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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

#251

Post by _y4o5 »

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…

Don't waste your time with these cryptic editors. Get a more reasonable editor such as Sublime Text or VSCode that allow you to install plugins for emacs/vim bindings etc.

IMHO the best bang for buck that you get with these editors comes from learning just a handful of commands for the most common stuff, i.e. open/close/save, move caret, cut/copy/paste/, switch between buffers. So with a more modern editor with emacs/vim like plugin you can have the best of both worlds, i.e. enable fast operations for the common stuff while also having sensible menus etc. for the non-common stuff. If you go "raw" emacs/vim, then everything is cryptic.

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

#252

Post by reitanqild »

falcolas wrote: post #218
reitanqild wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't say anything bad about vim, I use it on a daily basis but normal IDEs aren't necessarily as bad as some people seem to want to portray them: A few hints to get reasonably good, fast: Use ctrl+arrowleft/arrowright to jump words at a time. Use shift to select as you move. This works together so ctrl + shift + arrowright means select to the next word boundary. At keast in some IDEs this will also stop at word boun…

A few hints to get reasonably good, fast (in vim): Use w, W to jump words at a time. Use v before moving to select as you move. This works together, so vw will select to the next word boundary. Press i to insert text, escape to stop inserting text. Next: in the :help files, you will find a hint that tells you a direct shortcut for that command (like :help quit, or :help write, or just plain :help).

I personally already use vim, actually prefer it when I remote to servers.

I guess my point is just that it seems to me a lot of people (not necessarily you guys) use vim as some kind of cargo cult.

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

#253

Post by drew-y »

blakeyrat wrote: post #165
hans wrote: post #60

Pontificating but for ide + editor replacement: someday we'll see ai/ml features that aide in opening files and keeping the right blobs of code nearby, maybe pre fetch good goog links that can drop down on a whim panel. Even some kind of auto model visualizer that helps every so often like a replacement for the ignoble package mmanager side panel view. We're still so stuck on text editing.

I think we need to first get over the hurdle of "code == text". I mean, the features you talk about are great-- but right now I can't even embed a little vector graphic explaining a function's flow in my source file. Every time I've suggested using a file format that allows things like fonts, styles, embedded images, to write my code, the reaction is always an insanely irrational knee-jerk against it. (Seriously, try…

This is actually something that can be done in the IDE distributed with Racket (https://racket-lang.org/). When I first started playing with the language one of the biggest things that stood out was the ability to embed images straight into the source code. It's pretty neat and I other platforms adopt it.

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

#254

Post by flukus »

wtetzner wrote: post #235
asimjalis wrote: post #234

Neat. One question: How can I script it? What is the scripting language for customizing the editor? I couldn’t find information on this in the documentation.

This thread explains that you script it using shell commands: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13166635

So it's not possible to have something like vims quickfix?

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

#255

Post by p0nce »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #57
SeanDav wrote: post #40

From the github docs: > " Due to Kakoune relying heavily on being in a Unix-like environment, no native Windows version is planned." Deal breaker right there. If I am going to go to the effort of learning a new editor, it better run on all reasonable platforms - like Vim does.

It blows my mind that people want Unix tools in a non-unix environment. With that said, Windows is working on that embedded native linux thing, so i imagine it will work there.

Actually it does work there.

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

#256

Post by ZenoArrow »

throwaway991872 wrote: post #119
gbersac wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is very hard to be more unintuitive than vim.

Vim is unintuitive at first, but there's excellent documentation. With Visual Studio, the documentation is horrible, you always encounter stale links to unorganized and regularly changing microsoft.com websites. Relatively basic things are left unexplained and documentation is outsourced to Stackoverflow: 1) How do I restore the output window I clicked it away in order to make the editor usable in the first place? 2)…

>"1) How do I restore the output window I clicked it away in order to make the editor usable in the first place?"

There are many ways, it comes down to personal preference. For example, would you prefer restoring the Output window using a keyboard or a mouse?

>"2) What the heck is a "project" and why do I need one?"

The same reason you probably use a makefile when working with Vim, to manage your dependencies and build configurations.

>"3) Why do I need so many frigging clicks to get to the debugger (the debugger itself is nice though I have to admit)?"

I don't know what you're talking about here, the debugger is accessible with hardly any effort at all. How many clicks are you using to bring it up?

>"The list goes on an on. All these things are far simpler with vim and gdb: Need to debug x87 fpu registers? One simple google search and you have an instructive plaintext website that tells you everything and off you go."

Depends on your use cases. I've personally never found MSDN documentation lacking, plus it's ridiculously easy to use. For example, when coding in C#, highlight a language keyword and press F1, you'll be brought to online documentation about that language feature.

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

#257

Post by gbersac »

throwaway991872 wrote: post #119
gbersac wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is very hard to be more unintuitive than vim.

Vim is unintuitive at first, but there's excellent documentation. With Visual Studio, the documentation is horrible, you always encounter stale links to unorganized and regularly changing microsoft.com websites. Relatively basic things are left unexplained and documentation is outsourced to Stackoverflow: 1) How do I restore the output window I clicked it away in order to make the editor usable in the first place? 2)…

I don't know about visual studio, but I use IDEA which have a pretty good documentation. Far better than vim's one. And I need less because things are quite intuitive in IDEA.

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

#258

Post by gbersac »

wtetzner wrote: post #242
gbersac wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not. I learned vim for three month. After a vimrc of close to 150 lines, I had to admit that sublime text has more functionality than vim and all of them are far more difficult and slow to use (long and hard to memorize command names). It's even worst compared with IDEA. Now I only use vim as my default editor in terminal. Just use sublime, or even better, IDEA.

I don't use either editor, but just out of curiosity, what functionality is in Sublime that Vim is missing? Multiple cursors? Certain plugins?

Mutli cursor. There is plugins which try to emulate it, but it either didn't work or was lacking a lot functionnality. Other things bothered me, but the lack of good multi cursor implementation was a reason to stop using vim by itself. Just can't live without it now.

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

#259

Post by exabrial »

I think editors provide at least two more things: Code completion and global refactoring. Eclipse/IntelliJ users in the Java world can pound out entire programs in seconds using nothing but keyboard shortcuts. Are there features like this for other languages?

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

#260

Post by falsedan »

brightball wrote: post #161
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…

If you do any amount of work via command line or SSH, you need to be competent with one of them. I've been using vim for 18 years now and I'd consider myself a barely competent vim user at this point. I know enough to use it, but not enough to like it. For virtually all work where I don't have to use a terminal editor, I use Sublime/Textmate or one of the language specific Jetbrains IntelliJ derivatives. The "jump-to…

  > If you do any amount of work via command line or SSH,
  > you need to be competent with one of them.
The one you need to be competent with is vi: it's part of the Single UNIS specification, so practically all random hosts you ever SSH to will have /bin/vi. This comes in handy when you're paged at 3am by a host you've never seen before, and you want to change some code quickly so you can get back to sleep. Being familiar with basic vi will save you time and potentially making an error scp'ing files from your dev host (which has your editor set up just the right way).
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