Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: What is your primary editor?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: Poll: What is your primary editor?

#81

Post by err4nt »

finicky wrote: post #75
Timothee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found your comment very interesting: I've been using vim for a few years now and wouldn't consider changing (except for Emacs with Evil mode) because I like doing everything without lifting my hands from the keyboard. But reading your description, I'm left slightly envious and pondering how vim could be integrated better with a browser with web development in mind specifically. I'm not sure what it'd be but it gets…

I'd love to be able to fully control and test the browser without using my mouse. I try my best to only use the keyboard when editing which makes the switch to 'mouse mode' even more painful.

Funny you should mention that, I just got an external custom programmable USB keyboard from XKeys. I got the 68 key version with the jog dial.

I can launch apps, I have shortcuts for:

- most frequently used apps (including 3 browsers)

- common shortcuts (command-R, Command-Shift-I, Command-Q)

- one-touch window control (resize between 4 preset widths)

- a numpad specialized for inputting numerical CSS values

And then the rest are like shift keys that change the function of the shuffle wheel. The wheel can scroll, change screen brightness, move the cursor, select text, change volume, zoom in browser and more.

Here's a quick screen capture of me using it on my first week having it. Everything you see here is contolled from that one extenral keyboard, no alphanumeric keyboard or mouse used for the duration of the recording,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NRcyHuMKCRI

Re: Poll: What is your primary editor?

#82

Post by jacderida »

click170 wrote: post #26

To my fellow Vim users out there, I would like to ask why you use Vim? For me, Vim is what my mentor was using so it's what I picked up. It's command-line oriented which is a huge win for me, and it's available everywhere (Mac includes it by default), and I haven't hit a roadblock that's been painful enough to get me to sincerely investigate other editors. What has led you to continue using your editor of choice?

I was a C# and hence VS user for many years, so I mainly used that, but at the same time, also casually used Vim for editing csproj files, MSBuild scripts and the like. Then I moved away from C# and Windows to Linux and DevOps stuff. At that point, I started to use Vim fulltime. Getting into it, I saw you could keep your configuration in a dotfiles repository, so that you didn't need to remember how to setup a billion plugins on a new OS install (although admittedly, that's true for any editor) and that was when I seriously invested time in getting a good setup.

Now, I just can't imagine going back to anything else. No matter how good you seem to get, you just never stop learning stuff about it that makes it easier to do your work. Initially I was afraid of not having intellisense, as I'd developed what I consider to be a bit of a crutch on that, from years and years of using VS. But, it turns out, you can get very near IDE like intellisense with plugins like YouCompleteMe. For me, the approximation is acceptable, due to all the other power that comes with Vim.

I also love that I can use it in the terminal (I don't use gvim) and still have it look fantastic, meaning, using it along with tmux, I rarely need to leave the terminal for anything now. I like that, because it means I get to learn how to do everything really fast on the command line, without the aid of a mouse. I really just consider the whole command line environment to be my IDE now, and I love it!

I do have to admit though, if I was still doing Java or C#, I'd probably still keep the IDE around for doing big refactors and some code analysis. Now though, I'm mostly using dynamic languages and bash scripting, so the full IDE isn't as necessary (at least I haven't found it to be, so far).

Re: Poll: What is your primary editor?

#84

Post by alkonaut »

icegreentea wrote: post #39
alkonaut wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an IDE and this was about editors (or so I thought). Some the editors in the poll such as emacs can support basic IDE development (at least a debugger with watches and stepping), but I'm assuming those of us who develop in an IDE should vote for what editor we use for text editing and other general work.

Well, Eclipse, Netbeans, and XCode are all IDEs... soo...

True. Then VS is missing, and the poll is a bit weird as many would use an editor to edit a config file on their computer, but also use an IDE for all dev work (personally I can't fathom why you would prefer developing without interactive debugger etc.). when I edit drawings I use a cad program, and when I edit letters I use ms word....

Re: Poll: What is your primary editor?

#85

Post by alkonaut »

rifung wrote: post #64
click170 wrote: post #26

To my fellow Vim users out there, I would like to ask why you use Vim? For me, Vim is what my mentor was using so it's what I picked up. It's command-line oriented which is a huge win for me, and it's available everywhere (Mac includes it by default), and I haven't hit a roadblock that's been painful enough to get me to sincerely investigate other editors. What has led you to continue using your editor of choice?

Vim is what we used in school in my first programming class. While I understand the appeal of IDEs, I hate autocomplete as I feel like it gets in the way more than it helps. I type faster than most people I know though so that is probably why I don't really appreciate the autocomplete. I really really hate having to constantly use the mouse. Finally, I am fairly new to working but I really feel like using vim and the…

But is autocomplete the only feature distinguishing the IDEs from the editors? I'd say interactive debugger/watches etc are most important, followed by graphical tools in the case of frontend mobile/desktop development.

Autocomplete isn't about speed, it's about context sensitive lookup in documentation. You should never have to alt-tab to a browser to check a function signature, that costs too much.

Re: Poll: What is your primary editor?

#87

Post by lewaldman »

finicky wrote: post #75
Timothee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found your comment very interesting: I've been using vim for a few years now and wouldn't consider changing (except for Emacs with Evil mode) because I like doing everything without lifting my hands from the keyboard. But reading your description, I'm left slightly envious and pondering how vim could be integrated better with a browser with web development in mind specifically. I'm not sure what it'd be but it gets…

I'd love to be able to fully control and test the browser without using my mouse. I try my best to only use the keyboard when editing which makes the switch to 'mouse mode' even more painful.

AwesomeWM + Conkeror... Switched to it and never looked back.

Re: Poll: What is your primary editor?

#88

Post by lewaldman »

pmoriarty wrote: post #72

To compliment the "why vim?" question elsewhere in this thread, for my fellow Emacs users: why Emacs? How did you start using Emacs? Why do you still use it?

I was a VIM guy for some 3 or 4 years... but then... I wanted to learn LISP. Aaand... you can't try to learn LISP without Emacs.

So, Emacs + Evil Mode and some months latter, I'm a full converted.

My last play-out with Emacs was org-mode... still learning it's awesomeness.

Re: Poll: What is your primary editor?

#90

Post by dllthomas »

alkonaut wrote: post #84
icegreentea wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Eclipse, Netbeans, and XCode are all IDEs... soo...

True. Then VS is missing, and the poll is a bit weird as many would use an editor to edit a config file on their computer, but also use an IDE for all dev work (personally I can't fathom why you would prefer developing without interactive debugger etc.). when I edit drawings I use a cad program, and when I edit letters I use ms word....

"(personally I can't fathom why you would prefer developing without interactive debugger etc.)"

One may prefer developing without an interactive debugger because they want to be working in a language or environment where an interactive debugger is unavailable.

You can also have an interactive debugger without an IDE.

Post reply on HN