4 ms·

The one I keep forgetting is ":q!" (really!). I think it's some kind of brain defect on my part.

by undees 18y ago

zenspider 18y ago
as an emacs user, that's the only one I'm required to know. :) Actually I'm competent in vi, so I can pair with others, but man I don't like it.
- BrandonM 18y ago
  I started off using Xemacs during my undergrad, but I never really learned how to use it efficiently. When I later returned to Unix, I picked up vim and started using it for everything. When I later returned to emacs, even having learned some keybindings (thanks to GNU readline in gnome-terminal), I just felt handcuffed in my movement abilities. The thing that makes vim great is the many (confusing for initial users, perhaps) different ways of moving around in the file, entering Insert mode, etc. Once you get the hang of that, you'll find yourself cursing any editor that doesn't have an easy way to move to the end of the 3rd word from the current location. That said, I think I'll eventually find myself using emacs in viper-mode, especially if I ever get around to migrating to Lisp (from mainly Python).
  - zenspider 18y ago
    "Once you get the hang of that, you'll find yourself cursing any editor that doesn't have an easy way to move to the end of the 3rd word from the current location." I find myself cursing any editor that is moded. Moded editing is simply wrong. That said, I doubt there is any movement command in vi that is missing from emacs. The editors are the same in basic text-editing functionality. They differ drastically in philosophy and extended functionality.
    - BrandonM 18y ago
      Ok... well here is something that especially bothers me when working at my shell prompt. In vim, I press W to skip to the first character of the next word, where the only word delimiter is whitespace. In emacs, M-f moves forward to the next word, but any punctuation (including underscores, strangely) is considered to be a separator. So how do I perform this movement in emacs? In vim, I press l to move to the right one character. In emacs, it's C-f or I have to reach for the right arrow. Do you really think the movement commands in emacs are just as convenient as vim? I think moded editors mirror the desired functionality perfectly. In some cases, I just want to be typing a lot of stuff, and when I'm doing that, I'm in Insert mode. In other cases, I want to move around the file and make various minor edits, and for this I'm in Normal mode. How is that "simply wrong"? It's basically similar to when a user of a point-and-click IDE would switch from typing stuff to pointing-and-clicking on stuff.

The one I keep forgetting is ":q!" (really!). I think it's some kind of brain defect on my part.

by undees 18y ago

The one I keep forgetting is ":q!" (really!). I think it's some kind of brain defect on my part.

as an emacs user, that's the only one I'm required to know. :) Actually I'm competent in vi, so I can pair with others, but man I don't like it.

BrandonM 18y ago
I started off using Xemacs during my undergrad, but I never really learned how to use it efficiently. When I later returned to Unix, I picked up vim and started using it for everything. When I later returned to emacs, even having learned some keybindings (thanks to GNU readline in gnome-terminal), I just felt handcuffed in my movement abilities. The thing that makes vim great is the many (confusing for initial users, perhaps) different ways of moving around in the file, entering Insert mode, etc. Once you get the hang of that, you'll find yourself cursing any editor that doesn't have an easy way to move to the end of the 3rd word from the current location. That said, I think I'll eventually find myself using emacs in viper-mode, especially if I ever get around to migrating to Lisp (from mainly Python).
- zenspider 18y ago
  "Once you get the hang of that, you'll find yourself cursing any editor that doesn't have an easy way to move to the end of the 3rd word from the current location." I find myself cursing any editor that is moded. Moded editing is simply wrong. That said, I doubt there is any movement command in vi that is missing from emacs. The editors are the same in basic text-editing functionality. They differ drastically in philosophy and extended functionality.
  - BrandonM 18y ago
    Ok... well here is something that especially bothers me when working at my shell prompt. In vim, I press W to skip to the first character of the next word, where the only word delimiter is whitespace. In emacs, M-f moves forward to the next word, but any punctuation (including underscores, strangely) is considered to be a separator. So how do I perform this movement in emacs? In vim, I press l to move to the right one character. In emacs, it's C-f or I have to reach for the right arrow. Do you really think the movement commands in emacs are just as convenient as vim? I think moded editors mirror the desired functionality perfectly. In some cases, I just want to be typing a lot of stuff, and when I'm doing that, I'm in Insert mode. In other cases, I want to move around the file and make various minor edits, and for this I'm in Normal mode. How is that "simply wrong"? It's basically similar to when a user of a point-and-click IDE would switch from typing stuff to pointing-and-clicking on stuff.