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Why I use vim

michaeltrier.com

51–56 of 56 posts

Re: Why I use vim

#51

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.

Interesting, does anyone know of something similar for Python? I have PyLint (I think?) and it points out errors as I type, it's great.

Re: Why I use vim

#52

So 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.

Re: Why I use vim

#53

So 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 .

I tried several times and failed several times. What won me over in the end was the need to do some project management and the discovery of Org-Mode. Those checkboxed lists and tables are pure magic.

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

#54

So 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 .

i'm playing with emacs + evil-mode for the better haskell support. so far it looks pretty good, and the thought of hacking up some elisp to fill in missing bits is a lot less offputting than hacking in vimscript.

Re: Why I use vim

#55

Am 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).

it's not even a necessary condition. it has, however, made my life a lot more comfortable and pleasant, given the amount of time i spend entering text into a document and then editing it in various ways. there are things that i can do almost without thinking about them in vim that would involve effort, tedium or both if done any other way.

Re: Why I use vim

#56
post #52

So 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.

> You are not worth answering to.

Are you always so pleasant? Who pissed in your wheaties?

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