Time to talk about why vim is better than emacs and recruit for the temple of vim

  • nematoad [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    No joke just learning the very basics of vim will make editing text much more pleasant. Also, it's everywhere. You can get vim bindings in Pycharm/IntelliJ, Atom, VSCode, etc. You don't have to use vim in the terminal proper.

    • regul [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      this tbh

      I have vim bindings running in all my editors and IDEs.

  • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I've been using vim for 6 years and I average one new keyboard shortcut a year. Honestly all I think I really need to know is tabs/windows, vertical select, and go to bottom of the file.

    That being said its my main editor and I honestly feel like it makes me a better programmer to not rely on auto-complete.

    Vim bindings in an IDE is a waste of time and never feels quite right. the timings are off which means I fuck up said bindings.

    • communist_princess [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I find it amazing that I always seem to learn just another shortcut- there's so many!

      Yeah, my experience with bindings has been very mixed. I will say, VsVim bindings work extremely well, but that has been the best I've experienced and some other IDEs are just super laggy like you've said.

      • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I've only tried vim bindings in VS code so that may be why my opinion is as it is. The work I do tends to not be limited by not using a full ide. Mostly running grep -re <string> in a directory to find references is just as fast as an ide search. I find switching to a mouse often while editing just so frustrating.

        • communist_princess [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Ah, that makes sense. I didn't like the extension in VS code as much. I have pretty bad carpal tunnel so I also avoid switching to a mouse as much as possible; it's great vim keybindings make this a lot easier.

  • lib2
    ·
    4 years ago

    Emacs is better for lisp development. I say this as a former vim enthusiast who had to learn lisp.

    • communist_princess [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      That totally makes sense, One of my friends who is really into lisp development has always raved about emacs and basically uses it for everything, like even emails and stuff.

      • lib2
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah i don't take it that far. I do use an rss reader in emacs but thats about as fancy as i get. I also use evil mode so i always stay true to my roots.

    • alphamule [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Is it better for all lisp, or just emacs-lisp? Like, is clojure better in emacs? Otherwise, isn't this like saying vim is better at vim-script?

      • lib2
        ·
        4 years ago

        When i started clojure programming it was much better for interactive lisp development. I haven't tried vim with fireplace in a long time for clojure development but it's still a nice tool. I tried it back before vim had async calls which is one thing that made it a pain. I think the reason emacs is better for lisp development is because it already had a lot of the necessary concepts for interactive development built in for emacs lisp (eval-last-sexp for example). Many lisp users just use emacs so a lot of the great tooling like Cider was developed for emacs.

        I've also found emacs to be great for common lisp and hy.

        • alphamule [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Ah, this makes sense. I was thinking about code editing + navigation, but yeah, I can see how emacs would be better for REPL/interactive usage.

          • lib2
            ·
            4 years ago

            Yeah. Navigation is fine. Cider uses the running instance of your application to do navigation and code completion. For editing you have tools like parinfer and smartparens for lisps. I believe vim has ports of those which work well.

  • rinze [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    As an old Spanish comic strip character said: "We can't use emacs, we only have 10 fingers" (or something to that effect.)

    Also, hi everybody. Nice to be here.

  • s0ciety [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It's because vi is at least always there, and I only have 10 fingers.

    • Sushi_Desires
      ·
      4 years ago

      It's about the deepest, most arcane, most powerful eldritch magic in computer science. Actually "computer science" is a bit of a misnomer, here's why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY

  • shyamalamadingdong [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Vimtutor is so easy and fun, can't believe I was on Linux for years before trying it. Now I don't even have any other editor installed on my system

  • communist_princess [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I like vim because the control scheme works for me I just want a text editor with basic plugin support. I know evil mode exists with emacs but I couldn't figure out how to get a .vimrc working and I just got confused lol.

    • the_river_cass [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      start with doom emacs, it sets everything up out of the box for you such that all the normal vim shit works with the plugins that make emacs worthwhile. at this point, I more run emacs as a kind of meta-program that integrates a bunch of stuff, including a vim-like text editor. being able to run a shell that autocompletes with a little dropdown as I type, syntax highlights when I cat, and opens files in a buffer that I can pipe in and out of, with a vim editing experience for all of it is just joyous.

  • garbology [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/164-ideavim Why just use vim instead of using vim bindings in a full-featured IDE?

    • ElectricMonk [she/her,undecided]
      ·
      4 years ago

      For me

      • Still better and more customisable then vim plug-ins
      • Uses less ram
      • Works through ssh
      • Free and open source
      • Language agnostic
      • With plug-ins can be as powerful as an IDE, I use a Language Server plug-in and it’s great
    • shyamalamadingdong [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      If you're not going full Vim, micro is a better fit than nano imo. Saner keybindings and more minimal looking too out of the box, while probably being able to do a lot more.