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Where Vim Came From

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Re: Where Vim Came From

#51

Post by tmalsburg2 »

snambi wrote: post #49
j0e1 wrote: post #38

> While Emacs certainly still has a following, some people think that the Editor Wars are over and that Vim won.16 The 2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey suggests that this is true; only 4.1% of respondents used Emacs. I'm an Emacs user for years now and love the editor. But I'm curious about this claim of its poor popularity. The article refers to a piece from http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Bea…

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/6ihxua/officially_se...

Selection bias: the crowd on /r/linux is likely not representative.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#52

Post by tmalsburg2 »

thelazydogsback wrote: post #4

Though e-lisp is great and I appreciate the power and regularity of Emacs, Vi(m)'s mode-full, default cmd-mode editing that doesn't require ctrl + meta + esc left_foot_pedal + wink-wink-nudge-nudge... seems so much nicer to me than insert-by-default editing - thank goodness there are vim plugins everywhere. The TRS-80 Level II line editor was very much in the spirit of "em", along with other BASICs of the day. And pe…

You can have Vim-style editing in Emacs via Evil mode. This way you get the best of both worlds. I used to be a hardcore Vim user for 10 years, switched to Emacs/Evil mode for Elisp, and never looked back.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#53

Post by h1d »

whatyoucantsay wrote: post #34

It's amazing we have Bill Joy to thank for not only C shell and much of BSD, but also VI.

It's time to give a spotlight to NeoVim that puts efforts into getting rid of legacy craft while maintaining compatibility to move vi past 50 years of usage.

Last time I checked, there's no clear advantage from users' perspective for now but some plugins have started targeting it as the primary platform and also a few GUI are being developed too.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#54

Post by h1d »

simula67 wrote: post #32
digitalzombie wrote: post #27

> How did Vim become so successful? I recall the early days of RoR crowd were pushing for Vim too. It was hipster in term of adopting new and awesome things and RoR crowd really push some new things. This was when the editors war was still a thing.

One reason I switched from Emacs was because it took longer to launch

I don't see this gets mentioned much but this is one of the larger reason I never use emacs. When quick editing files on remote servers, snappiness is really nice, even with bunch of plugins activated.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#55

Post by h1d »

digitalzombie wrote: post #27

> How did Vim become so successful? I recall the early days of RoR crowd were pushing for Vim too. It was hipster in term of adopting new and awesome things and RoR crowd really push some new things. This was when the editors war was still a thing.

Simple. My muscle seems to like vim.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#56

Post by nextlevelwizard »

j0e1 wrote: post #38

> While Emacs certainly still has a following, some people think that the Editor Wars are over and that Vim won.16 The 2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey suggests that this is true; only 4.1% of respondents used Emacs. I'm an Emacs user for years now and love the editor. But I'm curious about this claim of its poor popularity. The article refers to a piece from http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Bea…

Completely anecdotally I've ever met two person who used Emacs and handful of people who use vim. At my current job I'm the only one who uses vim as my main tool, but collegue sitting next to me is the other Emacs user. Although some poeople have started to dabble in vim every now and then. I guess people just run into vim more often in the wild.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#58

Post by Annatar »

I still use the original, AT&T vi since I grew up on UNIX and Solaris 2.5.1 was my first UNIX OS after using my Amiga.

Even when I’m on a GNU/Linux variant, I run vim by calling vi, primarily because syntax highlighting enrages me to no end.

vi won because it came with every UNIX by default, and when one is in a cold server room connected to /dev/console via serial port at 3 o’clock in the morning, one quickly learns to appreciate vi’s ready availability and ubiquity.

Emacs on the other hand was always a huge program, was never bundled with UNIX by default, and compiling it on one’s own always ended in failure somewhere around Emacs wanting to compile itself as an Xwindows application. Add to that that Emacs had completely different key bindings and users would have to adapt to it rather than it letting them use their prior knowledge, it was a death knell to Emacs. Later versions added vi key bindings (“evil mode”), but since the pre-built versions continued to insist on Xwindows, it was wholly unsuitable for servers; for example, an SGI Origin 200 or Origin 3000 didn’t even have a frame buffer nor did they need Xwindows, and neither did the hp K-, N-, or L-class servers. Meanwhile, vi continued to be the UNIX system administrator’s trusty friend: always there, with no additional software requirements.

Ironically, when I’m on the Amiga I use vim, but there it doesn’t have syntax highlighting which I hate, and so is usable out of the box (I use it as I would vi on UNIX, without any extra vim fluff).

Re: Where Vim Came From

#59

Post by gumby »

trn wrote: post #50
gumby wrote: post #42

From the article: > ...Emacs could cost hundreds of dollars (this was before GNU Emacs) Emacs clones (of various levels of compatibility) for unix and other systems could be purchased back around the time this sentence is set, but to be fair, the original Emacs (or EMACS -- the ITS filesystem only had upper case) evolved by RMS et al from Gene Ciccarelli's TECO init file was naturally free. And Bernie Greenbergs Emac…

http://multicians.org/mepap.html - Greenberg's "Multics Emacs: The History, Design and Implementation" is the canonical Multics Emacs paper. While "emacs" is the command to invoke emacs, it was always referred to as Emacs in the documentation and the program itself. You can use it at https://ban.ai

> While "emacs" is the command to invoke emacs, it was always referred to as Emacs in the documentation...

Multics's use of mixed case used to weird me out. (It was my problem...I eventually got over it)

Re: Where Vim Came From

#60

Post by alxlaz »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #56
j0e1 wrote: post #38

> While Emacs certainly still has a following, some people think that the Editor Wars are over and that Vim won.16 The 2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey suggests that this is true; only 4.1% of respondents used Emacs. I'm an Emacs user for years now and love the editor. But I'm curious about this claim of its poor popularity. The article refers to a piece from http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Bea…

Completely anecdotally I've ever met two person who used Emacs and handful of people who use vim. At my current job I'm the only one who uses vim as my main tool, but collegue sitting next to me is the other Emacs user. Although some poeople have started to dabble in vim every now and then. I guess people just run into vim more often in the wild.

It's an anecdote that describes my experience as well. In more than ten years I've only met three other people who use Emacs (and one other person who uses WindowMaker :-) ), and I've often been the only Emacs user in an entire department.
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