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From Vim to Emacs

juanjoalvarez.net

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Re: From Vim to Emacs

#61

Post by DAddYE »

I'm a vim (loser[1]) and terminal (power) user for 7+ years.

Two things comes to my mind when we talk about emacs and other editors.

The Terminal! In particular iterm.app

Basically with iterm and vim, I'm on osx close to a i3 on linux.

Vim works perfectly inside a terminal (no need to remap meta). We have terminals on android, ipad etc...

I love working in a terminal because... well, is where I spend most of the time. Running ruby, compiling go, js, logging on a server, running a script, tailing logs...

[1] loser because my vim is "modern" so with mouse, arrows and so on...

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#62

Post by aerique »

DAddYE wrote: post #61

I'm a vim (loser[1]) and terminal (power) user for 7+ years. Two things comes to my mind when we talk about emacs and other editors. The Terminal! In particular iterm.app Basically with iterm and vim, I'm on osx close to a i3 on linux. Vim works perfectly inside a terminal (no need to remap meta). We have terminals on android, ipad etc... I love working in a terminal because... well, is where I spend most of the time…

It's not quite the same but since Emacs is primarily an OS it has window managements build in, so by running it fullscreen and making a bunch of horizontal and vertical splits you get pretty close to i3[1] as well.

The only problem is terminals. You can run them inside of Emacs, but there's always issues. You can run eshell[2] which is wonderful. Myself, I prefer to use terminals outside of Emacs.

[1] my development OS is Linux and I run i3

[2] http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/2010/12/13/complete-g...

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#63

Post by qnaal »

bch wrote: post #46

I used to be all vi all the time. One day I figured I ought to learn emacs. I don't remember what the exact impetus was, but I gave myself an 8 week challenge to use nothing but emacs. For the next ~7 years, I pretty much used nothing but emacs, and it was enlightening to work with text in the emacs concept, and to witness emacs' implementation of its concepts, and all the excellent modes that authors developed withi…

I think it was Alan Kay? who said it's expected to learn a new editor, as well as move into a new house, at least once every 10 years.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#64

Post by aerique »

bch wrote: post #46

I used to be all vi all the time. One day I figured I ought to learn emacs. I don't remember what the exact impetus was, but I gave myself an 8 week challenge to use nothing but emacs. For the next ~7 years, I pretty much used nothing but emacs, and it was enlightening to work with text in the emacs concept, and to witness emacs' implementation of its concepts, and all the excellent modes that authors developed withi…

And now you're using evil-mode I assume? (If not, try it out!)

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#65

Post by aerique »

dlau1 wrote: post #43

Bravo man, I tried to make the switch from vim to emacs evil and failed horribly. I would eventually throw emacs into a state where it wasn't in any of the evil modes, then bash my keyboard with C-X C-C. Is it possible to use emacs+evil without knowing emacs inside and out? Emacs with evil, without a doubt, runs so much smoother while editing large projects. The biggest point is that asynchronous operations are a lot…

It is possible to use Emacs + evil without knowing Emacs inside-out, but you do need some basic Emacs knowledge. If you had to do C-x C-c when entering a non-evil mode, you did not have that basic knowledge :-)

The least you should do is the tutorial that's presented on the startup screen or "M-x help-with-tutorial".

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#66

Post by endlessvoid94 »

I was a vim user for years. I accepted a challenge from the programmer who sat next to me (an emacs user): we'd swap editors for a week. Every time either of us swore or complained about the editor, we'd pay the other a dollar.

That was 2011. I've been an emacs user ever since.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#67

Post by paufernandez »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #66

I was a vim user for years. I accepted a challenge from the programmer who sat next to me (an emacs user): we'd swap editors for a week. Every time either of us swore or complained about the editor, we'd pay the other a dollar. That was 2011. I've been an emacs user ever since.

What about the other guy?

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#68

Post by aerique »

millstone wrote: post #57
bch wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the first-class IDE-style features you want?

I am not the person to whom you replied, but the feature I use most often in Xcode is Go To Definition (with command-click). This integrates with clang, so it knows how to navigate templates, overloads, etc. It also integrates with the build system, so it knows the correct header search paths, preprocessor macros, etc. I imagine there are some plugins available for vi and emacs that try to provide these features, but…

Whether they work as reliably depends on the language. Emacs + Slime for Common Lisp is fine. Nowadays there's luckily a lot of editor / IDE independent tools like Jedi, ycmd, eclim which improves the situation for Emacs and Vim considerably.

C++ has always been had issues but for me it's good enough especially since I move between languages and OSes a lot. If I was just doing C# on Windows I would probably use an IDE tuned for it.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#69

Post by johncoltrane »

brandonmenc wrote: post #12
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…

> it was the best career decision I've ever made I hear this a lot, and I'm not debating whether it's true or not since ymmv. I'm curious if anyone here has gone the other way. I used vi in my teens then switched to emacs, which I used for over a decade. A couple years ago I switched to JetBrains IDEs and have never been happier. I hadn't used an IDE since Borland Turbo C, and forgot what I was missing. Are there any…

> Are there any other former vi/emacs users (like, hardcore - I used to browse the web in emacs) who ditched it for an IDE?

I'm an active vimmer very involved with the community and, for me, using an IDE or Vim is not a political/religious/philosophical choice: it is a pragmatic choice. When I need IDE features I use an IDE, when I don't I use my favorite text editor. Simple.

> I found that the mouse really wasn't a productivity killer for the few times you need to use it in a modern IDE.

"Modern" IDEs expose all their functionalities via keyboard shortcuts so you don't really need the mouse.

Re: From Vim to Emacs

#70

Post by endlessvoid94 »

paufernandez wrote: post #67
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #66

I was a vim user for years. I accepted a challenge from the programmer who sat next to me (an emacs user): we'd swap editors for a week. Every time either of us swore or complained about the editor, we'd pay the other a dollar. That was 2011. I've been an emacs user ever since.

What about the other guy?

Good question! He switched to vim due to RSI I believe.

Conclusion: neither is better. I think.

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