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On vim vs emacs

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Re: On vim vs emacs

#11

Post by jherdman »

BoppreH wrote: post #10

I hear a lot about this vim vs emacs war. But I have never seen a battle, so to speak. Where can I see videos of people actually using this text editors? A side by side comparison of interesting/useful features? I really would like to choose, but the most I managed to find was a guy playing snake on his emacs. I'm currently using the very basics features of vim, but just because I felt like it and it came with a tuto…

Have you checked out the VIMCasts (http://vimcasts.org/) series? They're pretty great. I don't know of an equivalent series for Emacs. I'm a VIM-ophile, but I find ELisp to be a major draw for Emacs.

I think if I could entirely swap out the movement features of Emacs for those of VIM completely, I'd switch tomorrow. That said, Viper and Vimpulse just don't cut it.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#12

Post by jrockway »

Xurinos wrote: post #7

I hear about the viper-mode and vimpulse stuff a lot, and while they go a long way towards helping emacs be more useful for text editing, I find the discontinuities disturbing. For example, I am no longer in vi-mode if I end up in a help window of some sort. I cannot just Ctrl-W+Ctrl-W my way back to the original window; that suddenly deletes words. But I like working with multiple windows in vim sometimes. This gets…

viper is not for vim users, it's for Emacs users. As a long time Emacs user who doesn't really enjoy holding down the control key while editing text, viper is wonderful -- it gives Emacs a command mode, without making Emacs work like vi. If I wanted vi, I would just use vi.

That's the logic behind Viper, anyway. I believe a few people are working on a vim emulation layer for Emacs; giving Vim users the ability to have a proper scriptable environment, without having to give up anything they know from Vim. Ask on #emacs.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#13

Post by jrockway »

kennu wrote: post #4

Vim is cool because it's built in to every OS (except maybe Windows) and highly usable even without any configuration and requires very little resources. For me knowing vim has proven a very productive skill. I often work on random new OS installations like virtual machines and cloud instances, and sometimes in very limited environments like embedded Linux devices. It works there just as well as in my regular Mac/Lin…

vi is the one built into every OS. Sometimes it happens to be vim, but not always... and other vi variants are quite different from vim.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#14

Post by revaaron »

BoppreH wrote: post #10

I hear a lot about this vim vs emacs war. But I have never seen a battle, so to speak. Where can I see videos of people actually using this text editors? A side by side comparison of interesting/useful features? I really would like to choose, but the most I managed to find was a guy playing snake on his emacs. I'm currently using the very basics features of vim, but just because I felt like it and it came with a tuto…

All the really matters is that you use what you like. If you like gedit or notepad++ that's just fine. FYI, emacs also comes with an extensive tutorial.

Personally, I used emacs and clones (mg and JASSPA MicroEmacs) for a long time- though I never really went very deep into the features. Then, I started a job where I'd be doing some sysadmin work on AIX boxes- nothing but vi and ed installed- so I figured I should sharpen my rusty vi/vim skills. I've found myself using more of the features available in VIM, as well as writing plugins myself. After you get past the initial weirdness (for folks coming from emacs and other modeless editors) I've found it easier. Less of a learning/feature curve, far fewer keystrokes, and almost no "Meta-Shift-Control-Z Ctrl-X abc" acrobatics. UI feels more modular in that I'm stringing together simple commands rather than using a command that does something specific.

Not advocating so much as trying to explain where I came from when I started using vim...

Re: On vim vs emacs

#17

Post by BoppreH »

revaaron wrote: post #14
BoppreH wrote: post #10

I hear a lot about this vim vs emacs war. But I have never seen a battle, so to speak. Where can I see videos of people actually using this text editors? A side by side comparison of interesting/useful features? I really would like to choose, but the most I managed to find was a guy playing snake on his emacs. I'm currently using the very basics features of vim, but just because I felt like it and it came with a tuto…

All the really matters is that you use what you like. If you like gedit or notepad++ that's just fine. FYI, emacs also comes with an extensive tutorial. Personally, I used emacs and clones (mg and JASSPA MicroEmacs) for a long time- though I never really went very deep into the features. Then, I started a job where I'd be doing some sysadmin work on AIX boxes- nothing but vi and ed installed- so I figured I should sh…

Thanks for the info.

The problem with the "use what you like" approach is that the emacs/vim learning curve are too steep. By the time I am actually using one of them I'll have spent so much that the fear of change starts to strike and I'm stuck with that editor.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#18

Post by krakensden »

jrockway wrote: post #13
kennu wrote: post #4

Vim is cool because it's built in to every OS (except maybe Windows) and highly usable even without any configuration and requires very little resources. For me knowing vim has proven a very productive skill. I often work on random new OS installations like virtual machines and cloud instances, and sometimes in very limited environments like embedded Linux devices. It works there just as well as in my regular Mac/Lin…

vi is the one built into every OS. Sometimes it happens to be vim, but not always... and other vi variants are quite different from vim.

Really? I thought nvi and elvis had fallen by the wayside, and now everyone shipped vim (in compatibility mode).

Re: On vim vs emacs

#19

Post by cubes »

Seriously? Seriously? It's 2010, and we're still having this religious debate? Pick an editor that works for you. Learn it. Use it. Done. NB I'm a heretic, I use both vi and emacs.

Re: On vim vs emacs

#20

Post by Xurinos »

krakensden wrote: post #18
jrockway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vi is the one built into every OS. Sometimes it happens to be vim, but not always... and other vi variants are quite different from vim.

Really? I thought nvi and elvis had fallen by the wayside, and now everyone shipped vim (in compatibility mode).

I noticed recent distributions (last couple years) deploy a crippled form of vim, halfway between vi and vim. You still have to "sudo apt-get install vim" to get something that is nice.
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