij, visual studio, it's all there, ready to go. In effect, a modern IDE is "programming…

Sure, but the biggest problem with modern IDE's is the fact that they are terrible at editing text.

IDE's and text editors overlap in their uses, but they are not the same. Sometimes you really do just have a text editing task, and none of the IDE functionality will help with it. Also, the ways in which IDE's are extensible is lacking compared to something like Emacs. Yes, they come with a bunch of built-in useful stuff, but sometimes you want to add a keybinding to do some editing task you do a lot in a particular project or company, even if it's not useful in a more general-purpose setting.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#160

Post by jstewartmobile »

equalarrow wrote: post #112

I don't want to belittle anyone's work or inventions, but I think modal editors are old and outdated. They've had their time in my mind. Bret Victor gave a great talk about programming and tools: https://vimeo.com/36579366 His talks always blow me away.

His demo is a neat parlor trick, but when you think about it, he's really just painting with javascript instead of a paint program.

Introduce any kind of higher dimensionality into his model and it breaks.

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