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It took me a while to realize what really vim is for. What led me to realization was switching to Emacs. I read this post, and second checkbox says "modern cust

It took me a while to realize what really vim is for. What led me to realization was switching to Emacs. I read this post, and second checkbox says "modern customizable IDE". And I stopped there. Why you may ask? Well, I used Vim for 3 years before trying Emacs this spring. And I loaded it with all the heavy plugins(YCM), but Emacs led me to realization that Vim is more of an editor than IDE. Even with plugins I think it just doesn't even come close to Emacs, which has really nice ecosystem and plugins that are spot-on IDE feeling (ENSIME, CIDER, Alchemist etc). When I configured Vim again few days ago I realized how I misused Vim. My init.vim had about 150 lines of code, with few plugins, and now it felt right. Just like it felt right to customize the living hell out of Emacs. Again, this might be just my perception of things, some other people like it the other way, different flavors for different people, but it is how it felt right for me personally, after trying to understand philosophies and surroundings in which these wonderful pieces of software were made.

gepoch 10y ago
I will add some of my own opinions: My feeling is that real value of Vim is its novel approach to modal text manipulation, and you shouldn't let the fact that it has a standalone lightweight reference implementation usefully installed on almost every machine that you use confuse you. Vim script is not a great plugin language, and the vim runtime itself is not fantastic at doing things beyond the text editing. I think the activity around NeoVim is good evidence for this. The community recognizes the constraints of Vim, and seeks better plugin and runtime tooling to meet their needs. My issue is: there are loads of great text editors that support the Vim interface. Emacs, Atom, Sublime, whatever, all have very good Vim interfaces and far superior languages and platforms for doing complex plugin work that you need to support IDE-ish environments. NeoVim seems like a bit of a waste to me, because I think it misses the point. Vim is not a platform. It's a unique modal editing paradigm. Why make yet another Vim-binding-having platform? I guess what I mean is that vim should be left as vim. There are superior platforms that implement the same interface, should you feel the need to expand your tools. Vim does best as a portable minimal editor that you can use everywhere. If you need something with more power, pick a better platform, and run the Vim editing paradigm as an interface.
- Lio 10y ago
  > There are superior platforms that implement the same interface I guess that depends on how well you know Vim. All of the Vi/Vim plugins and emulators I've tried fell in the "uncanny valley" where they were only superficially like Vim but sooner or latter departed from the expected behaviour.
  - gepoch 10y ago
    Yeah, fair enough. That's a very good way of putting it, and I know exactly what you mean. I think the hardest part about implementing the Vim keybindings is that they're intrinsically linked to the way that Vim models text and operations. Commands are really statements about this internal model. Without the model, it gets difficult to reproduce the full palette of vim commands with very high fidelity. You kind of inevitably have to build your own vim-like text model to handle the keystrokes, and map it back into the platform that you're on (which is often a dumb buffer object for most text editors.) It's certainly much deeper than a keybinding. I called it an interface, but that's still not really deep enough. Well, anyways maybe NeoVim is good after all.
    - Philipp__ 10y ago
      I encourage you to try NeoVim. I did. And I never looked back. After 6 months of Emacs, looks like I'll be back to NeoVim, and I am happy about it.
      - weaksauce 10y ago
        you might want to give spacemacs a go... it's quite good after you translate whatever vim config to emacs config. out of the box it's actually quite great and this is coming from a hardcore vim user that can't stand using a text editor without vi bindings and proper macro support etc. Everything is done pretty well and there isn't anything that I have found dealbreakingly lacking so far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKF41ivkBb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKF41ivkBb0 it's also under active development so if that's your thing check it out. https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/ https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/
pmoriarty 10y ago
I don't think it's true that vim "just doesn't even come close to Emacs". They each have their strengths and weaknesses. As bad as the defaults for vim are, they're even worse in emacs (IMO) -- especially for former vim users (though I haven't tried spacemacs, which is supposed to make things automagically a lot more comfortable for people coming from vim). Evil mode helps a lot, but even with evil, most commands in emacs and its modes remain bound to traditional emacs chorded keystrokes, not to vim-style moded keystrokes (the latter of which feel much easier on the hands for me). I've used vim (vi and some other vi colones before that) for over 25 years, and switched mostly to emacs (with evil) about 6 years ago or so (while continuing to use vim on servers that didn't have emacs installed). I spent several months, spending 10 hours a day to customize emacs the way I liked it, and to bring it mostly up to parity with my vim config (which was thousands and thousands of lines long), along with customizing some emacs extensions that had no vim equivalent (like emacs-w3m, which is an embedded web browser, which is still super handy despite not working with javascript). It took that long despite me knowing Common Lisp and scheme before switching to emacs, which made learning Elisp a breeze compared to the extra effort it would take someone coming from vim who didn't know any Lisp. And still, even after all that work, I haven't gotten around to learning and customizing many of the things I really want to use emacs for, like email, IRC, RSS, Slime, and the various other extensions made for editing Lisp and Scheme. So I found the switch to be a ton of work, which was worth it for me, since I'm still using emacs instead of vim, and don't intend to switch back. But others who are considering a switch from vim to emacs should also be prepared to do a lot of work customizing emacs to your liking. It's a never-ending process, really, just as it is with vim. Now some words on some of what I see as strengths and weaknesses between the two editors: Vim has much better tab support out of the box. Emacs has any tab support without extensions, to my knowledge. Though vim's methods for writing syntax-highlighting for new, not already recognized filetypes is a bit of a nightmare, I found it to be a lot easier to understand than how to write new modes in emacs -- which I still really haven't bitten the bullet and fully learned. So for some filetypes that emacs doesn't have modes for, I still use vim to this day. This is particularly the case for strace output, which I view pretty regularly in vim, which handles them just fine, but emacs still has no modes for. One of the main reasons I switched to emacs was for its allegedly superior shell/terminal integration. But I found it really lacking for anything that involves curses terminal graphics, and also not really practical for me since I don't use GUI emacs, but rather use emacs inside tmux and inside a terminal. This makes for way too many levels of indirection for commands, and a lot of keystrokes are taken up by the various levels. Some say I should just use GUI emacs and not use tmux, but I don't want to do that, and am not going to go in to all the reasons why, in the interest of not making this post much longer than it already is. Emacs has a huge win over vim (for a Lisp/Scheme lover like me) in being natively scriptable in Elisp (and perhaps soon in Guile Scheme). vim could be scripted in scheme, but 99.9% (or more) of vim scripts aren't done in scheme -- the ecosystem is really mostly vimscript, which I don't hate like some people do, but which still pales in comparison to "real" programming languages like Python or Ruby, and even more so compared to a Lisp or Scheme (IMO). While virtually the whole emacs ecosystem is written in Elisp. That's super important to me, and makes writing and reading my emacs configs and emacs scripts a lot more of a pleasure for me than scripting vim will ever be. When mainline emacs switches to Guile Scheme, scripting it will be even more fun for me, and this Lisp ecosystem is one of the primary reasons I will continue to use emacs instead of vim in the long run. vim has neovim, which is super exciting, and has even made me (on occasion) wonder if maybe I should switch back. The ability to completely and cleanly split vim between the controlling and presentation levels and to properly and fully embed it in other programs is going to be huge. Emacs still has a lot of catching up to do in this area, despite it having a server mode, which does help. emacs can be really super slow on some large files that demand a lot of syntax highlighting. vim has the same problem, but to a much lesser extent. There are times that I'll switch back to vim just to edit some huge files every now and then. In such times, I must say that it's nice to be comfortable in both editors, so I have a choice as to which to use as the situation warrants.. the right tool for the job, and all that. As I mentioned before emacs-w3m (a web browser embedded in to emacs) is really great, and I use it all the time, despite it not being able to handle javascript. It's awesome to be able to split a web page in to panes in the same and independently scroll each pane, and to copy and paste things in to the panes without leaving the editor. It's super handy for browsing several sections of online documentation at the same time, without having to split out the page in to seperate windows in a traditional browser. I also use pentadactyl in firefox, and while that's pretty cool as far as it goes, it still does not come close to the power of having the browser embedded in an editor as powerful as emacs, and vim doesn't have anything close to that, to my knowledge. Similarly, there are emacs extensions for full email, IRC, and RSS clients, which sound awesome and don't have vim equivalents, to my knowledge. But I haven't tried those, so can't comment. There are many more things that one editor or the other is better at. But I'll just end this here, so I don't make this post much more ginormous than it already is. This subject really deserves a blog post or even a series of them, and maybe I'll write one.

gepoch 10y ago

I will add some of my own opinions: My feeling is that real value of Vim is its novel approach to modal text manipulation, and you shouldn't let the fact that it has a standalone lightweight reference implementation usefully installed on almost every machine that you use confuse you. Vim script is not a great plugin language, and the vim runtime itself is not fantastic at doing things beyond the text editing. I think the activity around NeoVim is good evidence for this. The community recognizes the constraints of Vim, and seeks better plugin and runtime tooling to meet their needs. My issue is: there are loads of great text editors that support the Vim interface. Emacs, Atom, Sublime, whatever, all have very good Vim interfaces and far superior languages and platforms for doing complex plugin work that you need to support IDE-ish environments. NeoVim seems like a bit of a waste to me, because I think it misses the point. Vim is not a platform. It's a unique modal editing paradigm. Why make yet another Vim-binding-having platform? I guess what I mean is that vim should be left as vim. There are superior platforms that implement the same interface, should you feel the need to expand your tools. Vim does best as a portable minimal editor that you can use everywhere. If you need something with more power, pick a better platform, and run the Vim editing paradigm as an interface.

Lio 10y ago
> There are superior platforms that implement the same interface I guess that depends on how well you know Vim. All of the Vi/Vim plugins and emulators I've tried fell in the "uncanny valley" where they were only superficially like Vim but sooner or latter departed from the expected behaviour.
- gepoch 10y ago
  Yeah, fair enough. That's a very good way of putting it, and I know exactly what you mean. I think the hardest part about implementing the Vim keybindings is that they're intrinsically linked to the way that Vim models text and operations. Commands are really statements about this internal model. Without the model, it gets difficult to reproduce the full palette of vim commands with very high fidelity. You kind of inevitably have to build your own vim-like text model to handle the keystrokes, and map it back into the platform that you're on (which is often a dumb buffer object for most text editors.) It's certainly much deeper than a keybinding. I called it an interface, but that's still not really deep enough. Well, anyways maybe NeoVim is good after all.
  - Philipp__ 10y ago
    I encourage you to try NeoVim. I did. And I never looked back. After 6 months of Emacs, looks like I'll be back to NeoVim, and I am happy about it.
    - weaksauce 10y ago
      you might want to give spacemacs a go... it's quite good after you translate whatever vim config to emacs config. out of the box it's actually quite great and this is coming from a hardcore vim user that can't stand using a text editor without vi bindings and proper macro support etc. Everything is done pretty well and there isn't anything that I have found dealbreakingly lacking so far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKF41ivkBb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKF41ivkBb0 it's also under active development so if that's your thing check it out. https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/ https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/

pmoriarty 10y ago

I don't think it's true that vim "just doesn't even come close to Emacs". They each have their strengths and weaknesses. As bad as the defaults for vim are, they're even worse in emacs (IMO) -- especially for former vim users (though I haven't tried spacemacs, which is supposed to make things automagically a lot more comfortable for people coming from vim). Evil mode helps a lot, but even with evil, most commands in emacs and its modes remain bound to traditional emacs chorded keystrokes, not to vim-style moded keystrokes (the latter of which feel much easier on the hands for me). I've used vim (vi and some other vi colones before that) for over 25 years, and switched mostly to emacs (with evil) about 6 years ago or so (while continuing to use vim on servers that didn't have emacs installed). I spent several months, spending 10 hours a day to customize emacs the way I liked it, and to bring it mostly up to parity with my vim config (which was thousands and thousands of lines long), along with customizing some emacs extensions that had no vim equivalent (like emacs-w3m, which is an embedded web browser, which is still super handy despite not working with javascript). It took that long despite me knowing Common Lisp and scheme before switching to emacs, which made learning Elisp a breeze compared to the extra effort it would take someone coming from vim who didn't know any Lisp. And still, even after all that work, I haven't gotten around to learning and customizing many of the things I really want to use emacs for, like email, IRC, RSS, Slime, and the various other extensions made for editing Lisp and Scheme. So I found the switch to be a ton of work, which was worth it for me, since I'm still using emacs instead of vim, and don't intend to switch back. But others who are considering a switch from vim to emacs should also be prepared to do a lot of work customizing emacs to your liking. It's a never-ending process, really, just as it is with vim. Now some words on some of what I see as strengths and weaknesses between the two editors: Vim has much better tab support out of the box. Emacs has any tab support without extensions, to my knowledge. Though vim's methods for writing syntax-highlighting for new, not already recognized filetypes is a bit of a nightmare, I found it to be a lot easier to understand than how to write new modes in emacs -- which I still really haven't bitten the bullet and fully learned. So for some filetypes that emacs doesn't have modes for, I still use vim to this day. This is particularly the case for strace output, which I view pretty regularly in vim, which handles them just fine, but emacs still has no modes for. One of the main reasons I switched to emacs was for its allegedly superior shell/terminal integration. But I found it really lacking for anything that involves curses terminal graphics, and also not really practical for me since I don't use GUI emacs, but rather use emacs inside tmux and inside a terminal. This makes for way too many levels of indirection for commands, and a lot of keystrokes are taken up by the various levels. Some say I should just use GUI emacs and not use tmux, but I don't want to do that, and am not going to go in to all the reasons why, in the interest of not making this post much longer than it already is. Emacs has a huge win over vim (for a Lisp/Scheme lover like me) in being natively scriptable in Elisp (and perhaps soon in Guile Scheme). vim could be scripted in scheme, but 99.9% (or more) of vim scripts aren't done in scheme -- the ecosystem is really mostly vimscript, which I don't hate like some people do, but which still pales in comparison to "real" programming languages like Python or Ruby, and even more so compared to a Lisp or Scheme (IMO). While virtually the whole emacs ecosystem is written in Elisp. That's super important to me, and makes writing and reading my emacs configs and emacs scripts a lot more of a pleasure for me than scripting vim will ever be. When mainline emacs switches to Guile Scheme, scripting it will be even more fun for me, and this Lisp ecosystem is one of the primary reasons I will continue to use emacs instead of vim in the long run. vim has neovim, which is super exciting, and has even made me (on occasion) wonder if maybe I should switch back. The ability to completely and cleanly split vim between the controlling and presentation levels and to properly and fully embed it in other programs is going to be huge. Emacs still has a lot of catching up to do in this area, despite it having a server mode, which does help. emacs can be really super slow on some large files that demand a lot of syntax highlighting. vim has the same problem, but to a much lesser extent. There are times that I'll switch back to vim just to edit some huge files every now and then. In such times, I must say that it's nice to be comfortable in both editors, so I have a choice as to which to use as the situation warrants.. the right tool for the job, and all that. As I mentioned before emacs-w3m (a web browser embedded in to emacs) is really great, and I use it all the time, despite it not being able to handle javascript. It's awesome to be able to split a web page in to panes in the same and independently scroll each pane, and to copy and paste things in to the panes without leaving the editor. It's super handy for browsing several sections of online documentation at the same time, without having to split out the page in to seperate windows in a traditional browser. I also use pentadactyl in firefox, and while that's pretty cool as far as it goes, it still does not come close to the power of having the browser embedded in an editor as powerful as emacs, and vim doesn't have anything close to that, to my knowledge. Similarly, there are emacs extensions for full email, IRC, and RSS clients, which sound awesome and don't have vim equivalents, to my knowledge. But I haven't tried those, so can't comment. There are many more things that one editor or the other is better at. But I'll just end this here, so I don't make this post much more ginormous than it already is. This subject really deserves a blog post or even a series of them, and maybe I'll write one.