Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

slashusr.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 66 posts

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#21

Post by nyellin »

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #16

Aren't Emacs and Vim basically the same editor at this point? There are some stylistic differences, which can be surprisingly subtle, like the differences between acoustic and electric guitar. But pretty much every other editor these days wants to be an MP3 player. Today's editor war is between (a.) technical people who expect to spend many hours a day manipulating text for the next few decades, and (b.) people who d…

No. Not in the least bit.

Emacs is an interactive Lisp interpreter. Once you realize that you can change function and variable bindings on the fly, you can do anything.

Vim is "merely" an editor with an acceptable scripting language and incredible keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts have survived for 40 years due to their ease of use and intuitive nature.

The only similarities between Vim and Emacs are their ages and the fantastic communities surrounding each of them.

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#22

Post by nyellin »

markokocic wrote: post #4
thingie wrote: post #2

So I use emacs with viper and it's great. I have no idea how to really edit text in emacs without vi mode and I can't open a file in vim without :q and running it again with a different argument. Yet I can edit text vi style and use superior (to vim) and convenient emacs features like modes, tramp, buffer management, org-mode…

You can try elvis. I havent tried it myself, but I heard it being a continuation of viper and vimpulse efforts.

You mean evil: http://gitorious.org/evil

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#23

Post by irahul »

obiterdictum wrote: post #12
drats wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great addition is: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key Getting out of insert mode with a double j instead of moving your hand (esc) or doing the slightly awkward ctrl+[ is a godsend.

Another good alternative is to remap the infrequently used Caps-Lock key to Esc (what Emacs users remapped to Control for ages). http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RemapCapsLock

I am an avid vimmer, but I sometimes use Emacs. I have capslock mapped to ESC, and it works well in emacs. I am pretty comfortable with C-{some_key}. It's the M-C-{some_key} that are a pain. ESC-C-{some_key} is what I use and since I have my capslock mapped, it's convenient.

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#25

Post by pyre »

qwertyboy wrote: post #13
drats wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great addition is: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key Getting out of insert mode with a double j instead of moving your hand (esc) or doing the slightly awkward ctrl+[ is a godsend.

Actually, Ctrl-c is the fastest way to get back to normal mode. Unlike Ctrl-[ and , it does not check for abbreviations and does not trigger InsertLeave. And on most keyboards it's even easier to type.

Ctrl-c is not always equivalent to . For example, if you hit q: to get the command history editor, Ctrl-c will close that buffer, but won't.

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#26

Post by yesimahuman »

I'm curious if the speed difference between counting how many times to repeat a command versus using movement/visual block/etc. is big enough?

I find the "repeat-n-times" modifiers require a lot of thought before I know what number to put before the command. I do consider myself very fast with Vim, but the repeat commands haven't done much for me.

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#27

Post by lukeschlather »

obiterdictum wrote: post #7

I apologize in advance for this ode to Vim, but I feel I should get it off my chest. I admit, the main reason for me to develop in Vim these days is to simply minimize the number of keystrokes I have to press (and the number of times I have to reach for the mouse), because, due to RSI, I experience a mild, but constant, and noticeable discomfort in my wrists (...and triceps, and shoulder) whenever I type (I distinctl…

Seriously, I think Vim is more dangerous than Emacs for RSI in some respects. Emacs forces you to change your hands' positions as you alternate modifiers. This means that your hands do move more, but they on the balance do given actions less.

At least that's my impression. Obviously there's a lot of posture issues, and you can mitigate RSI to some degree simply by getting up and stretching your hands every 30 minutes. But it's not a simple matter of moving less -> less RSI. If you don't dramatically reduce the number of actions, moving less can be a problem.

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#29

Post by ajross »

lukeschlather wrote: post #27
obiterdictum wrote: post #7

I apologize in advance for this ode to Vim, but I feel I should get it off my chest. I admit, the main reason for me to develop in Vim these days is to simply minimize the number of keystrokes I have to press (and the number of times I have to reach for the mouse), because, due to RSI, I experience a mild, but constant, and noticeable discomfort in my wrists (...and triceps, and shoulder) whenever I type (I distinctl…

Seriously, I think Vim is more dangerous than Emacs for RSI in some respects. Emacs forces you to change your hands' positions as you alternate modifiers. This means that your hands do move more, but they on the balance do given actions less. At least that's my impression. Obviously there's a lot of posture issues, and you can mitigate RSI to some degree simply by getting up and stretching your hands every 30 minutes…

Bit your tongue. You only have to change your hand position if you have the modifiers mapped wrong. Ctrl goes next to "A", Meta is below slash (some keyboards have this as an Alt already, sometimes you have to remap it). The modifiers are on opposite pinkies.

Re: Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr

#30

Post by ajross »

lukeschlather wrote: post #27
obiterdictum wrote: post #7

I apologize in advance for this ode to Vim, but I feel I should get it off my chest. I admit, the main reason for me to develop in Vim these days is to simply minimize the number of keystrokes I have to press (and the number of times I have to reach for the mouse), because, due to RSI, I experience a mild, but constant, and noticeable discomfort in my wrists (...and triceps, and shoulder) whenever I type (I distinctl…

Seriously, I think Vim is more dangerous than Emacs for RSI in some respects. Emacs forces you to change your hands' positions as you alternate modifiers. This means that your hands do move more, but they on the balance do given actions less. At least that's my impression. Obviously there's a lot of posture issues, and you can mitigate RSI to some degree simply by getting up and stretching your hands every 30 minutes…

Bit your tongue. You only have to change your hand position if you have the modifiers mapped wrong. Ctrl goes next to "A", Meta is below slash (some keyboards have this as an Alt already, sometimes you have to remap it). The modifiers are on opposite pinkies.
Post reply on HN