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Vim after 15 Years

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Re: Vim after 15 Years

#121

Post by Philipp__ »

eadmund wrote: post #93
Philipp__ wrote: post #68

I was split between using Emacs and Vim for last 2 years (I used Vim for last 6, and learned Emacs 2 years ago). But what made Vim my main editor is fzf and ag, and smooth workflow that I had in terminal. But I have to say, ivy and counsel made my Emacs experience much, much nicer. But I guess that I got too deep into Vim already that I kinda got used to it so much, that I appreciated more that "terminal" workflow.

> But what made Vim my main editor is fzf and ag, and smooth workflow that I had in terminal. For emacs, try helm to replace fzf (or just use fzf.el). helm-ag is awesome . On the terminal, just alias 'vi' to 'emacsclient -nw -a ""'. If you miss the vi keybindings (which are a pretty nice way to deal with code), then evil-mode or a full Spacemacs are pretty good options for you.

I tried helm, but it induced slight lag, bigger loading times, and I didn't like that. I had big ass emacs configuration, it felt heavy and sluggish. That was the moment where I declared bankruptcy and started from beginning where I created 250 LOC config, with no big plugins like helm.

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#122

Post by falcolas »

snarfy wrote: post #106

I've been using vim about 20 years now. Maybe I'm weird but I don't use any plugins. When I want more than what Vim does I use something else. Autocomplete, find usages, etc? I'll use an IDE for that. When I need to refactor a 500MB text file without hanging my machine, I'll use vim.

> I'll use an IDE for that.

These are usually attempts at reducing the need for IDEs, while keeping the familiar vim editing. With no exceptions so far, no IDE plugin (or emacs plugin, for that matter) has been able to emulate vim editing well enough to replace vim as my primary editor.

Perhaps when neovim (or anything else) is able to give me native vim capabilities in a more extensible or powerful editor, I'll switch. But we're just not there yet.

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#123

Post by falcolas »

eequah9L wrote: post #73
nasredin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the FIRST time when a "Emacs is a nice OS, all it's missing is a decent text editor" joke would be appropriate. If 20 years ago you would have told me we gonna have Vim inside a text editor inside a web browser I would have thought you are insane.

BTW, it does have a decent text editor. It's called Evil :)

FWIW, in all the times I've tried to use Emacs with Evil, it's still not been quite good enough. Enough friction here and there to bring me to a dead halt and make me reach for vim again.

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#124

Post by dghf »

Walf wrote: post #104
dghf wrote: post #86

If you're going to use buffers (which you should), make sure to set hidden otherwise you'll get an error message when you try to swap to a different buffers when you have unsaved changes in your current buffer,

Great for helping lose unsaved changes, too.

But the whole point of 'set hidden' is that the current buffer is hidden (rather than unloaded/closed) when you switch to a different one, so there's no prospect of losing unsaved changes -- unless you :qa! without checking your buffer list first.

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#126

Post by KGIII »

bohrshaw wrote: post #85
criddell wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was split between using Emacs and Vim for last 2 years You're going to have to pick a side. You can't be an atheist that dabbles in Catholicism.

I'm a vigorous vim user, and always want to incorporate emacs into my workflow or try to utilize its strength. So far, I just failed several times and the affection to vim grows stronger.

It be easier for everyone if you just admitted you use vim because you've not yet figured out how to exit it.

Ctrl Alt SysReq + REISUB

(It's the only way.)

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#127

Post by eradicatethots »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #120
eradicatethots wrote: post #23

Vim is the best lightweight single file editor there is. That’s all it should be. If you’re heavily configuring it, you should be able to answer “why is this better than an ide?” Without saying “vim makes me cool”. Also, if you can answer that, please let me know! To me, an IDE is better for everything but what default vim is good at. And if you tell me that typing is faster, please also tell me why that’s relevant!

Reversely what is so good about your IDE?

Intellisense, in-line code documentation, debugger, unit tests, refactoring, file browser/project support, find usages/jump to definition, full project intelligent search.

Even where vim supports these, it’s support is far weaker, less reliable, and much more painful to set up than IDE support. Among devs serious about productivity, it’s hard to imagine choosing vim.

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#128

Post by equalunique »

snarfy wrote: post #106

I've been using vim about 20 years now. Maybe I'm weird but I don't use any plugins. When I want more than what Vim does I use something else. Autocomplete, find usages, etc? I'll use an IDE for that. When I need to refactor a 500MB text file without hanging my machine, I'll use vim.

I also prefer plain vim or plain neovim, mainly because plugins aren't guaranteed to be on the servers I have to do work on.

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#129

Post by dagi3d »

I'm so in with fzf. I discovered it recently, after using CtrlP for several years and I couldn't be happier. maybe there was a workaround, but with CtrlP I had to clear its cache everytime I added a new file to be listed in the search results. With fzf it just works out of the box and it's blazing fast <3

Re: Vim after 15 Years

#130

Post by nextlevelwizard »

eradicatethots wrote: post #127
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reversely what is so good about your IDE?

Intellisense, in-line code documentation, debugger, unit tests, refactoring, file browser/project support, find usages/jump to definition, full project intelligent search. Even where vim supports these, it’s support is far weaker, less reliable, and much more painful to set up than IDE support. Among devs serious about productivity, it’s hard to imagine choosing vim.

>in-line code documentation

What do you mean by this? Like folded comments?

>debugger

So, gdb?

>unit tests

You can write unit tests in vim. You can also run them, obviously.

>refactoring

Again, what do you mean? Now it feels like you are just listing stuff or maybe I just don't know what refactoring actually means.

>file browser/project support

Granted the build in file explorer is pretty stupid, but the standard `:find` works perfectly well, so as long as you are not just randomly browsing, I don't see an issue.

>find usages/jump to definition

Vim has support for tags. I use jumping between them every day.

>full project intelligent search

What is this? Just grepping for stuff on whole repo or something more interesting?

>Even where vim supports these, it’s support is far weaker, less reliable

Only if you haven't used the features before. I definitely do not buy the "far weaker and less reliable" part.

>much more painful to set up than IDE support.

I am not arguing that vim does not have a higher learning curve than your average GUI editor/IDE, but are you seriously suggesting that you have not configured a single thing in your IDE? If you have, then your point is moot. I consider my .vimrc complex, but it has been build from scratch over the years as I've wanted more functionality.

>Among devs serious about productivity, it’s hard to imagine choosing vim.

Meh, sure depends on what you are doing. I rather have a tool which I can adapt to my needs than having to hunt down new tool for every project/language.

You ready for that killer feature that your IDE doesn't have? Try being productive on another machine. Over an SSH.

EDIT: I just noticed that I completely dismissed the "intellisense". Completion is build in by default. I can't remember if member list is, I use some tiny script that formats them all nice and neat.

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