Emacs and Vim • Hacker News Board

Re: Emacs and Vim

#31

Post by nick_riviera » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 11:49 AM UTC

therealmarv wrote: post #30

So many Emacs articles the recent days... please tell me: Should I really switch to Emacs as a web developer? Is it really superior to SublimeText and Brackets for a web dev?

No. Use what you are comfortable with. There is a cost incurred for changing (time) that may or may not have a sensible return as an editor is a very personal thing to choose.

Re: Emacs and Vim

#32

Post by atmosx » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 11:52 AM UTC

therealmarv wrote: post #30

So many Emacs articles the recent days... please tell me: Should I really switch to Emacs as a web developer? Is it really superior to SublimeText and Brackets for a web dev?

I'm using vim. The thing is for text-based editors you need to configure specific workflows for languages other than C. Ruby and Python (probably others) have acceptable workflows (identation, completion, run, snippets, etc.) The workflow can be extremely optimised.

But for CSS/SCSS and JS I find easier to use espresso[1]. That's because it's made for web-dev and I don't need to setup my own workflow. I believe same thing is with Sublime Text. It's better to use for web-dev IMHO compared to VIM/EMACS.

ps. That said, I always believed that the editor is a tool. It's better to learn your current editor's ins and outs than switching back and forth from editor to editor.

[1] http://macrabbit.com/espresso/

Re: Emacs and Vim

#33

Post by Yuioup » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 11:55 AM UTC

elwell wrote: post #15

Yuioup wrote: post #2

I use Vim on Windows. I tried to learn Emacs but I keep running into roadblocks because of poor Windows compatibility of plugins.

I'm currently a Windows Emacs user. I'm curious, which plugins in particular gave you trouble?

Ideally I wanted to set up an Emacs environment for Python development. I tried to install the plugins mentioned on this page:

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/PythonProgrammingInEmacs

Couln't get flymake and pyflakes to work. pymacs was a non-starter so I couln't use ropemacs.

I also tried CEDET, but that was an epic fail.

Re: Emacs and Vim

#34

Post by jheriko » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 11:56 AM UTC

notepad and other modern solutions... they are ubiquitous for a reason. typing is such a tiny part of programmer productivity compared to thinking...

... do a little more thinking and never have this problem again, learn to adapt to whatever text editor is on the system etc.

Re: Emacs and Vim

#35

Post by mercurial » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 11:59 AM UTC

omaranto wrote: post #28

mercurial wrote: post #26

It's still too slow for me. I have often several vims open, usually for a short time, and I'm not going to start a daemon in my session to have a decent startup time, that's unreasonable. Also, even setting a theme like solarized dark turned out to be a headache last time I tried. I think I'll wait for neovim.

You mean startup time without using the server and client setup is too slow, right? (That's easily solved by, well, using the server and client setup, of course.) I find that in actual operation Emacs is faster and that's the reason I switched from Vim to Emacs. Even after using all the tricks in Vim's :help tex-slow, Vim still lagged when I scrolled or even typed into LaTeX files (unless I turned off syntax highligh…

Ah, I'm not a Latex person. In my experience, vim works fine, even on very large files, unless you combine syntax highlighting with very long lines, in which case you're going to suffer.

But yes, I admit that I find silly that I should need a 'server' for a text editor. Not to mention that I remote into various VMs regularly which would also need to get their own server/client setup if I wanted a homogeneous working environment.

Re: Emacs and Vim

#36

Post by terhechte » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:01 PM UTC

therealmarv wrote: post #30

So many Emacs articles the recent days... please tell me: Should I really switch to Emacs as a web developer? Is it really superior to SublimeText and Brackets for a web dev?

It depends on how you plan your future. I've used quite a few text editors over the years (Bluefish, Scite, Homesite, Phase5, Idle, TextMate, Vim, others). I switched to Emacs more than a year ago with one clear goal: Not having to switch anymore. You see, most of the editors above (except vim) used to be good and then were deprecated, sold, stopped, and so on. Which of those has been existing for more than 20 years and is still able to hold up to new editors. Sadly, none (One could argue for TextMate 2, but in between there were many, many years of staleness).

I was fed up with having to switch to a newfangled editor every so many years, having to identify new plugins, having to learn new keybindings. I've used Vim for 7 years (I think) and it came pretty close, but in the end the archaic VimScript language and the lack of async commands was something that was nagging me. I wanted to call an editor home, and hone my skills until I pass away, increasing my arcane knowledge over 10-20 years, learning ever more about the scripting language, commands, and writing more and more specific plugins that help with my tasks.

I still want to be coding in 10 years, but I don't want to switch text editors ever again. Emacs shall be my final editor [1], and that's why I decided to switch. Because I can see Emacs still going strong in another 20 years. I wouldn't want to say that about Sublime, or really any other editor right now.

[1] There's a case to be made that NeoVim is going to be great, and it may well be, but right now I'm really, really, really happy with Emacs + Evil. Nothing is perfect, of course, but the things that bug me are really, really small things that I could probably even fix, if I'd invest enough time; but they don't bug me enough for that.

Re: Emacs and Vim

#37

Post by gergles » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:02 PM UTC

I do wonder what it would be like to use an editor where the main cursor navigation was forward/backward incremental search. One case of this is the Canon CAT[1] word processor, which used "LEAP" keys for cursor movement (and nothing else).

I'm often curious how productive it would be to use while coding.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat Bonus link: http://clickamericana.com/media/advertisements/the-canon-cat...

Re: Emacs and Vim

#38

Post by conistonwater » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:03 PM UTC

mbrock wrote: post #16

asuffield wrote: post #4

Gah, the tutorial keybindings! They are mad. I've been using emacs for a very long time, and I can't imagine using those to navigate. Emacs has perfectly reasonable default keybindings these days, they just aren't the ones mentioned in the tutorial. Command: move down one line What vi uses: j What the emacs tutorial suggests: C-n What I use in emacs: the down arrow

I use C-{n,p,f,b} all the time, though admittedly their placement is more convenient with Dvorak. Though I also tend to use M-f and M-b a lot to navigate by words instead of characters. I also often navigate by incremental search.

Speaking of incremental search: try ace-jump-mode, it's really good. Here is a video that shows it at work: http://emacsrocks.com/e10.html

Re: Emacs and Vim

#39

Post by bmoresbest55 » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:04 PM UTC

I still do not undertand the devotion that people have with these text editors. I prefer Vim however I could see myself using it soley or even half the time. I feel like I know the basic commands and it is fast but with the ease of a sublime text or something similar why do people still use these pieces of software so frequently? (Not a rhetorical question)

Re: Emacs and Vim

#40

Post by jerf » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:04 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #9

asuffield wrote: post #4

Gah, the tutorial keybindings! They are mad. I've been using emacs for a very long time, and I can't imagine using those to navigate. Emacs has perfectly reasonable default keybindings these days, they just aren't the ones mentioned in the tutorial. Command: move down one line What vi uses: j What the emacs tutorial suggests: C-n What I use in emacs: the down arrow

Usually the strong defenders of emacs tell you that you must use c-n c-p c-b c-f to move because those are better and you will adapt in a short time. Then the strongest defenders of emacs tell you that you must use whatever you want because the purpose of emacs is that the editor must adapt to you and not the opposite.

It's the vim defenders who will claim that the home key navigation is a must. Emacs advocates don't much care from what I've seen. Some of them will be roused to suggest that you learn to use searching better.