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Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

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Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#1

Post by eliah-lakhin »

Hi folks,

I would like to know are there any good and modern alternatives to the most popular terminal-based editors such as VIM and Emacs?

Thing that I'm looking for is something like Sublime Text. So keybindings should be more or less familiar for the Windows/Mac users(i.e. copypaste through the cmd+c/cmd-v), but I want to run it in terminal/unix environment. This is very important for me.

I know about Nano, but set of code manipulation features is too poor. I want a rich set of "advanced" features like we have in Vim/Emacs.

Any suggestions?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#4

Post by eliah-lakhin »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #2

So ... what is it you find lacking in Emacs or Vim? Perhaps if you tell us that we might be able to help.

I actually didn't work with Emacs, and I tried Vim a little. The major reason why I gave up is learning curve. Keybindings(especially in Emacs) are too unfimiliar for windows/mac user like me. And I don't think this is a good idea to remap all shortcuts(I'm not a big fan of customization).

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#6

Post by eliah-lakhin »

thenerdfiles wrote: post #5

vim-spf13 is the way to go. I cannot believe how beautifully easy it is to hit the ground running. Incomparable. Except for maybe LightTable, but I'm constantly running into PATH issues. So I will settle (is it really "settling"?) for PythonMode in vim.

I will take a look. Thank you!

I suppose keybindings and modes are the same as in vanilla vim?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#8

Post by eliah-lakhin »

ftomassetti wrote: post #7

What about Sublime Text?

There are some pitfalls, but generally I like it. The only reason I don't use it as my main editor - it is not terminal based.

I mean, for example I want to run the editor remotely connecting to remote server through SSH. And the editor should work with the remote file system natively. I can't do it with Sublime Text(or not?).

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#9

Post by mfukar »

eliah-lakhin wrote: post #4
duncan_bayne wrote: post #2

So ... what is it you find lacking in Emacs or Vim? Perhaps if you tell us that we might be able to help.

I actually didn't work with Emacs, and I tried Vim a little. The major reason why I gave up is learning curve. Keybindings(especially in Emacs) are too unfimiliar for windows/mac user like me. And I don't think this is a good idea to remap all shortcuts(I'm not a big fan of customization).

An interesting conundrum: f you don't feel like learning, can we suggest anything actually useful?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any modern alternatives to VIM and Emacs

#10

Post by eliah-lakhin »

mfukar wrote: post #9
eliah-lakhin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually didn't work with Emacs, and I tried Vim a little. The major reason why I gave up is learning curve. Keybindings(especially in Emacs) are too unfimiliar for windows/mac user like me. And I don't think this is a good idea to remap all shortcuts(I'm not a big fan of customization).

An interesting conundrum: f you don't feel like learning, can we suggest anything actually useful?

oh, comeone! I didn't say I can't/don't want to learn anything. I just said that learning barrier in case of Emacs specificially is too high for me. I don't want to spend that much time on code editor. But it doesn't mean I don't want to learn at all.

To be more specific, if Emacs would have more familiar keybindings for Windows/Mac users I probably use it. For example from the manual http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/courses/cs699-autumn2013/refs/... :

> C-e end of line

Why not just "end"?

> M-v scroll down one page

I would like to use "page-down" instead.

> C-Space Set beginning mark (for region marking for example)

Really? Why not just press "Shift"?

ok, ok, I know that old keyboards didn't have all these buttons, and also Windows "familiar" key bindings were defined much later. So Emacs and Vim developers did what they did. But why should I spend so many time in learning all these oldschool workarounds?

Yes, I want terminal-based editor. But the rest of the killer features of Emacs or Vim are not so unique these days. I can obtain near the same level of functionality and flexibility in any modern window-based editor such as Sublime Text or IntelliJ Idea. Currently I'm using this one as my primary code editor - just for text, not for Java. And I find that it has even wider range of handy code manipulation commands than Emacs provides.

So, returning to my question. I would prefer to choose terminal-based code editor. And it is ok if it will be differ from the editors that I use - I'm ready to spend time in learning new stuff. But I'm not ready to learn code editor completely from scratch. That's why I rejected Emacs. ok, maybe I was wrong, so I would like to hear your opinion.

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