21 ms·

Two weeks with Vim

50 points by iuguy 16y ago

olalonde 16y ago
> I was more of an Emacs person Are there really any benefit of switching from Emacs to Vim? I was under the impression that both editors were pretty much interchangeable.
- sole 16y ago
  We were taught basic programming with Emacs, connecting to an HP-UX machine. So we really didn't know much Emacs anyway :-)
- weaksauce 16y ago
  vim is more of a text editor that emphasizes a minimum of keystrokes to do things efficiently. Emacs is a text editor that is leans more to the IDE side of the spectrum with many cool extensions that make your life easier.(I am not saying vim doesn't have extensions just that emacs seems to use them more or has more of an emphasis to them) Both are excellent text editors. one will fit your style of living. use that one.
  - FraaJad 16y ago
    Someone said on Stack overflow, "I use Vim for manipulating text, Emacs to do programming and Firefox to look at funny cat pictures". I agree with that assessment.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  It can be better for preventing RSI. But mostly it comes down to a preference on how to do things.
- iuguy 16y ago
  Vim is on pretty much everything, it starts up quickly, for rapid text editing it's pretty difficult to beat. Emacs once it's up and running (in emacs server mode at least) is reasonably speedy but much more resource hungry and is an entire operating system. To put it into perspective, I used org-mode for 6 months and loved it for that alone, but vim just works better for me as a text editor, YMMV.
jhrobert 16y ago
I am a wordstar guy, I started with CP/M... For years I enjoyed Borland products, they used Wordstar key bindings. And then one day it stopped working. I simply had to use the mouse. I was shocked. It took me years to recover. I hated it. Call me a masochist, a few years ago I tried Emacs, it was the only editor with syntax enlighting for Ruby at the time. Except it was not working, or at least it was not working for me. I had learned a little bit of lisp however, so it was not a total waste of time. A few ago I was so frustrated with my editor (Notepad++), that I decided to give Vim a try. Well... I am french. I can tell you that using Vim with a french keyboard is hell. That, plus copy/paste with the mouse working erratically (that is: more or less depending on the current "mode")... I quickly got frustrated again. And then, boom, my netbook's hard drive goes back to his creator and I am forced to switch to my Linux netbook. No more Notepad++ there. I am back with SciTe. Now my friends, may be you will understand it better when I will tell you a little secret I am sligthly ashamed of: My project is mainly ONE big file, almost 12 000 lines of code, even the CSS that I used in in it. No more buffers, no more windows, no more subdirectory to navigate. Just one big file. Heaven. I wish I had seen the ligth before. All I miss is a little post processor tool, with which I could define "sections" in my big file. Sections that it will dispatch into their own little files. And when I will move to git, I will write it, and I will make it "bidirectortional", so that I can fetch back changed files, fetch them back into my BIG file that is. One big file. Simplicity. Don't worry, be happy.
- olalonde 16y ago
  Uh? I thought the purpose of splitting code between different files was simplicity.
  - jhrobert 16y ago
    It's a lie. The true reason is purely historical. Editor where just TOO SLOW to handle big files (on DOS they often were limited to 64kb, if not less) Please note that I love "modular code", hence the notion of "sections" in my big file. To clarify: I love to edit one big file, but for other purposes I definitely need small ones. What I am basically proposing is that it is easier to edit multiple files from within a single window/buffer. But there exist no editors that do that AFAIK I am not the only one, see this Python tool for Vim: http://coliveira.net/software/editing-multiple-files-in-a-single-buffer/ http://coliveira.net/software/editing-multiple-files-in-a-si...
Supermighty 16y ago
I love VIM. It's my go to editor for everything. And as much as I love it I hate to admit that I was more productive using Eclipse when it came to a large-ish web project. I tried using gVIM tabs, an buffers, and minibufexplorer, and Project, and ctags. Either I was doing it wrong or they just didn't want to work how I thought and worked. So I'll lust after VIM and use it when I can, but I'll default to Eclipse when it comes time to work with a project set.
- kleevr 16y ago
  I'm running Ubuntu on my development machine, and I really enjoy VIM keybindings. I had a lot of trouble getting the key bindings to work in Eclipse, but jVi worked like a charm in NetBeans for me. (Needed a rich IDE for some Magento dev. Sometimes to make a 2-line change properly in the core involves making 3 dirs, 2 XML files, 1 php file. le sigh)
- kertap 16y ago
  I've been doing some ruby and php stuff at home and I mostly use vim. But when I go back into work it's back to java and eclipse. I would love to use vim on my java work but I'd really miss eclipses background compilation and server integration.
  - azim 16y ago
    Try Eclim for your java work. It's a set of vim plugins which run and communicate with a headless Eclipse instance in the background. This allows you use Vim as your editor and pull many of Eclipse's fancy features forward.
jjcm 16y ago
The man throws out an excellent plug in the article: vimcasts (http://vimcasts.org http://vimcasts.org). Drew Neil (the man who creates/narrates them) does an excellent job of explaining not only the basics of vim, but also the intricacies of it as well. I consider myself a fairly seasoned vim user, but even I picked up a few tricks from his vimcasts. Try them out.
apinstein 16y ago
I just got TM-style command-T working on my vim setup thanks to wincent, it is a nice implementation: http://wincent.com/products/command-t http://wincent.com/products/command-t It was really one of the only things about TM that made me jealous :) Also it taught me about <Leader> which I'd never even heard of before! Great way to keep your personal commands namespaced from stock vim.
- moe 16y ago
  For anyone interested I'd suggest to also look at FuzzyFinder. It does the same thing but is a little more advanced (real fuzzy search, also works on buffers, etc.): http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984
crazydiamond 16y ago
To the author (and this has been posted to HN before but deserves a reposting for those who missed it): http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/ http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/
sero 16y ago
Wow, I would love a personal Drew Neil (from VimCasts) to read me bedtime stories. (Also, great site, I'm learning!)
scorpion032 16y ago
I use vim, but not vim exclusively. Every single day, I use gedit, scite, scribes and an IDE - some times in the vi mode. There is a cognitive load to switching between many editors. That is something Emacs users who always exist in Emacs do away with.
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  And vim users who only use vim don't?

50 points by iuguy 16y ago

> I was more of an Emacs person Are there really any benefit of switching from Emacs to Vim? I was under the impression that both editors were pretty much interchangeable.

sole 16y ago
We were taught basic programming with Emacs, connecting to an HP-UX machine. So we really didn't know much Emacs anyway :-)
weaksauce 16y ago
vim is more of a text editor that emphasizes a minimum of keystrokes to do things efficiently. Emacs is a text editor that is leans more to the IDE side of the spectrum with many cool extensions that make your life easier.(I am not saying vim doesn't have extensions just that emacs seems to use them more or has more of an emphasis to them) Both are excellent text editors. one will fit your style of living. use that one.
- FraaJad 16y ago
  Someone said on Stack overflow, "I use Vim for manipulating text, Emacs to do programming and Firefox to look at funny cat pictures". I agree with that assessment.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
xiongchiamiov 16y ago
It can be better for preventing RSI. But mostly it comes down to a preference on how to do things.
iuguy 16y ago
Vim is on pretty much everything, it starts up quickly, for rapid text editing it's pretty difficult to beat. Emacs once it's up and running (in emacs server mode at least) is reasonably speedy but much more resource hungry and is an entire operating system. To put it into perspective, I used org-mode for 6 months and loved it for that alone, but vim just works better for me as a text editor, YMMV.

jhrobert 16y ago

I am a wordstar guy, I started with CP/M... For years I enjoyed Borland products, they used Wordstar key bindings. And then one day it stopped working. I simply had to use the mouse. I was shocked. It took me years to recover. I hated it. Call me a masochist, a few years ago I tried Emacs, it was the only editor with syntax enlighting for Ruby at the time. Except it was not working, or at least it was not working for me. I had learned a little bit of lisp however, so it was not a total waste of time. A few ago I was so frustrated with my editor (Notepad++), that I decided to give Vim a try. Well... I am french. I can tell you that using Vim with a french keyboard is hell. That, plus copy/paste with the mouse working erratically (that is: more or less depending on the current "mode")... I quickly got frustrated again. And then, boom, my netbook's hard drive goes back to his creator and I am forced to switch to my Linux netbook. No more Notepad++ there. I am back with SciTe. Now my friends, may be you will understand it better when I will tell you a little secret I am sligthly ashamed of: My project is mainly ONE big file, almost 12 000 lines of code, even the CSS that I used in in it. No more buffers, no more windows, no more subdirectory to navigate. Just one big file. Heaven. I wish I had seen the ligth before. All I miss is a little post processor tool, with which I could define "sections" in my big file. Sections that it will dispatch into their own little files. And when I will move to git, I will write it, and I will make it "bidirectortional", so that I can fetch back changed files, fetch them back into my BIG file that is. One big file. Simplicity. Don't worry, be happy.

olalonde 16y ago
Uh? I thought the purpose of splitting code between different files was simplicity.
- jhrobert 16y ago
  It's a lie. The true reason is purely historical. Editor where just TOO SLOW to handle big files (on DOS they often were limited to 64kb, if not less) Please note that I love "modular code", hence the notion of "sections" in my big file. To clarify: I love to edit one big file, but for other purposes I definitely need small ones. What I am basically proposing is that it is easier to edit multiple files from within a single window/buffer. But there exist no editors that do that AFAIK I am not the only one, see this Python tool for Vim: http://coliveira.net/software/editing-multiple-files-in-a-single-buffer/ http://coliveira.net/software/editing-multiple-files-in-a-si...

Supermighty 16y ago

I love VIM. It's my go to editor for everything. And as much as I love it I hate to admit that I was more productive using Eclipse when it came to a large-ish web project. I tried using gVIM tabs, an buffers, and minibufexplorer, and Project, and ctags. Either I was doing it wrong or they just didn't want to work how I thought and worked. So I'll lust after VIM and use it when I can, but I'll default to Eclipse when it comes time to work with a project set.

kleevr 16y ago
I'm running Ubuntu on my development machine, and I really enjoy VIM keybindings. I had a lot of trouble getting the key bindings to work in Eclipse, but jVi worked like a charm in NetBeans for me. (Needed a rich IDE for some Magento dev. Sometimes to make a 2-line change properly in the core involves making 3 dirs, 2 XML files, 1 php file. le sigh)
kertap 16y ago
I've been doing some ruby and php stuff at home and I mostly use vim. But when I go back into work it's back to java and eclipse. I would love to use vim on my java work but I'd really miss eclipses background compilation and server integration.
- azim 16y ago
  Try Eclim for your java work. It's a set of vim plugins which run and communicate with a headless Eclipse instance in the background. This allows you use Vim as your editor and pull many of Eclipse's fancy features forward.

jjcm 16y ago

The man throws out an excellent plug in the article: vimcasts (http://vimcasts.org http://vimcasts.org). Drew Neil (the man who creates/narrates them) does an excellent job of explaining not only the basics of vim, but also the intricacies of it as well. I consider myself a fairly seasoned vim user, but even I picked up a few tricks from his vimcasts. Try them out.

apinstein 16y ago

I just got TM-style command-T working on my vim setup thanks to wincent, it is a nice implementation: http://wincent.com/products/command-t http://wincent.com/products/command-t It was really one of the only things about TM that made me jealous :) Also it taught me about <Leader> which I'd never even heard of before! Great way to keep your personal commands namespaced from stock vim.

moe 16y ago
For anyone interested I'd suggest to also look at FuzzyFinder. It does the same thing but is a little more advanced (real fuzzy search, also works on buffers, etc.): http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984

crazydiamond 16y ago

To the author (and this has been posted to HN before but deserves a reposting for those who missed it): http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/ http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/

sero 16y ago

Wow, I would love a personal Drew Neil (from VimCasts) to read me bedtime stories. (Also, great site, I'm learning!)

scorpion032 16y ago

I use vim, but not vim exclusively. Every single day, I use gedit, scite, scribes and an IDE - some times in the vi mode. There is a cognitive load to switching between many editors. That is something Emacs users who always exist in Emacs do away with.

xiongchiamiov 16y ago
And vim users who only use vim don't?