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My thoughts about editors in 2020

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Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#51

Post by OrderlyTiamat »

addicted wrote: post #49
kstrauser wrote: post #13

I stopped reading when they wrote that they preferred modal editors because they hate navigating with arrow keys. Uh, I use to live in Emacs and now I use VS Code, and you could remove my arrow keys for all I’d care (or notice). Those are entirely orthogonal, like “I prefer cars to bikes because I like tires.”

How do you navigate text in VSCode without arrow keys (and equivalents such as Pg Up/Dn, Home, End) I’m not sure about the author, but I consider emacs essentially a modal editor. The vast majority of actions are preceded by a combination of modifier key presses, which is essentially modal, except you can’t (or can you?) keep it sticky. So, for example, next line in Emacs is Ctrl+N whereas in Vim is Esc+J. The only d…

That's not modal though. You could make it modal/sticky with e.g. god-mode, evil-mode, or others, but essentially its a single shortcut (yes, it uses two keys instead of one, but that doesn't make it modal: try pressing Ctrl and afterwards pressing n like with esc h for vim, I don't think it'll work...)

Org-mode and magit are modes in the sense that they are different environments, not input modes. You won't have a good time trying to update your calendar using magit, and reverting the latest commit is going to be a challenge from within org-mode. These are different tools.

I'd say once again, emacs can be as modal as you like, more or less exactly like vim, or it can be non-modal.

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#52

Post by OrderlyTiamat »

fao_ wrote: post #15

I'll crosspost what I wrotw about Doom Emacs on Reddit: ----------------- > The killer feature of Atom to me is its ability to tell you what commands are associated (or erased) for a keybinding you are pressing, live. It is very practical to debug keybinding issues and I wish more editors had it. Other editors feature similar stuff, but not quite as good as this echo mode for keybinding. Btw, for Doom Emacs this is a…

That feeling while using it is very recognizable to me. It's like the cliché about swordfighting: the tool is an extension of your arm, rather than something you interact with.

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#53

Post by bzg »

strait wrote: post #27

During the period of about 10 years that I was using Emacs as my main editor, I invested countless hours in mastering Elisp, configuring this and that, writing custom functions, fixing abandoned minor modes that I still found useful... It was literally all over the place. At some point, the list of things that were broken/didn't work well for me got quite long, and I became dissatisfied enough to stop what I was doin…

Did you try to see what made the table unusable? If you feel want, you can report this to emacs-orgmode@gnu.org and maybe we can do something about it. Thanks!

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#54

Post by bzg »

OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #51
addicted wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you navigate text in VSCode without arrow keys (and equivalents such as Pg Up/Dn, Home, End) I’m not sure about the author, but I consider emacs essentially a modal editor. The vast majority of actions are preceded by a combination of modifier key presses, which is essentially modal, except you can’t (or can you?) keep it sticky. So, for example, next line in Emacs is Ctrl+N whereas in Vim is Esc+J. The only d…

That's not modal though. You could make it modal/sticky with e.g. god-mode, evil-mode, or others, but essentially its a single shortcut (yes, it uses two keys instead of one, but that doesn't make it modal: try pressing Ctrl and afterwards pressing n like with esc h for vim, I don't think it'll work...) Org-mode and magit are modes in the sense that they are different environments, not input modes. You won't have a g…

Well, of course you can revert a commit from org-mode.

Simply create a bash source code block that goes in the right directory and does the git revert. \o/

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#55

Post by [deleted] »

bzg wrote: post #54
OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not modal though. You could make it modal/sticky with e.g. god-mode, evil-mode, or others, but essentially its a single shortcut (yes, it uses two keys instead of one, but that doesn't make it modal: try pressing Ctrl and afterwards pressing n like with esc h for vim, I don't think it'll work...) Org-mode and magit are modes in the sense that they are different environments, not input modes. You won't have a g…

Well, of course you can revert a commit from org-mode. Simply create a bash source code block that goes in the right directory and does the git revert. \o/

[deleted]

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#56

Post by wayneftw »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #2

My thoughts after coding for 15 years now... I still can’t be bothered to learn emacs or vim. I’ve tried and it just never sticks. I remember fewer commands in vim than I knew 10 years ago. I really like smart IDE’s like IntelliJ and pycharm. I’m doing a typescript project in VSCode and the refactoring and code understanding is just... not enough. I agree with James Gosling’s opinion of heavy IDE’s. They help me. I’m…

> I’m doing a typescript project in VSCode and the refactoring and code understanding is just... not enough.

What's your exact complaint?

Find and Replace or repeatedly hitting Ctrl+D covers 90% of my refactoring needs and I work on mostly TypeScript / JavaScript code. The other 10% is covered by "Extract to function" which I rarely use because it's easy enough to cut and paste.

Renaming a file is a very easy 2 step process. 1) Rename the file. 2) Find and replace `/filename"` with `/new-filename"`.

I almost exclusively use named exports, so renaming a symbol is a simple find and replace.

What else could you possibly need that wouldn't be more complicated than just typing? Also, have you explored extensions for this? Here's one now - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=cancerbe...

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#57

Post by mixmastamyk »

sodapopcan wrote: post #41
YZF wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge but not really slow. They automate a lot of common tasks, super fast searches/navigation, refactoring etc. Code analysis is just there. Often my fellow non-IDE users struggle to find the piece of code when we're chatting whereas for me navigating or finding things anywhere in a really large code base is pretty much instant. I stopped pointing it out unless it's a good friend I just want to rib a little.

Most non-IDE users I meet IRL don't take the time to beef up their tool and actually learn how to properly use it. There are also those who flat out refuse to install any plugins, for example, plugins that could make searching large codebases very fast. I don't understand these people, but to each their own! Of course, the whole reason many people chose an editor over an IDE is because they don't want to learn an IDE…

Searching can be handled with ag or ripgrep and used anywhere with any text files, with only a terminal.

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#58

Post by codemac »

taeric wrote: post #33
codemac wrote: post #32

His "types of navigation" doesn't include searching as navigation. I use emacs with C-s (isearch-forward) more often than left and right.

Ace jump has become a very welcome nature for jumping to a spot.

But it only works on what you can currently see, right? Or does ace jump work differently than I recall.

isearch moving you along further in the buffer interactively as you type is far more useful than searching what you just see, and typing rando letters that appear. If it's on the wrong entry with the same word, I just hit C-s again - which is very fast to type repeatedly (rather than ace's find the right letter combo, and type it).

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#59

Post by lostmsu »

Donckele wrote: post #47
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #2

My thoughts after coding for 15 years now... I still can’t be bothered to learn emacs or vim. I’ve tried and it just never sticks. I remember fewer commands in vim than I knew 10 years ago. I really like smart IDE’s like IntelliJ and pycharm. I’m doing a typescript project in VSCode and the refactoring and code understanding is just... not enough. I agree with James Gosling’s opinion of heavy IDE’s. They help me. I’m…

> Also, I feel like I do more reading code and debugging than writing nowadays, and I am not bothered by my speed at writing code. Well, I write more code so my experiences are not the same as yours.

I have been mostly writing and refactoring new code in last 3 years. Writing is easy. Can't imagine doing refactoring in vim with 1/10 efficiency of ReSharper.

Re: My thoughts about editors in 2020

#60

Post by sodapopcan »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #57
sodapopcan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most non-IDE users I meet IRL don't take the time to beef up their tool and actually learn how to properly use it. There are also those who flat out refuse to install any plugins, for example, plugins that could make searching large codebases very fast. I don't understand these people, but to each their own! Of course, the whole reason many people chose an editor over an IDE is because they don't want to learn an IDE…

Searching can be handled with ag or ripgrep and used anywhere with any text files, with only a terminal.

That was essentially what I was getting at :) ...the difference being those who have these wired up into their text editors vs those who have to context switch between editor and terminal.
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