4 ms·

Some thoughts on Emacs and Vim

29 points by codeup 16y ago

slysf 16y ago
Having to support what I write in production situations let me to choose vim over emacs long ago. The biggest con about emacs that's not mentioned is that it's just not _everywhere_. Even if I have to log into a firewall to make some emergency change, odds are even that has vi installed. When you start looking at doing embedded work this is even more of an issue. It's hard to rapidly iterate on a prototype when you have to make a change in your sandbox in order to use your editor of choice. YMMV of course.
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- amock 16y ago
  I think the point of using Vim or Emacs is that sometimes you don't want a full IDE. Often when I'm writing code I just want my editor to be fast and not require me to take my hands of off the keyboard. Both Vim and Emacs have much better keyboard navigation and are much faster than Eclipse.
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    - technomancy 16y ago
      > you can't be productive with it if you need to write more than small pieces of code. This is possibly true in Java, but in better languages you don't need much help from your editor to be productive.
      - reedF211 16y ago
        Oh please... emacs and vim are way behind even crappy IDEs let alone solid ones like Netbeans. They lack some basic features that any working programmers cannot be productive without. I'm not talking anything fancy like Intellisense but basic features like syntax highlighting, file browsing , and a decent debugger are missing. I know someone is going to say "oh but you can configure and hack around to get those features", but thing is I don't wanna have to fight with my development environment to get these basic features.
        msbarnett 16y ago
        This isn't even remotely correct. Both emacs and vim have had those features out of the box for years. Decades, even.
        Locke1689 16y ago
        Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
        wahnfrieden 16y ago
        vim comes with syntax highlighting and file browsing built-in. You just have to enable the syntax highlighting, but it's one command to put into your rc. Yes vim has some sucky defaults, but it's disingenuous to call these simple cases "hacks" or to suggest it takes fighting the software to get it working. vim doesn't have a debugger since it's outside the scope of vim, which is just an editor. If you want an "all-in-one" philosophy, maybe emacs will treat you better.
    - travisjeffery 16y ago
      > Ok, I agree, maybe for scripting and small code, but anything more complex is just for the Hype of saying I am a Emacs user and you are just a plain dumb Java developer that uses eclipse. Sorry, no. I don't have any prejudice on whatever programming language you use, but you're making yourself look like a plain dumb person, period by saying that you can't be productive with Vim or Emacs with large pieces of code. Here's just a few notable cases...Guido and Python with Vim and Emacs, Torvalds and Linux/Git with MicroEmacs, Stroustrup and C++ with Sam, DHH and Ruby on Rails with TextMate, Matsumoto and Ruby with Emacs, Zawinski and Mozilla with Emacs, Steele and Scheme with Emacs, and on and on. Ridiculous.
  - stelfer 16y ago
    Emacs mode in Eclipse? It has almost all of the navigation keystrokes. As far as emacs not being everywhere, I recently just learned about mg on openbsd. If I had just rtfm I would have found it years ago.
- meemo 16y ago
  There are many reasons people like vim and emacs, not because they want to "say they are cool and roots." They're both simple, in their own way, but extensible and powerful. And for all the different tasks that you need a text editor, it's nice to always be able to use same thing.
  - micrypt 16y ago
    + extremely lightweight in comparison.
- samdk 16y ago
  That's not why I use Vim, and that's not why most people use Vim. I use Vim because it's an enormously powerful tool that makes me more efficient and because I enjoy using it. (I've never spent four hours attempting to debug my code only to discover that the problem was a bug in Vim. I can't say the same about Eclipse.) Vim and Emacs are not toys. If you think they're toys you haven't invested enough time in them to understand how they work. Note that I'm not saying that a competent Vim/Emacs user might not prefer something else. I'm saying that you can't get to the point of being a competent Vim or Emacs user without understanding how enormously powerful both are. Vim and Emacs can do just about everything your IDE can do (and, in many cases, more). The difference is that you're not starting with everything built in and crowding a complicated GUI. You're starting with something simple and powerful and (if you want) building it up with exactly the features you want.
- adam_albrecht 16y ago
  I couldn't disagree more. I had the hardest time switching over to Vim because there is such a high learning curve, but once it "clicked", I could never back. Sometimes I'll have to do some .Net work in Visual Studio and I feel like I just switched from a Ferrari to a Corolla. Now, if you're doing work in compiled languages like Java and C#, the code-completion of Visual Studio and Eclipse is very valuable. But besides that, I'd much rather have a simple and fast editor over a bloated IDE with tons of features.
  - mbowcock 16y ago
    vi emulation in visual studio - https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim
  - jodrellblank 16y ago
    You don't use Vim 7 completion? http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/09/visual-walk-through-of-couple-of-new.html http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/09/visual-walk-through-of...
    - dougws 16y ago
      I'm a dyed-in-the wool emacs user (and have played with vim quite a bit) but there's really no comparison between the "completion" vim and emacs offer and that provided by IDEs like VS and Eclipse. They do quite a bit of static analysis and do context-sensitive completion which is extremely helpful when the standard library for your language has a ridiculously bloated API (like, for instance, Java and .NET).
d0mine 16y ago
It’s a scripting language but it doesn’t even have case/switch statements. </quote> The same could be said about Python.
- deleted 16y ago
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  - zck 16y ago
    The quote was regarding vimscript, not Elisp.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  They're included in dictionary usage. Having a separate case statement would be redundant. Lua does the same thing.
samvelst 16y ago
"Vim’s Normal mode lets me fly around a document" Isn't this just because he is more experienced in Vim? I'm not an expert in any case, but is it really true that Vim is that much faster (editing-wise) than Emacs? I'm guessing that everyone's editor of choice would be the one they're most comfortable in. In other words, the one in which they've invested the most time into learning.
- keeptrying 16y ago
  I use emacs for everything except to quickly jump around a file and edit it. Vim is super fast for this. Emacs will also help you when your in weird situation because it is so powerful. One very simple example: we had some new machines installed recently but they didn't have our home directories nfs-ed onto them because the San was in a different network. With e-shell In emacs I could copy over my files without even opening a window to my home directories because emacs's tramp mode is built into the shell. It meant that I had autocomplete in my shell while working on a remote machine. Guys were ftping files clumsily over while I just had to use "cp" and the tab key.
  - gnosis 16y ago
    Two other alternatives to emacs in this situation are sshfs, and mc's (midnight commander's) fish protocol.
    - keeptrying 16y ago
      true, but thats the whole point. You rarely need something other than emacs ;)
      - gnosis 16y ago
        Assuming you use emacs in the first place. And not everyone does, or cares to. Especially when there are alternatives with a much easier learning curve.
        16y ago
bradtgmurray 16y ago
On a somewhat related note, are there any tutorials out there for a guide to emacs and org-mode for vim users?
gaiusparx 16y ago
Why I choose Emacs http://eatingair.com/post/2829859704/why-i-choose-emacs-over-vim http://eatingair.com/post/2829859704/why-i-choose-emacs-over...
delackner 16y ago
This article lead to me reading about vim's undo branches feature, something that I had really wanted for a long time but just didn't notice existed. Thanks! http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-branches http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-branche...

29 points by codeup 16y ago

slysf 16y ago

Having to support what I write in production situations let me to choose vim over emacs long ago. The biggest con about emacs that's not mentioned is that it's just not _everywhere_. Even if I have to log into a firewall to make some emergency change, odds are even that has vi installed. When you start looking at doing embedded work this is even more of an issue. It's hard to rapidly iterate on a prototype when you have to make a change in your sandbox in order to use your editor of choice. YMMV of course.

deleted 16y ago
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deleted 16y ago

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amock 16y ago
I think the point of using Vim or Emacs is that sometimes you don't want a full IDE. Often when I'm writing code I just want my editor to be fast and not require me to take my hands of off the keyboard. Both Vim and Emacs have much better keyboard navigation and are much faster than Eclipse.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - technomancy 16y ago
    > you can't be productive with it if you need to write more than small pieces of code. This is possibly true in Java, but in better languages you don't need much help from your editor to be productive.
    - reedF211 16y ago
      Oh please... emacs and vim are way behind even crappy IDEs let alone solid ones like Netbeans. They lack some basic features that any working programmers cannot be productive without. I'm not talking anything fancy like Intellisense but basic features like syntax highlighting, file browsing , and a decent debugger are missing. I know someone is going to say "oh but you can configure and hack around to get those features", but thing is I don't wanna have to fight with my development environment to get these basic features.
      - msbarnett 16y ago
        This isn't even remotely correct. Both emacs and vim have had those features out of the box for years. Decades, even.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
      - wahnfrieden 16y ago
        vim comes with syntax highlighting and file browsing built-in. You just have to enable the syntax highlighting, but it's one command to put into your rc. Yes vim has some sucky defaults, but it's disingenuous to call these simple cases "hacks" or to suggest it takes fighting the software to get it working. vim doesn't have a debugger since it's outside the scope of vim, which is just an editor. If you want an "all-in-one" philosophy, maybe emacs will treat you better.
  - travisjeffery 16y ago
    > Ok, I agree, maybe for scripting and small code, but anything more complex is just for the Hype of saying I am a Emacs user and you are just a plain dumb Java developer that uses eclipse. Sorry, no. I don't have any prejudice on whatever programming language you use, but you're making yourself look like a plain dumb person, period by saying that you can't be productive with Vim or Emacs with large pieces of code. Here's just a few notable cases...Guido and Python with Vim and Emacs, Torvalds and Linux/Git with MicroEmacs, Stroustrup and C++ with Sam, DHH and Ruby on Rails with TextMate, Matsumoto and Ruby with Emacs, Zawinski and Mozilla with Emacs, Steele and Scheme with Emacs, and on and on. Ridiculous.
- stelfer 16y ago
  Emacs mode in Eclipse? It has almost all of the navigation keystrokes. As far as emacs not being everywhere, I recently just learned about mg on openbsd. If I had just rtfm I would have found it years ago.
meemo 16y ago
There are many reasons people like vim and emacs, not because they want to "say they are cool and roots." They're both simple, in their own way, but extensible and powerful. And for all the different tasks that you need a text editor, it's nice to always be able to use same thing.
- micrypt 16y ago
  + extremely lightweight in comparison.
samdk 16y ago
That's not why I use Vim, and that's not why most people use Vim. I use Vim because it's an enormously powerful tool that makes me more efficient and because I enjoy using it. (I've never spent four hours attempting to debug my code only to discover that the problem was a bug in Vim. I can't say the same about Eclipse.) Vim and Emacs are not toys. If you think they're toys you haven't invested enough time in them to understand how they work. Note that I'm not saying that a competent Vim/Emacs user might not prefer something else. I'm saying that you can't get to the point of being a competent Vim or Emacs user without understanding how enormously powerful both are. Vim and Emacs can do just about everything your IDE can do (and, in many cases, more). The difference is that you're not starting with everything built in and crowding a complicated GUI. You're starting with something simple and powerful and (if you want) building it up with exactly the features you want.
adam_albrecht 16y ago
I couldn't disagree more. I had the hardest time switching over to Vim because there is such a high learning curve, but once it "clicked", I could never back. Sometimes I'll have to do some .Net work in Visual Studio and I feel like I just switched from a Ferrari to a Corolla. Now, if you're doing work in compiled languages like Java and C#, the code-completion of Visual Studio and Eclipse is very valuable. But besides that, I'd much rather have a simple and fast editor over a bloated IDE with tons of features.
- mbowcock 16y ago
  vi emulation in visual studio - https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim
- jodrellblank 16y ago
  You don't use Vim 7 completion? http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/09/visual-walk-through-of-couple-of-new.html http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/09/visual-walk-through-of...
  - dougws 16y ago
    I'm a dyed-in-the wool emacs user (and have played with vim quite a bit) but there's really no comparison between the "completion" vim and emacs offer and that provided by IDEs like VS and Eclipse. They do quite a bit of static analysis and do context-sensitive completion which is extremely helpful when the standard library for your language has a ridiculously bloated API (like, for instance, Java and .NET).

d0mine 16y ago

It’s a scripting language but it doesn’t even have case/switch statements. </quote> The same could be said about Python.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- zck 16y ago
  The quote was regarding vimscript, not Elisp.
silentbicycle 16y ago
They're included in dictionary usage. Having a separate case statement would be redundant. Lua does the same thing.

samvelst 16y ago

"Vim’s Normal mode lets me fly around a document" Isn't this just because he is more experienced in Vim? I'm not an expert in any case, but is it really true that Vim is that much faster (editing-wise) than Emacs? I'm guessing that everyone's editor of choice would be the one they're most comfortable in. In other words, the one in which they've invested the most time into learning.

keeptrying 16y ago
I use emacs for everything except to quickly jump around a file and edit it. Vim is super fast for this. Emacs will also help you when your in weird situation because it is so powerful. One very simple example: we had some new machines installed recently but they didn't have our home directories nfs-ed onto them because the San was in a different network. With e-shell In emacs I could copy over my files without even opening a window to my home directories because emacs's tramp mode is built into the shell. It meant that I had autocomplete in my shell while working on a remote machine. Guys were ftping files clumsily over while I just had to use "cp" and the tab key.
- gnosis 16y ago
  Two other alternatives to emacs in this situation are sshfs, and mc's (midnight commander's) fish protocol.
  - keeptrying 16y ago
    true, but thats the whole point. You rarely need something other than emacs ;)
    - gnosis 16y ago
      Assuming you use emacs in the first place. And not everyone does, or cares to. Especially when there are alternatives with a much easier learning curve.
      - 16y ago

bradtgmurray 16y ago

On a somewhat related note, are there any tutorials out there for a guide to emacs and org-mode for vim users?

gaiusparx 16y ago

Why I choose Emacs http://eatingair.com/post/2829859704/why-i-choose-emacs-over-vim http://eatingair.com/post/2829859704/why-i-choose-emacs-over...

delackner 16y ago

This article lead to me reading about vim's undo branches feature, something that I had really wanted for a long time but just didn't notice existed. Thanks! http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-branches http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-branche...