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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)

#51

Post by e12e »

jeromenerf wrote: post #37
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…

I just use emacs+evil for org only. Org is feature rich (bloated?) but these dynamic code blocks in documents are just too good. I prefer vim for everything else and the general "minimalist" approach in particular. Emacs seems to appeal to people who like to do everything within one tool.

I know org.mode is a deep rabbit hole - but do you have an example of "dynamic code blocks in documents"?

I've recently switched my "notes.txt" buffer in (neo)vim to markdown ("notes.md) - along with a slightly more magical syntax plug-in - and I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality of life improvements from having multiple code/script snippets highlighted in-line (eg: ```SQL (... Snippet...) ``` in a paragraph followed by some notes and a block of bash etc).

But I rarely execute the blocks in / from vim - I do a bit of copy-pasting though (I don't generally fit a terminal buffer/window in vim, I use a separate window with gnome-terminal or Sakura. I tried term-in-vim, but didn't quite like the flow. Maybe I should try again).

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

#52

Post by bitwize »

davidw wrote: post #31
dang wrote: post #2

Just for fun, here are some of the larger past threads. Others? After over a decade of Vim, I’m hooked on Emacs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551796 - March 2018 (161 comments) A pragmatic decision on GNU Emacs versus Vim for programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590944 - Feb 2017 (59 comments) Why I switched from Vim to Emacs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13130775 - Dec 2016 (101 c…

Emacs vs Vim is like comfort food for software-related online discussions.

And it's even more useless fluff than it was back in the day because people used Vim and Emacs in large numbers back then. These days the vast bulk of professional developers use Visual Studio Code. Compared to VSCode vs. IntelliJ, Vim vs. Emacs is a sideshow at best.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by salmo »

In college I used Emacs, because I had a romance with lisps and just really enjoyed extending stuff. Also used Sawfish as my window manager, etc. The modal thing in vi(m) was hard for me to wrap my head around and the bizarre config of vim seemed so inelegant.

But when I got a gig as a sysadmin running a few thousand servers w/ a slew of Unixes (Solaris, BSD, HP-UX, Linux) I finally bit the bullet and learned vi, because it was the only common denominator (oh, man and ksh88 because so many bash-es were so broken on those platforms).

Now I find modal editing very natural and productive and don't miss the keyboard gymnastics of emacs. I find I get pissed at every text editor that isn't vi. Outlook, this text box, etc.

I use IntelliJ (and do Python and Go in it) with vi binding for large long-lived projects and just vim/neovim in a terminal for scripts, short-lived stuff, and quick edits. The bindings in IntelliJ are good enough, although sometimes I forget and try to do things, like run a file through awk.

I play with using VSCode with vi bindings from time to time, but honestly just forget to use it much.

I have a smallish vim config with a handful of plugins, mostly for linting. I'm comfortable with it and haven't ever really found it lacking. And I don't feel the need to maintain a codebase for my config like I enjoyed doing in college. I guess I garden in my garden vs my config files and am not so focused on some kind of concept of purity. Heck, I think I have the default background on my mac.

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

#55

Post by kenbolton »

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)

Emacs user for the years in college, with the occasional forced dip into vi.

Vim user for ten years after college with a couple of forced dips into Eclipse and other IDEs, with vi keybindings where available.

Evil emacs user for about the last ten years. Magit makes me happy. Tramp wins the "but vi is everywhere" conversation. Org-mode wins.

I won't hire someone unwilling to give emacs an honest effort. Switching back to emacs remains the best professional decision I have made.

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

#57

Post by zshev »

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…

I somehow find myself commenting on these threads the most on this site purely to bring up vterm. I think the combination of a well-polished Emacs (like DOOM), evil-mode for vi modal editing everywhere and critically vterm/emacs-libvterm make for a great workflow[1].

Sure there's all the regular Emacs value-adds (Org-mode, Magit, TRAMP etc.) and there's no rush to start learning them, but navigating local/remote codebases all the while treating Dired filesystem views, regular files AND terminal ptys as buffers with full modal editing I find to be something of a special power. This has been possible for a long time with eshell/shell etc. but vterm really takes the lag out of it IMO. This workflow was certainly my gateway drug to Emacs. It displaced nearly two decades of vim for editing and tmux for terminals. YMMV.

[1] I wrote a bit about the workflow and continuing to train better with vim bindings using Emacs https://martin.baillie.id/wrote/evil-motion-training-for-ema...

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

#58

Post by kenbolton »

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)

The distinction with regard to muscle memory between Vim and evil-mode Emacs is a false one. Try Doom or Spacemacs. You are likely to learn more about your editor and your development process with a tool like Spacemacs.

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

#59

Post by jimbokun »

bitwize wrote: post #52
davidw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs vs Vim is like comfort food for software-related online discussions.

And it's even more useless fluff than it was back in the day because people used Vim and Emacs in large numbers back then. These days the vast bulk of professional developers use Visual Studio Code. Compared to VSCode vs. IntelliJ, Vim vs. Emacs is a sideshow at best.

> Vim vs. Emacs is a sideshow at best.

Until you need to ssh into a server and edit something.

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

#60

Post by weaksauce »

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…

you might find vscode to be a great replacement for vim... using the neovim extension you have a pretty much seamless true vim in vscode (with a few rough edges). some other extensions like magit for vscode are gaining functionality and polish coupled with best in class support for language server makes it pretty solid as a replacement.
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