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From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

blog.aaronbieber.com

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Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#21

Post by TrisMcC »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #8

I’m curious to hear from folks who have switched between the two, and have lasted for more than a year on both. If you’ve learned more than the basics and both became muscle memory, which did you end up sticking to? (Vim user for 23 years, Emacs user of none... but interested because of Lisp)

I was a vim user for 16 years (very proficient -- other developers in whatever office I was in would ask me vim questions) when I switched to emacs about 8 years ago. I switched for curiousity and to check out evil mode and magit.

A couple years ago during a lull in a dev cycle I built a neovim setup to see the state of that art but I didn't stick with it.

I've rewritten my emacs configuration many times, swapped between spacemacs, vanilla, and doom. I am currently on doom emacs with my customizations.

I also do not use evil mode anymore. Default emacs bindings make a lot of sense to me. I can still use vim with muscle memory, but I reach for "mg" if I need a quick edit more often than not.

Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#22

Post by soldeace »

syntheticnature wrote: post #20
mjfl wrote: post #13

I started with emacs and never learned vim. What am I missing?

Vi's sense of composability. For example, 'd' is the delete command, but what does it delete? It deletes across a motion. What is a motion? Could be any movement mode supported by the editor, which ranges from simple cursor motions to motions involving words or blocks to forms of searching to raw line number jumps. So, once you learn a vi command, you can use it with all the motions you already know, and once you lea…

I can relate. Going from Emacs to evil-mode (not pure vim) has been a bliss. Text and code editing feels almost like playing a game.

Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#24

Post by andrewzah »

This article fails to explain -why- one would want to switch to emacs from vim.

Org-mode and configuring emacs in a lisp-like are cool, but are not worth re-learning everything for me. I put that time in already by reading "Practical Vim" by Drew Neil and other vim literature online. I'm sure everyone is already aware, but vi is available basically everywhere. This has saved my ass at least twice where I couldn't access vim or had internet access to install XYZ editor.

So as a power vim user I see no reason to switch. If I can't use vim, most editors now have support for reasonable vim bindings. So I use that for Jetbrains' products / Joplin / Insomnia / etc.

Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#25

Post by mkl95 »

I have been using Emacs for several years now, I love how easy it makes it to quickly browse and edit code. The only downside is that coding without Emacs keybindings makes me uncomfortable and kind of sloppy. Fortunately most IDEs have an Emacs plugin.

Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#26

Post by asciimov »

andrewzah wrote: post #24

This article fails to explain -why- one would want to switch to emacs from vim. Org-mode and configuring emacs in a lisp-like are cool, but are not worth re-learning everything for me. I put that time in already by reading "Practical Vim" by Drew Neil and other vim literature online. I'm sure everyone is already aware, but vi is available basically everywhere. This has saved my ass at least twice where I couldn't acc…

For me, I wanted access to org-mode, as well as the emacs ecosystem of packages.

emacs has good vim emulation through the evil package.

Doom emacs, is a decent place to start for a vimmer.

Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#27

Post by Scarbutt »

mjfl wrote: post #13

I started with emacs and never learned vim. What am I missing?

A different way of doing the same thing for text editing, on which both are great. I use evil-mode just because of muscle memory from vim.

I have been using a jetbrain IDE recently and surprisingly, the vim plugin is pretty decent. So knowing vim lets me use both the IDE and emacs with less friction.

Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#28

Post by asciimov »

mjfl wrote: post #13

I started with emacs and never learned vim. What am I missing?

Modal editing.

Command mode lets you manipulate text using a full keyboard as shortcuts. Depending on setup this can reduce the amount of chording you do.

Visual mode lets you select text. By character, line, or region/block. I find this easier than emacs selection.

Insert mode what you use to enter text.

Re: From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)

#30

Post by asciimov »

tyingq wrote: post #4

"Finally, install evil-mode, the Vim emulation package for Emacs" Anyone use this regularly? Does it kill off some of the upside of emacs?

I use it regularly. It integrates quite well with emacs and if you use the evil-collection you can add vim-ness to other modes.

Personally, I mostly just use evil for modal editing, as I am a long time vim user. Then I use the emacs shortcuts on top of that.

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