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Commanding your text editor

blog.peepcode.com

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Re: Commanding your text editor

#11

Post by emidln »

confluence wrote: post #5
eitland wrote: post #3

Regarding the point about autocompletion: If autocompletion is needed don't use vim or emacs, -use Netbeans or eclipse, both excellent, free (both ways) and open source. vim is great and I use it all the time but not for Java and PHP where the IDE support is so good that it really makes a difference.

I concur - Java dev off Eclipse can be a complete nightmare. I used to be a hard core vimmer/command liner - until I realised 2 things: 1. The vast majority of things that I did were repetitive and were already solved in other environments 2. Knowing the minutiae of the stuff that I know now does not improve my skills at all - production matters for shipping, minutiae matters for interviews. Best way to get a job is…

I feel like the second time I do an action in vim, it tends to get macro'd so subsequent uses aren't repetitive.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#12

Post by jheriko »

I think its much more important to become good at using whatever text editor is infront of you - i.e. learning the standard Windows/Mac shortcuts, instead of becoming reliant on what I consider the 'old' style of text editor.

Yet to meet anyone using vim or emacs who is actually more productive than me... the more productive people use Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse or whatever else is infront of them.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think typing is probably 30% or less of the time I spend coding... and thinking to make sure I write less code is probably more valuable than typing faster, not just in saving me time, but in improving stability and ease of reading code...

Re: Commanding your text editor

#13

Post by yummyfajitas »

petepete wrote: post #2

A nice introduction, although I'd be surprised if anyone who wasn't totally new to development didn't know these already. Also, 'Fuzzy file' searching in vim: https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim

In emacs, you'd be better off using anything+eproject for fuzzy file searching. I.e., type C-f foo and it will show you all the files in the current repository that contain foo.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#15

Post by priomsrb »

exDM69 wrote: post #6
eitland wrote: post #3

Regarding the point about autocompletion: If autocompletion is needed don't use vim or emacs, -use Netbeans or eclipse, both excellent, free (both ways) and open source. vim is great and I use it all the time but not for Java and PHP where the IDE support is so good that it really makes a difference.

> If autocompletion is needed don't use vim or emacs, -use Netbeans or eclipse, both excellent, free (both ways) and open source. Vim also contains excellent autocompletion (several kinds, actually, most powerful of which is the omni complete) but it's not restricted to one language. It may, however require you to install your language specific plugins. Vim ships with C and C++ mode, which requires you to build a cta…

I like to use eclipse with the vrapper plugin. That way I get the completion and refactoring of eclipse as well a decent set vim key bindings. Vrapper may not perfectly emulate vi/vim but it does the basics well. And when I need to use advanced vim features (eg macro magic) I just open the file in vim.

To me the IDE features make up for the minor annoyances of using vi/vim emulation.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#16

Post by [deleted] »

exDM69 wrote: post #6
eitland wrote: post #3

Regarding the point about autocompletion: If autocompletion is needed don't use vim or emacs, -use Netbeans or eclipse, both excellent, free (both ways) and open source. vim is great and I use it all the time but not for Java and PHP where the IDE support is so good that it really makes a difference.

> If autocompletion is needed don't use vim or emacs, -use Netbeans or eclipse, both excellent, free (both ways) and open source. Vim also contains excellent autocompletion (several kinds, actually, most powerful of which is the omni complete) but it's not restricted to one language. It may, however require you to install your language specific plugins. Vim ships with C and C++ mode, which requires you to build a cta…

[deleted]

Re: Commanding your text editor

#17

Post by hmart »

eitland wrote: post #3

Regarding the point about autocompletion: If autocompletion is needed don't use vim or emacs, -use Netbeans or eclipse, both excellent, free (both ways) and open source. vim is great and I use it all the time but not for Java and PHP where the IDE support is so good that it really makes a difference.

IDE support for static typed languages like Java is great, PHP IDE support only works with native Functions and OOP, but still subpar.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#18

Post by gits1225 »

hmart wrote: post #14

I love Peepcode screencasts, the Vim series is great, They should release a Sublime Text one. Meanwhile this TutsPlus free course about ST2 http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/perfect-workflow-in-su...

I have tried watching a couple of peepcode videos, but at some point, sooner or later, I invariably fall to sleep no matter how interesting the topic they present is. Somehow the videos feel lifeless and monotonous. Maybe its just me, but thats been my experience.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#19

Post by martinced »

jheriko wrote: post #12

I think its much more important to become good at using whatever text editor is infront of you - i.e. learning the standard Windows/Mac shortcuts, instead of becoming reliant on what I consider the 'old' style of text editor. Yet to meet anyone using vim or emacs who is actually more productive than me... the more productive people use Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse or whatever else is infront of them. Maybe I am wron…

Editor war!

You are confusing non-expressive languages like C# and Java which needs lots of "refactoring" and lots of boilerplate code (hence the need for code generators which understand "patterns" and refactoring tools etc.) with "productive languages", for a start.

Then your point is moot anyway: since quite some time there are vim programmers using an Eclipse bridge and getting the Eclipse features right from inside vim (it's called "eclim") and there's, of course, a port to Emacs ("emacs-eclim") which, despite only being used by a few people, works quite well (I'm using it and getting the best of both world and for when I do really need to something inside that piece of underperforming bloat that Eclipse is, I can just switch to it in a heartbeat).

But anyway, even without these Eclipse bridges, if you do really think that someone using, say, Visual Studio to develop C# code is more productive than a programmer using Emacs to develop Clojure code I'd like to have some of the stuff you're smoking because it looks good ; )

To me the biggest issue with Eclipse / Visual Studio / IntelliJ is that their "text editor" part is really terrible.

In addition to that, programmers do craft tools to make their life easier : to me it's only logical that a programmer would want to be able to program his editor.

I suggest to take a look at the "Emacs rocks!" series on YouTube to get a feel of what's possible using Emacs.

To me a good example of a productive programmer using Emacs would be Rich Hickey. He created the Lisp dialect Clojure and then he went on to create an amazing DB (Datomic) using Clojure. He knows about productivity...

Now of course if you're stuck in the C#/NHibernate/SQL hell working on apps full of mutability and where it's close to impossible to reproduce state, I do understand why you feel Visual Studio would be better. But I do really your ability to "move fast" compared to people using more advanced technologies and who are not stuck in the "design pattern" / ORM mindset...

Re: Commanding your text editor

#20

Post by tangue »

jheriko wrote: post #12

I think its much more important to become good at using whatever text editor is infront of you - i.e. learning the standard Windows/Mac shortcuts, instead of becoming reliant on what I consider the 'old' style of text editor. Yet to meet anyone using vim or emacs who is actually more productive than me... the more productive people use Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse or whatever else is infront of them. Maybe I am wron…

Emacs is great, Vim is great, Visual Studio is great, Eclipse is great. Use whatever you like, ship great code.

FYI GNU Readline shortcuts - basically Emacs shortcuts - are defaults on OSX...

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