5 ms·

For me, having tried to use Vim in the past, the pain point is never the editing itself. It's the fact that I need visual step-through debugging, adding breakpo

For me, having tried to use Vim in the past, the pain point is never the editing itself. It's the fact that I need visual step-through debugging, adding breakpoints and watch points, and intuitive navigation through a large file hierarchy including lots of imported files, HTML templates, config files, performing ad hoc database investigation queries, uploading files to a server, and whatever else, along with ability to jump to classes and function definitions and intelligent auto-complete and popping up parameters and catching my variable name typos and so forth. There's a fundamental disconnect between me and the programmers who say "the only real choices are Vim and Emacs", and I'm fully willing to consider that I'm doing it all wrong, but I wonder if there's anything out there that could convince me that living on the home row in a modal editor can work me through the entire job of being a programmer and maintainer, as opposed to editing and entering text in a single or very few files.

andrewvc 16y ago
It probably depends on your stack. TFA's author is a Rails developer, like myself. I've used Rad Rails, the eclipse based Rails IDE, and I just find myself less productive in it than vim + a handful of terminals. I really tried to like Rad Rails, but I it just felt like overkill, and the interface was too complicated. Besides adding a breakpoint to a rails app is as simple as adding the line 'debugger' to it. No big deal. I've heard that for Java the situation is reversed, but I'm not a Java programmer so I couldn't say if there's anything to that.
kilowatt 16y ago
With customization, every pain point of yours can be addressed; but maybe that's the problem that makes people "fall back" on IDEs.
zephyrfalcon 16y ago
"It's the fact that I need visual step-through debugging, adding breakpoints and watch points, and intuitive navigation through a large file hierarchy including lots of imported files, HTML templates, config files, performing ad hoc database investigation queries, uploading files to a server, and whatever else, along with ability to jump to classes and function definitions and intelligent auto-complete and popping up parameters and catching my variable name typos and so forth." I know what you mean, but... Vim is first and foremost a text editor, and one could argue that none of this is a text editor's job. (In the spirit of the Unix tradition, do one thing and do it well, etc.) You can customize Vim a great deal, but it isn't really meant to do all of the above. I can see why you would choose to go with an IDE instead.
lee 16y ago
Hey, don't throw in Emacs in there! I use Emacs for a lot of Python and Django work. I can visually step through debugging, add break points, watch points, and etc... with Emacs. Emacs was designed with extensibility from the ground up, and there are a lot of debugging plugins that turn emacs into an "IDE".
- parfe 16y ago
  Can I ask what your setup is to setup break points and step through?
  - johngunderman 16y ago
    Super simple: run M-x gdb to bring up gdb, and then run M-x gdb-many-windows to make it look like an IDE debugger. it gives you the gdb prompt, the state of variables at any breakpoints, current threads that are running, what is on the stack, where you are in your code... pretty much anything you need from gdb. Compiling your code with the -g flag is a must though, if you want line numbers etc. for your errors/debugging. As far as setting breakpoints and stepping through, I personally use the gdb console. However, you can set breakpoints by clicking the left margin of the line you want to break on, and I believe there is a key map for stepping through.
    - parfe 16y ago
      That works for C, but I was looking for the Python example.
  - lee 16y ago
    Specifically for Python I use the ActiveState DBGP Client. You can find that here: http://docs.activestate.com/komodo/4.4/debugpython.html http://docs.activestate.com/komodo/4.4/debugpython.html I use Geben as the emacs plugin to connect to the debug client. http://code.google.com/p/geben-on-emacs/ http://code.google.com/p/geben-on-emacs/ The benefit of this is that I can debug remotely, or when I have my development setup in a chroot or virtual environment, I can still debug from outside.
jlongster 16y ago
The thing is, you can achieve that functionality whether or not you use Vim/Emacs. The difference is that it won't be so visual, but it turns out that visual clutter gets in the way anyway. So yes, it's harder to get up and running, but it's really efficient once you've settled into an IDE-like environment in Vim/Emacs. Also, because you've put the glue in place yourself (by hooking up GDB, creating separate windows, running SQL commands as subprocesses, etc.) you've really tailored your environment to your needs. And trust me, once you get to that point, no other IDE will compare.
nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
The best part about Vim is that I can take Vim with me when I use both Eclipse and Visual Studio; there are great projects available for implementing the true, modal Vi editing model for both IDEs. ViEmu, although not free, is a first class Vi mode for Visual Studio, so good that there's barely anything I use in Vim that isn't available in ViEmu. For Eclipse, Vrapper is an excellent newcomer that implements a pretty large portion of the Vi command set. It's not as complete as some of the other Vi modes for Eclipse, but it's definitely the best integration I've found, and hasn't fallen done in edge cases like the others have.
sreque 16y ago
I like getting the best of both worlds. Most IDEs have a vi plugin of varying quality. Netbean's vi plugin has worked excellently for me in the past (http://jvi.sourceforge.net/ http://jvi.sourceforge.net/). I've heard Intellij's is also pretty good. I've found the Eclipse one to be very buggy but still worth using (http://www.viplugin.com/ http://www.viplugin.com/). I've never spent time in the Microsoft developer world but have heard that historically there has even been a commercial plugin available for Visual Studio.
spacemanaki 16y ago
Missing from the other suggestions for IDE like behavior in Vim is Eclim, a plugin to Eclipse and set of Vim scripts which hook up Eclipse as a backed to Vim. I just started using it for Android development. You get intellisense,validation, import fixing etc.... all in Vim. might not do it for you but perhaps someone else will find it useful, I certainly did.

andrewvc 16y ago

It probably depends on your stack. TFA's author is a Rails developer, like myself. I've used Rad Rails, the eclipse based Rails IDE, and I just find myself less productive in it than vim + a handful of terminals. I really tried to like Rad Rails, but I it just felt like overkill, and the interface was too complicated. Besides adding a breakpoint to a rails app is as simple as adding the line 'debugger' to it. No big deal. I've heard that for Java the situation is reversed, but I'm not a Java programmer so I couldn't say if there's anything to that.

kilowatt 16y ago

With customization, every pain point of yours can be addressed; but maybe that's the problem that makes people "fall back" on IDEs.

zephyrfalcon 16y ago

"It's the fact that I need visual step-through debugging, adding breakpoints and watch points, and intuitive navigation through a large file hierarchy including lots of imported files, HTML templates, config files, performing ad hoc database investigation queries, uploading files to a server, and whatever else, along with ability to jump to classes and function definitions and intelligent auto-complete and popping up parameters and catching my variable name typos and so forth." I know what you mean, but... Vim is first and foremost a text editor, and one could argue that none of this is a text editor's job. (In the spirit of the Unix tradition, do one thing and do it well, etc.) You can customize Vim a great deal, but it isn't really meant to do all of the above. I can see why you would choose to go with an IDE instead.

lee 16y ago

Hey, don't throw in Emacs in there! I use Emacs for a lot of Python and Django work. I can visually step through debugging, add break points, watch points, and etc... with Emacs. Emacs was designed with extensibility from the ground up, and there are a lot of debugging plugins that turn emacs into an "IDE".

parfe 16y ago
Can I ask what your setup is to setup break points and step through?
- johngunderman 16y ago
  Super simple: run M-x gdb to bring up gdb, and then run M-x gdb-many-windows to make it look like an IDE debugger. it gives you the gdb prompt, the state of variables at any breakpoints, current threads that are running, what is on the stack, where you are in your code... pretty much anything you need from gdb. Compiling your code with the -g flag is a must though, if you want line numbers etc. for your errors/debugging. As far as setting breakpoints and stepping through, I personally use the gdb console. However, you can set breakpoints by clicking the left margin of the line you want to break on, and I believe there is a key map for stepping through.
  - parfe 16y ago
    That works for C, but I was looking for the Python example.
- lee 16y ago
  Specifically for Python I use the ActiveState DBGP Client. You can find that here: http://docs.activestate.com/komodo/4.4/debugpython.html http://docs.activestate.com/komodo/4.4/debugpython.html I use Geben as the emacs plugin to connect to the debug client. http://code.google.com/p/geben-on-emacs/ http://code.google.com/p/geben-on-emacs/ The benefit of this is that I can debug remotely, or when I have my development setup in a chroot or virtual environment, I can still debug from outside.

jlongster 16y ago

The thing is, you can achieve that functionality whether or not you use Vim/Emacs. The difference is that it won't be so visual, but it turns out that visual clutter gets in the way anyway. So yes, it's harder to get up and running, but it's really efficient once you've settled into an IDE-like environment in Vim/Emacs. Also, because you've put the glue in place yourself (by hooking up GDB, creating separate windows, running SQL commands as subprocesses, etc.) you've really tailored your environment to your needs. And trust me, once you get to that point, no other IDE will compare.

nuclear_eclipse 16y ago

The best part about Vim is that I can take Vim with me when I use both Eclipse and Visual Studio; there are great projects available for implementing the true, modal Vi editing model for both IDEs. ViEmu, although not free, is a first class Vi mode for Visual Studio, so good that there's barely anything I use in Vim that isn't available in ViEmu. For Eclipse, Vrapper is an excellent newcomer that implements a pretty large portion of the Vi command set. It's not as complete as some of the other Vi modes for Eclipse, but it's definitely the best integration I've found, and hasn't fallen done in edge cases like the others have.

sreque 16y ago

I like getting the best of both worlds. Most IDEs have a vi plugin of varying quality. Netbean's vi plugin has worked excellently for me in the past (http://jvi.sourceforge.net/ http://jvi.sourceforge.net/). I've heard Intellij's is also pretty good. I've found the Eclipse one to be very buggy but still worth using (http://www.viplugin.com/ http://www.viplugin.com/). I've never spent time in the Microsoft developer world but have heard that historically there has even been a commercial plugin available for Visual Studio.

spacemanaki 16y ago

Missing from the other suggestions for IDE like behavior in Vim is Eclim, a plugin to Eclipse and set of Vim scripts which hook up Eclipse as a backed to Vim. I just started using it for Android development. You get intellisense,validation, import fixing etc.... all in Vim. might not do it for you but perhaps someone else will find it useful, I certainly did.