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While I would never sell it as "turning vim into an IDE", I use most of these plugins. ctrl-P is great, but I would probably switch to fzf if I was bothering to

While I would never sell it as "turning vim into an IDE", I use most of these plugins. ctrl-P is great, but I would probably switch to fzf if I was bothering to update my vimrc and plugins lately. Fundamentally, I think people trying to sell emacs/vim with plugins as "turn X into an IDE" are sort of not getting what people see and get from IDEs, though. There's quite a bit more integration that goes into IDEs and what you're making is a pretty barebones/poor IDE with these plugins. Most languages, though, don't need an actual IDE for them to be great. You need the auto-completion, automatic compilation/error checking, jump to definition, easy-to-reach documentation, etc., for them to instantly be super productive while coding. Spacemacs with Haskell plugins is one of the best coding experiences I've had and it even taught me some patterns that I didn't know about. Another highlight is OCaml tooling that works really great with both Emacs and vim.

geowwy 9y ago
> There's quite a bit more integration that goes into IDEs and what you're making is a pretty barebones/poor IDE with these plugins. I think even that's putting it generously. It's not turning vim into an IDE at all, just adding some modern text editor features like you'd find in Atom or Sublime.
c256 9y ago
I don’t disagree on principle, but a highly-configured Emacs can easily reach levels of integration that I think is worthy of the “Integrated Development Environment” label. For vim, I suspect it’s more like “as close to IDE level as a dedicated vim user is likely to want”. (Fwiw, I use Emacs a lot, vim a little, and my hardcore IDE usage is several years back, so maybe that’s just my biases showing.)
- maccard 9y ago
  > a highly-configured Emacs can easily reach levels of integration that I think is worthy of the “Integrated Development Environment” label I disagree. I've _never_ seen an integration into emacs that comes close to a _good_ integrated debugging experience. Similarly, the navigation/refactoring integrations tend to feel bolted on, rather than integrated. (you're using projectile and irony mode? They both have different representations of what your "project" is, so you have to keep both up to date). Again, actually "building" from emacs is something I've never seen done well. You've inevitably got the compile command which you have to write yourself, but my IDE can parse its own project file, generate a list of targets and configurations (predefined compiler flags for optimisation/definitions) and build those in one keystroke. I've also never seen any integration of any autocomplete that works with configurations either.
  - empthought 9y ago
    I'm a longtime Emacs user, and I think you're generally right. But Emacs Lisp, SLIME, and CIDER are exceptions to these observations.
rjzzleep 9y ago
And what exactly is it that you're getting from an IDE? You get refactoring, jump to def, auto completion, linting, code snippets, documentation, depending on the languages you use. For Java there are more lightweight alternatives which lack refactoring features that IntelliJ has, but there has been eclim for ages. But that's using eclipse in the background you say? Well, at some point you're bound to use a language native component to use reflection. What about Omnisharp? How was Monosharp an IDE and vim with Omnisharp integration, which was based on the same components wasn't? I feel like the discussion has degraded to peoples perceptions of what an IDE should be. And for most people that perception is: "It should look like IntelliJ" or "It should look like Visual Studio". Maybe what you really mean is: It should have refactoring. It should have auto completion. It should do performance instrumentation. It should allow debugger integration. And then there's the question of how far each feature has to be integrated. For most IDEs performance instrumentation is really just a seperate tool that you can launch form the IDEs toolbar.
- contingencies 9y ago
  debugger integration ... performance instrumentation ... really just a separate tool that you can launch from the IDEs toolbar. Which is actually awfully close in usability terms to <hotkey to next terminal> + <full featured shell> # just sayin'
- gnulinux 9y ago
  Sorry, but I really don't understand this. What of these can you not get in emacs?
ssijak 9y ago
I find that proper IDE (intellij for example) is way better for statically typed languages, not so much for dynamic ones

geowwy 9y ago

> There's quite a bit more integration that goes into IDEs and what you're making is a pretty barebones/poor IDE with these plugins. I think even that's putting it generously. It's not turning vim into an IDE at all, just adding some modern text editor features like you'd find in Atom or Sublime.

c256 9y ago

I don’t disagree on principle, but a highly-configured Emacs can easily reach levels of integration that I think is worthy of the “Integrated Development Environment” label. For vim, I suspect it’s more like “as close to IDE level as a dedicated vim user is likely to want”. (Fwiw, I use Emacs a lot, vim a little, and my hardcore IDE usage is several years back, so maybe that’s just my biases showing.)

maccard 9y ago
> a highly-configured Emacs can easily reach levels of integration that I think is worthy of the “Integrated Development Environment” label I disagree. I've _never_ seen an integration into emacs that comes close to a _good_ integrated debugging experience. Similarly, the navigation/refactoring integrations tend to feel bolted on, rather than integrated. (you're using projectile and irony mode? They both have different representations of what your "project" is, so you have to keep both up to date). Again, actually "building" from emacs is something I've never seen done well. You've inevitably got the compile command which you have to write yourself, but my IDE can parse its own project file, generate a list of targets and configurations (predefined compiler flags for optimisation/definitions) and build those in one keystroke. I've also never seen any integration of any autocomplete that works with configurations either.
- empthought 9y ago
  I'm a longtime Emacs user, and I think you're generally right. But Emacs Lisp, SLIME, and CIDER are exceptions to these observations.

rjzzleep 9y ago

And what exactly is it that you're getting from an IDE? You get refactoring, jump to def, auto completion, linting, code snippets, documentation, depending on the languages you use. For Java there are more lightweight alternatives which lack refactoring features that IntelliJ has, but there has been eclim for ages. But that's using eclipse in the background you say? Well, at some point you're bound to use a language native component to use reflection. What about Omnisharp? How was Monosharp an IDE and vim with Omnisharp integration, which was based on the same components wasn't? I feel like the discussion has degraded to peoples perceptions of what an IDE should be. And for most people that perception is: "It should look like IntelliJ" or "It should look like Visual Studio". Maybe what you really mean is: It should have refactoring. It should have auto completion. It should do performance instrumentation. It should allow debugger integration. And then there's the question of how far each feature has to be integrated. For most IDEs performance instrumentation is really just a seperate tool that you can launch form the IDEs toolbar.

contingencies 9y ago
debugger integration ... performance instrumentation ... really just a separate tool that you can launch from the IDEs toolbar. Which is actually awfully close in usability terms to <hotkey to next terminal> + <full featured shell> # just sayin'
gnulinux 9y ago
Sorry, but I really don't understand this. What of these can you not get in emacs?

ssijak 9y ago

I find that proper IDE (intellij for example) is way better for statically typed languages, not so much for dynamic ones