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Commanding your text editor

blog.peepcode.com

21–30 of 66 posts

Re: Commanding your text editor

#21
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.

This is so wrong. vim has eclim, which is a bridge to Eclipse (you can either run Eclipse visually or use Eclipse in server mode) and provides all the Eclipse auto-completion. It just works.

It actually works so well that the "emacs eclim", based on eclim, "Just Works! [TM]" and gives you, right inside Emacs, the Eclipse auto-completion.

Even when stuck in the Java/ORM/Hibernate/SQL/XML hell (at which point I want to kill myself and really question the company's "productivity"), I'd still rather use Emacs + emacs-eclim then Eclipse (or IntelliJ IDEA -- which gives both NetBeans and Eclipse a run for its money btw).

Thing is: adding Eclipse / IntelliJ support to vim / emacs is not that hard. But turning the "text editor" part of Eclipse into Emacs just looks like mission impossible.

IIRC using eclim you can replace the (very lame) text editor of Eclipse with vim. So you get vim running right in the middle of your Eclipse.

What's not to love there?

Re: Commanding your text editor

#22
As long as my programmer idols Carmack and Persson use Visual Studio and Eclipse respectively to produce amazing stuff, i dont really care about changing to vim/emacs...besides i work mostly in statically typed languages anyway, so i would miss alot of the IDE features for refactoring.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#23
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 ins…

look at a Stream/Recording of Minecraft creator Notch writing game code in Eclipse and i bet you will think twice before sniffing at IDEs like Eclipse in that way again.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#24
post #22

As long as my programmer idols Carmack and Persson use Visual Studio and Eclipse respectively to produce amazing stuff, i dont really care about changing to vim/emacs...besides i work mostly in statically typed languages anyway, so i would miss alot of the IDE features for refactoring.

Not enough credit is given to Visual Studio's Autocomplete feature. It seriously is unmatched, and to me is one of the reasons why C# is very pleasant to work with.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#25
post #22

As long as my programmer idols Carmack and Persson use Visual Studio and Eclipse respectively to produce amazing stuff, i dont really care about changing to vim/emacs...besides i work mostly in statically typed languages anyway, so i would miss alot of the IDE features for refactoring.

For me the post boils down to "learn how to do these six things when editing code". Which is good advice to IDE users as well.

Okay, indentation and auto-completion are rather trivial things to do in an IDE, but most IDEs come with powerful search tools and for most IDEs I don't know how to use them.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#26
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 ins…

  > Editor war!
Please don't.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#29
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

You would be surprised at how many people, programmers or not, experienced or not, don't know those and other basic shortcuts. No wonder Vim's motions sound like necromancy to so many people.

Re: Commanding your text editor

#30
post #22

As long as my programmer idols Carmack and Persson use Visual Studio and Eclipse respectively to produce amazing stuff, i dont really care about changing to vim/emacs...besides i work mostly in statically typed languages anyway, so i would miss alot of the IDE features for refactoring.

Just spent half of the day doing AS3 in Eclipse. That was nice… thanks to the Vrapper plugin. Once you go Vim, using any other editor is a nightmare.

Maybe that's just me but I would be incapable of choosing an editor/IDE/smartphone/perfume/car/whatever because someone I admire uses it. That sounds incredibly childish to me.

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