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

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

#41

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

palish wrote: post #17
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…

Then you'll love http://www.viemu.com/ .... There are so many good things to say about ViEmu that it's hard to know where to begin. I've been a happy ViEmu customer for about three years now. Best $99 I've ever spent, hands-down. Maybe it will suffice to say: "VisualAssist + ViEmu = Someday I should record a video of me coding C++ in Visual Studio. In the last 4 days alone, I've written 8,700 lines of C++. No way cou…

Another vote for ViEmu. They offer a discount for students if you ask them, and I've been using my copy since senior year. It does lack a few of the subtle details; most annoyingly to me is the lack of leader key mapping to automate common commands. But it's an extremely good replacement for those times when you need to use VS.

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

#42

Post by loevborg »

palish wrote: post #17
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…

Then you'll love http://www.viemu.com/ .... There are so many good things to say about ViEmu that it's hard to know where to begin. I've been a happy ViEmu customer for about three years now. Best $99 I've ever spent, hands-down. Maybe it will suffice to say: "VisualAssist + ViEmu = Someday I should record a video of me coding C++ in Visual Studio. In the last 4 days alone, I've written 8,700 lines of C++. No way cou…

I just saw that you can use viemu for Word as well. Does anyone have experience with that?

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

#43

Post by gamble »

Ixiaus wrote: post #36
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…

Your understanding is very much flawed. (FYI, Emacs has been my primary editor for 5 years and Vim has been my over-ssh editor for 6) Your guitar analogy is more applicable not between Emacs and Vim but between something like pico/nano and vim/emacs. It's hard to find a good analogy between Emacs and Vim because they are both awesome editors for many different reasons. Emacs (due to its LISP origins) is highly config…

My understanding of the origins of emacs & vim:

emacs originated as the tool of choice for programmers. In those days a programmer would sit at a single text-based terminal all day, working dawn-til-dusk in a single editor process on a complex set of files stored on one system. emacs was designed to be an all-encompassing and extensible environment, because the programmer had the time and skills to sculpt his environment for maximum efficiency - and because the operating system shell was extremely basic in those days.

vim arose as a sysadmin's tool. Unlike programmers, sysadmins were constantly moving between systems and performing a variety of simple edits on various text files. They needed an extremely quick editor with sensible defaults, because they wouldn't be working on a single system long enough or doing anything complex enough to benefit from a customized environment.

Which editor is superior today depends on which archetype a particular user resembles. If someone isn't interested in crafting emacs into a cybernetic extension of their own mind, they're missing the point and should probably stick with vim for its sensible out-of-the-box behavior. They're both strictly superior to every other text editor available, because they're both fully accessible through keystrokes.

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

#44

Post by tikhonj »

agentultra wrote: post #31

I went the other way around. I was a long-time Vim user (around 10 years or so) and switched to Emacs in order to use Lisp + Slime in order to win an argument about Lisp. What's important is that I lost that argument, like Lisp, and use Emacs as my primary editor now. However, the Vim keybindings are still etched upon my soul so I still find myself popping it open for quick-and-dirty edits. They're both good editors…

I'm also an Emacs user, but I've been curious about Vi. Have you tried using Viper? As somebody with experience in both, do you think it's something worth trying?

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

#45

Post by owenmarshall »

These "I've used vim/emacs and decided to try switching..." articles always leave me cold.

I mean, both are insanely powerful editors. It's not as if there is something one can do that the other cannot, and if there is, it's doubtful that a user would want to -- for example, I don't think vim has a built in email client, but the vim users I've talked to laugh at the idea of an email client in their editor.

As a result, all of these "I've switched" articles begin with a comparison of modal and non-modal editing, discuss some pros and cons of both, and end with the same conclusion: both are great editors!

Where's the beef?

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

#47

Post by eridius »

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.

Is not triggering InsertLeave a good thing or a bad thing?

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

#48

Post by eridius »

I used emacs for a while, but fairly recently I switched to vim for one simple reason: opening speed. Emacs always takes a while to launch, but no matter how many plugins and whatnot I install in Vim it always launches instantly. And that, to me, is worth learning a new editor.

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

#49

Post by BCM43 »

eridius wrote: post #48

I used emacs for a while, but fairly recently I switched to vim for one simple reason: opening speed. Emacs always takes a while to launch, but no matter how many plugins and whatnot I install in Vim it always launches instantly. And that, to me, is worth learning a new editor.

Are you opening emacs with -nw? That will load it within the terminal, like vim. It loads within a second for me, and I have a sizable .emacs.

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

#50

Post by Amnon »

robertskmiles wrote: post #37
yesimahuman wrote: post #26

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.

There's a great deal of power in '.', which repeats the last command. So if you have to do something 12 times, your steps could look something like this; - Run the command once - Think "Hmm, looks like I have to do this about ten more times" - Type '10.', repeating the last command 10 times - See that there's only one left to do, since you guessed 10 and it was 11 - Press '.' one more time to do the last one You won'…

Actually, 10. doesn't necessarily repeat the last command 10 times, it just runs it again with an argument of 10. For example ">>10." will indent the current line and then indent it and the following 9 lines.

I still haven't found an easy way to indent a line N times without pressing ">" 2N times...

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