From Vim to Emacs

#1

Post by javinpaul » Thu, Sep 25, 2014, 2:39 PM UTC

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#2

Post by Animats » Thu, Sep 25, 2014, 10:55 PM UTC

Having used EMACS all the way back to the original Stanford SAIL machines (with a physical META key on their custom keyboards) I still don't want to use it.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#3

Post by unclebunkers » Thu, Sep 25, 2014, 11:19 PM UTC

I firmly went the other way a few years back, and haven't regretted it. Looking at this how-to, I have no real urge to back, though it is a good writeup.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#4

Post by hello_asdf » Thu, Sep 25, 2014, 11:25 PM UTC

As someone who has always used vim, what are the benefits of this system over a standard vim installation?

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#5

Post by SmileyKeith » Thu, Sep 25, 2014, 11:38 PM UTC

I love seeing this on the front page. I've been a Vim user for a few years and feel like there isn't a ton of help out there for switching to emacs + evil.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#6

Post by michaelsbradley » Thu, Sep 25, 2014, 11:53 PM UTC

hello_asdf wrote: post #4

As someone who has always used vim, what are the benefits of this system over a standard vim installation?

You get a computing environment which "breathes" Lisp[1] and is itself mostly built up from a fully hackable Lisp codebase.

I can highly recommend Bozhidar Batsov's Emacs Prelude[2] as a nice foundation for building a personalized configuration. Just fork it and put your personal .el files under the "personal" subdirectory; then "git fetch ... && git merge" to keep up to date with improvements committed to the author's repository.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs_Lisp

[2] https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#7

Post by euid » Thu, Sep 25, 2014, 11:56 PM UTC

SmileyKeith wrote: post #5

I love seeing this on the front page. I've been a Vim user for a few years and feel like there isn't a ton of help out there for switching to emacs + evil.

Here's my migration guide from early September, if you're looking for more resources:

http://nathantypanski.com/blog/2014-08-03-a-vim-like-emacs-c...

Bling, who I've linked to in that post, has repeatedly made quality posts about making the transition:

http://bling.github.io/

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#8

Post by cnp » Fri, Sep 26, 2014, 12:05 AM UTC

I began using Vim about a month ago and it has been totally revelatory to me, and believe quite honestly that it was the best career decision I've ever made. The one thing, however, is its speed. MacVim gets very slow sometimes, particularly with buffers.

So my question: How does Emacs and Vim compare speed-wise? I come from a Sublime Text background and really miss the ability to quickly navigate between tabs (buffers in vim), and sometimes it takes a full second.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#9

Post by bdamm » Fri, Sep 26, 2014, 12:17 AM UTC

cnp wrote: post #8

I began using Vim about a month ago and it has been totally revelatory to me, and believe quite honestly that it was the best career decision I've ever made. The one thing, however, is its speed. MacVim gets very slow sometimes, particularly with buffers. So my question: How does Emacs and Vim compare speed-wise? I come from a Sublime Text background and really miss the ability to quickly navigate between tabs (buffe…

Early in my career I did a self-study of the entire vim user manual. My time has been repaid over and over, every single day, ever since.

Normally vim is very snappy for me. Perhaps you have a ton of plugins that are clogging up your installation? Or perhaps just one very badly behaved plugin?

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#10

Post by geoffc » Fri, Sep 26, 2014, 12:37 AM UTC

An age old debate and both are great! I used Emacs for a decade plus and on a whim spent a vacation re-programming my fingers for Vim and stuck with it as it felt slightly faster, not sure it really makes a difference :-)