4 ms·

I've always felt vim is an excellent editing experience but a lousy project management (ie "IDE") experience. I've also grown tired of the song and dance of set

by city41 10y ago

I've always felt vim is an excellent editing experience but a lousy project management (ie "IDE") experience. I've also grown tired of the song and dance of setting up vim config and plugins, getting excited when I finally get a decent autocomplete working without stopping to consider VS Code has great autocomplete out of the box. The problem is vim editing never quite mixes well with other editors. The vim plugin for VS Code is great, but do you let it take over Ctrl? Do you get Ctrl-R for redo, and sacrifice other VS Code usages of Ctrl for example? The vim plugin is also pretty buggy here and there and no matter what, I always find a vim plugin is missing some vim feature I depend on. It's frustrating in a first world sense. It's hard to have your cake and eat it too with vim.

tomsthumb 10y ago
The real solution to this problem is for IDEs to support an editing frontend interface and then editors to be split into frontend and backend so that really you could use them in the context of the IDE. The obvious example would be using the neo-vim frontend to interact with VSCode, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc. What I want most is a Neo-Vim frontend to org-mode in Emacs, because it would be hilarious and because while Spacemacs is kind of cool it's still not Vim. And org-mode is awesome and unparalleled but vim > emacs all day.
- city41 10y ago
  That's what this project is working on: https://github.com/carlosdcastillo/vim-mode https://github.com/carlosdcastillo/vim-mode -- using neovim as the editing backend to Atom. It still doesn't completely solve the problem of vim and editor key commands clashing. Another interesting approach is VimR (http://vimr.org/ http://vimr.org/), which is Neovim combined with native IDE addons such as Markdown preview, file tree, etc. The nice thing about VimR is since the whole thing is one cohesive package, the developers can ensure it has a consistent experience. Sadly it's OSX only though.
- jdc0589 10y ago
  that's exactly how limetext approached it. one back end, multiple frontends. I think that project is dead-ish though
- flukus 10y ago
  This is basically what the language server protocol (https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol) is doing, just in reverse.
michaelmrose 10y ago
Have you considered emacs + evil?
- city41 10y ago
  I think emacs falls in the same camp as vim in this regard. Setting up emacs is just as painful as setting up vim.
  - vonkow 10y ago
    Check out spacemacs, it works beautifully out of the box.
    - _e 10y ago
      Spacemacs is only good if you actually use it consistently throughout the day. From the prompt, it is faster to open a large file in vim than emacs since you have to wait for all of the spacemacs plugins to load.
  - microcolonel 10y ago
    If you like searchable multiple-choice configuration, there's always customize. M-x customize
    - PopsiclePete 10y ago
      That doesn't help emacs noobs at all. Half the Emacs term still used today 40 years after being coined don't make any sense. Wait - this is not the Window, but the... Frame? What?
      - michaelmrose 10y ago
        Emacs terminology for the uninitiated. http://wikemacs.org/wiki/Emacs_Terminology http://wikemacs.org/wiki/Emacs_Terminology
      - untoreh 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bangvoidzero 10y ago
I agree. With the caveat that I'm not a vim power user, the IdeaVim plugin has worked well for me. It doesn't have everything, but I haven't encountered any annoying bugs while using it. Plus, IntelliJ / WebStorm do a lot of really powerful and convenient things. It has been a nice compromise.

by city41 10y ago

tomsthumb 10y ago

The real solution to this problem is for IDEs to support an editing frontend interface and then editors to be split into frontend and backend so that really you could use them in the context of the IDE. The obvious example would be using the neo-vim frontend to interact with VSCode, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc. What I want most is a Neo-Vim frontend to org-mode in Emacs, because it would be hilarious and because while Spacemacs is kind of cool it's still not Vim. And org-mode is awesome and unparalleled but vim > emacs all day.

city41 10y ago
That's what this project is working on: https://github.com/carlosdcastillo/vim-mode https://github.com/carlosdcastillo/vim-mode -- using neovim as the editing backend to Atom. It still doesn't completely solve the problem of vim and editor key commands clashing. Another interesting approach is VimR (http://vimr.org/ http://vimr.org/), which is Neovim combined with native IDE addons such as Markdown preview, file tree, etc. The nice thing about VimR is since the whole thing is one cohesive package, the developers can ensure it has a consistent experience. Sadly it's OSX only though.
jdc0589 10y ago
that's exactly how limetext approached it. one back end, multiple frontends. I think that project is dead-ish though
flukus 10y ago
This is basically what the language server protocol (https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol) is doing, just in reverse.

michaelmrose 10y ago

Have you considered emacs + evil?

city41 10y ago
I think emacs falls in the same camp as vim in this regard. Setting up emacs is just as painful as setting up vim.
- vonkow 10y ago
  Check out spacemacs, it works beautifully out of the box.
  - _e 10y ago
    Spacemacs is only good if you actually use it consistently throughout the day. From the prompt, it is faster to open a large file in vim than emacs since you have to wait for all of the spacemacs plugins to load.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  If you like searchable multiple-choice configuration, there's always customize. M-x customize
  - PopsiclePete 10y ago
    That doesn't help emacs noobs at all. Half the Emacs term still used today 40 years after being coined don't make any sense. Wait - this is not the Window, but the... Frame? What?
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
      Emacs terminology for the uninitiated. http://wikemacs.org/wiki/Emacs_Terminology http://wikemacs.org/wiki/Emacs_Terminology
    - untoreh 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bangvoidzero 10y ago

I agree. With the caveat that I'm not a vim power user, the IdeaVim plugin has worked well for me. It doesn't have everything, but I haven't encountered any annoying bugs while using it. Plus, IntelliJ / WebStorm do a lot of really powerful and convenient things. It has been a nice compromise.