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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.
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.
Emacs' evil-mode is used by many Emacs users who prefer modal editing...
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> Vim vs. Emacs is a sideshow at best. Until you need to ssh into a server and edit something.
VS Code supports editing files over ssh. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview
Partly because of excellent plugins (VSCode, Visual Studio), partly because, for some reason I bothered to learn Vim shortcuts to degree I never did with Emacs. And I just love that vi and vim is quick and available on my various cloud servers.
Once in a while I toy with the idea of going back and using evil mode (I keep reading about org mode).
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One good reason is programmability. You can write lisp scripts to automate some routine editing. For me the main reason I prefer emacs is the key bindings are better. Another reason that emacs (the real thing) is available everywhere. You can install it on Linux, Mac and Windows. And you can run it in console mode (terminal) as well as GUI (even on Windows).
For me the main reason I prefer emacs is the key bindings are better. Genuine question, why do you think emacs key bindings are better?
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)
Vim user for 12 years, Emacs user for 5. I prefer and mainly use Emacs after I finally "got it". My previous attempts at learning Emacs weren't as successful because I was too biased about what a good editor should be like because of my familiarity with vim - mainly I was annoyed about silly things like having to press 4 keypresses for tasks that would take two keypresses in vim. So, if you decide to give Emacs a try…
I went in the other direction about 5 years ago after 20 years of always installing Emacs on every computer I ever used. Vim has had a much bigger impact on my productivity. Partly because of excellent plugins (VSCode, Visual Studio), partly because, for some reason I bothered to learn Vim shortcuts to degree I never did with Emacs. And I just love that vi and vim is quick and available on my various cloud servers. O…
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How many lines of vimscript have you written? No, copy-pasting config lines from someone's dotfiles doesn't count. How many times have you opened the source code of some vim plugin you are using and tried to modify what it does? If I were to hazard a guess: zero. That was also me during ten years of vim usage. Vim encourages the mindset of mastery = learning a bunch of tricks, remembering them and incorporating them…
It's certainly easier than editing an XMonad config without knowing Haskell.
Emacs and Vim aren't quite like that.
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For me the main reason I prefer emacs is the key bindings are better. Genuine question, why do you think emacs key bindings are better?
Take for example, incremental search. Emacs has it by default. Vi being older didn't have it, but vim has it. It has to be turned on. Then it doesn't work as well as emacs. In emacs you can type to search then ctrl+s to move to next match then continue to type to edit the search string, and so on. This is just one example. Replace has advantages in emacs when it comes to case matching. And it goes on and on.
What do you mean by “type to search”? Sounds like you’re omitting the “start search” key combo.
Your example in Vim:
* / to start a forward search
* type in the word and hit enter
* n/N for next/previous match
To modify the search:
* q/ opens your search history with the cursor at the last searched string
* modify the search string using standard Vim keys
* hit enter to search