If you're a unix dev and want to be taken seriously, use Emacs or vim. Otherwise people will just laugh at you behind your back. Or to your face.
Or joke about you in irc while secretly not using either tool themselves.
Ask HN: Best code editor?
41–50 of 136 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#42UltraEdit and Komodo are good. Komodo has a free version, I think.
Loved ultraedit when I was a "Windows-guy"
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have come to really appreciate Eclipse. It's come a long way since the first time I tried to use it. Eclipse, plus vim in a terminal window, take care of all of my editing needs.
Eclipse (and intellij) are both resource hogs though.
I won't necessarily dispute this, but those "resources" on my system are there to be used.
Sometimes it seems like people buy quad-core machines and 8GB of RAM, and then are angry if an app uses more than 1% of CPU and a few MB of that RAM.
I'm not going to sit here and say that Eclipse's hour-long startup time doesn't annoy me, though...
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
another +1, but you need to learn to use it properly. Tags, windows, changing files, external commands, macros, etc. It's not user friendly, in fact it's downright user hostile, but it's powerful, and written for hackers.
vim is one of the most user friendly pieces of software I have ever used. The interface is incredibly efficient. The designers put great effort into making sure that common tasks were one or two keystrokes that usually don't even require moving your fingers off the home row. Just because it's not the most discoverable interface doesn't mean it's user hostile. I wish more software designers would look at vim as an exa…
I agree. It's like Photoshop: at first you're like "WTF were they thinking?" until you really use it and see what geniuses they were.
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#45scribes http://scribes.sourceforge.net/
Thanks! That looks superb.
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#46Visual Studio 2008 - Love it. I don't notice any load-time issues, but maybe thats because I never close it.
I'm a huge fan of VS as well. When I'm at home on my personal machine, it's always a bit of a letdown when Intellisense doesn't kick in...
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#47Coda on MAC is great.
Coda is great! I use it along with BBEdit (which is an equally awesome, straight-shootin' text editor)
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
another +1, but you need to learn to use it properly. Tags, windows, changing files, external commands, macros, etc. It's not user friendly, in fact it's downright user hostile, but it's powerful, and written for hackers.
vim is one of the most user friendly pieces of software I have ever used. The interface is incredibly efficient. The designers put great effort into making sure that common tasks were one or two keystrokes that usually don't even require moving your fingers off the home row. Just because it's not the most discoverable interface doesn't mean it's user hostile. I wish more software designers would look at vim as an exa…
Reading this crystalised some thoughts I've had for a long time, but never been able to express clearly.
Yes, vim is a non-discoverable interface.
http://www.google.com/search?q=discoverable+interface
( Side note: from that search I found this:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taouu/html/ch01s01.html
There it lists "... concision, expressiveness, ease, transparency, and scriptability." It then expands on each, but mysteriously quote "Discoverable" in place of "scriptability." Very odd.
But I digress ...)
Now the question is - without having to wade through plodding tutorial after plodding tutorial, how can we help people discover the interface? This doesn't just apply to vim, it applies to your web site, or application, or even your company procedures.
It's now a long time since I learned about :sp and ctrl-w to create and move between windows in vim. How can we help others find these things? How can we help them find the fast way of doing things on our web facility?
As a parting note - I wouldn't equate efficiency to "user-friendly."
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#49Notepad. It's a simple, feature-rich, light-weight editor. The learning curve is long and steep though, but well worth it. I've been using if for 3 years now and still don't know all it's bells and whistles. Best of all it comes preinstalled on a lot of OSs so you don't have to go through a laborious install process.
Not as effecient as the cat editor.
$cat > $kernelroot/drivers/custom/screen_driver.c
[note, you learn not to make any typos eventually]
Re: Ask HN: Best code editor?
#50Emacs. And yes, I'm very satisfied with it. Everytime I see a feature in another editor I like, EmacsWiki usually has an implementation or guide. Plus emacs has org-mode...
I used vim for over 12 years before switching to emacs. The thing that made me switch was looking at some insane vim-script to indent Python (or something like that - I don't rememember).
I love emacs now. Yeah it takes ages to learn, moving around isn't quite as quick as hjkl in vi, emacs lisp isn't perfect, but it really is worth it. Nothing is as powerful.
23 even lets you connect to a running process from a tty and GUI simultaneously.
And yeah - org-mode is great. As is the gdb integration.