I have no idea why I keep using Vim. These past few days I've been trying to switch to Eclipse for coding, as it has all the bells and whistles, but as soon as I need to open another file in the editor, I find myself switching to the command line and opening it in Vim, wondering why the hell I did that with Eclipse open. I think it just comes down to speed, in the end. I can switch to Vim and open the file in the tim…
I'm using RubyMine with the vim plugin for Ruby coding. That's just awesome: all that's good about an IDE with a lot of what's good about vim.
Why I use vim
51–56 of 56 posts
Re: Why I use vim
#52So has anyone ever been a die-hard vim user, been absolutely seduced by Emacs and the wealth of things that go with it (IRC? Org mode? Holy crap!), tried to use it, and been completely turned off by the abundance of control keys? This describes me. I really, really want to like Emacs and learn to use it, but coming from vim, such heavy use of the meta keys just feels wrong .
Yes, I use Emacs. And yes, I use Meta (Alt) keys sparingly. I think the only Meta-chord I use is Alt-Tab to switch applications.
Re: Why I use vim
#53So has anyone ever been a die-hard vim user, been absolutely seduced by Emacs and the wealth of things that go with it (IRC? Org mode? Holy crap!), tried to use it, and been completely turned off by the abundance of control keys? This describes me. I really, really want to like Emacs and learn to use it, but coming from vim, such heavy use of the meta keys just feels wrong .
So what I really needed was a use case to make me use it properly. Once you see the awesome power of Org-Mode and try to imagine what else you could do, you see the potential of Emacs. After that, it is the all-too-well-known cycle of "This is rather tedious", "there has to be a better way to do this" and finally discovering yet another new keyboard shortcut.
Also, get into the habit of using isearch (C-s, C-r) as a replacement for many of the Vim search commands (fFtT/? etc.). This makes Emacs a lot more manageable if you are used to Vim motions.
But really, I don't feel the need to use only Emacs or Vim. I switch freely between them depending on the task at hand.
That said, I did and do have trouble getting over the fact that Emacs seems to be unable to handle mousewheel-scrolling properly and has rather poor support for code folding. Not deal breakers, those, but come on, this is 2012!
Re: Why I use vim
#54So has anyone ever been a die-hard vim user, been absolutely seduced by Emacs and the wealth of things that go with it (IRC? Org mode? Holy crap!), tried to use it, and been completely turned off by the abundance of control keys? This describes me. I really, really want to like Emacs and learn to use it, but coming from vim, such heavy use of the meta keys just feels wrong .
Re: Why I use vim
#55Am I the only person who thinks it's absolutely insane how much time people spend learning to use an editor? Am I really supposed to believe that my time is better spent learning an editor than it is spent getting better at programming? I honestly feel that learning these editors has more to do with gaining status than it does self-improvement. Why should I have to spend hours consciously learning an /editor/. It's /…
Personally, I have spent a lot of time customizing and mastering Vim. But I agree with you that mastering a powerful editor is not a sufficient condition to be a good programmer. That realization occurred to me after I found that a few programmers that I respect very much have very primitive editing skills (which was very difficult for me to swallow at first).
Re: Why I use vim
#56So has anyone ever been a die-hard vim user, been absolutely seduced by Emacs and the wealth of things that go with it (IRC? Org mode? Holy crap!), tried to use it, and been completely turned off by the abundance of control keys? This describes me. I really, really want to like Emacs and learn to use it, but coming from vim, such heavy use of the meta keys just feels wrong .
You are not worth answering to. Yes, I use Emacs. And yes, I use Meta (Alt) keys sparingly. I think the only Meta-chord I use is Alt-Tab to switch applications.
Are you always so pleasant? Who pissed in your wheaties?