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Meanwhile, I’m always amazed how, on HN threads about Emacs, people talk about preferring the Vi family of editors. When I installed Linux on my computer two de

Meanwhile, I’m always amazed how, on HN threads about Emacs, people talk about preferring the Vi family of editors. When I installed Linux on my computer two decades ago and had to learn *nix, my own (totally subjective) impression was that the Vi family was regarded as clunky and half-obsolete, about as much of a pain as editing in ed. As I began to contribute to the Free Software community, most of the other people I interacted with seemed to use Emacs. So, to find out that Vi is still used and loved in 2020 has been a shock.

Skunkleton 6y ago
I don't think many people are using Vi. Its more likely they are using vim or neovim, which are both far from clunky.
spudlyo 6y ago
I think the thing about Vi and Vim that has the most value in 2020 is not the software itself, but rather the keyboard-centric composable modal editing system that they popularized. Some of the growth that Emacs has enjoyed over the past several years is from folks who want the Vim style modal editing in an editor as customizable and extensible as Emacs. Emacs "distributions" such as Doom and Spacemacs cater to these folks.
- how_gauche 6y ago
  Many of us switched to evil mode because we got RSI from incorrectly chording all the time! C-a & C-e I'm looking at you
pritovido 6y ago
When I entered a technical University in Spain, all the masters(teachers that have done incredible things on their lives) used either Vim or Emacs. Most "normal" people just used other "more visual" editors. As I learned from the masters I started using more and more both vim for unix tasks and programming and emacs for lisp. Now I use 65%vim, 30% emacs, 5% other editors. Both of those editors are extremely powerful. But you need to know how to use them. It is not painful for the master to use them, in fact it is automatic and instantaneous and faster than any other editor, a thought becomes an action without conscious intervention, like you thing in playing Do minor in an instrument and your fingers do it automatically, you want to erase a line or replace a word, you think on it, is done. They are like musical instruments. You could have the best piano or violin in the world, if a mediocre player plays them, you get bad sound. Most people would be better served with a simple electronic piano or a tablet with lights that point to the next notes of the song, and auto correct them when they play a bad note.
- _benj 6y ago
  Your reference to musical instruments resonates with me (I play piano) and the fact that emacs call they keyboard bindings "chords" further complements that view. I guess the issue that is being handled here thought is that, just like the piano, the road for those actions to become unconscious is a long painful one. When I started using Golang for work the first thing that I did was buy GoLand from jetbrains. It just works, and I'm paid for "playing piano", not for "learning how to play piano" I wish I was able to use emacs professionally but until I'm able to dedicate (usually unpaid) time to learn it, it's just easier to use something else
  - necubi 6y ago
    It's really not that painful. In college I spent two weeks forcing myself to use emacs for everything. I printed out a reference card and unplugged my mouse to prevent cheating. It was not a productive two weeks, but afterwards I was proficient in emacs editing and have been ever since. (Of course true emacs mastery goes much deeper, but it really doesn't take that long to become proficient.)
    - quanticle 6y ago
      A broke college student with nothing to lose but time and a professional programmer have entirely two different definitions of "painful". A broke college student will spend two weeks learning emacs to avoid paying for a $100 IDE. A professional developer will happily pay for a $100 IDE if it saves him two weeks of time.
      - antepodius 6y ago
        In this case, it isn't about money, but proficiency.
        quanticle 6y ago
        Proficiency? Proficiency in what? Proficiency in learning a completely irrelevant language to spend two months getting up to the same level everyone else gets to in two weeks?
paledot 6y ago
I came to vim (years ago now) because I was experiencing RSI from all of the chorded keyboard shortcuts I was using in Coda. Emacs doesn't help with that, but vim does (if you `map ; :`). Any editor feels clunky for the first week of using it, Vim and Emacs most of all. Nobody wastes the headspace in staying current on multiple editors. So I don't know that you'll ever see an objective comparison of the two. But they're both solid ways to write code, it just takes way too long to get either one dialed in to do the things we expect modern editors to do out of the box, like code completion.
- honr 6y ago
  Heh, most of my emacs shortcuts start with ; Perhaps ironically, mac OS text input boxes are where I use most of the traditional emacs C-/M- keybindings these days.
- bluenose69 6y ago
  I switched from emacs to vim for the same reason. I was doing a lot of typing, and my left hand started aching when I was stretching my fingers and eventually it just started aching all the time. So I thought, why not try vim, which I had used many decades before. Things were very slow for a few days, and there was a lot of swearing, as I got weird results from hitting a wrong key. But after about a week I was able to get along adequately, and after another one, I was at the point where I was making choices for optimal methods without really thinking about whether typing 2w would be better than holding j for a while. I think the key was that I made the switch during a vacation, when my workload was lower and I would not be so frustrated by learning enough that I could select between methods. Learning either vim or emacs in a rush is not good because you are likely to become habitualized on a small subset of methods, and will be blocked from learning other methods that will increase your productivity some day.
nineteen999 6y ago
I know I fell into it because I originally learnt UNIX on shitty XENIX servers which were basically AT&T SVR4 on x86. The internet and Linux weren't around then. Later on I had to work with a number of different versions of different UNIX platforms on a daily basis (Tru64, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX) as well as multiple varieties of Linux, and vi was a common denominator on all of them.
umanwizard 6y ago
Funnily enough, Bill Joy (creator of vi) said he would have made a modeless editor if he had thought of it, he just didn’t. I use vi-family editors for the same reason I use grep: it’s installed everywhere. I’m not religious about its benefits.

Skunkleton 6y ago

I don't think many people are using Vi. Its more likely they are using vim or neovim, which are both far from clunky.

spudlyo 6y ago

I think the thing about Vi and Vim that has the most value in 2020 is not the software itself, but rather the keyboard-centric composable modal editing system that they popularized. Some of the growth that Emacs has enjoyed over the past several years is from folks who want the Vim style modal editing in an editor as customizable and extensible as Emacs. Emacs "distributions" such as Doom and Spacemacs cater to these folks.

how_gauche 6y ago
Many of us switched to evil mode because we got RSI from incorrectly chording all the time! C-a & C-e I'm looking at you

pritovido 6y ago

When I entered a technical University in Spain, all the masters(teachers that have done incredible things on their lives) used either Vim or Emacs. Most "normal" people just used other "more visual" editors. As I learned from the masters I started using more and more both vim for unix tasks and programming and emacs for lisp. Now I use 65%vim, 30% emacs, 5% other editors. Both of those editors are extremely powerful. But you need to know how to use them. It is not painful for the master to use them, in fact it is automatic and instantaneous and faster than any other editor, a thought becomes an action without conscious intervention, like you thing in playing Do minor in an instrument and your fingers do it automatically, you want to erase a line or replace a word, you think on it, is done. They are like musical instruments. You could have the best piano or violin in the world, if a mediocre player plays them, you get bad sound. Most people would be better served with a simple electronic piano or a tablet with lights that point to the next notes of the song, and auto correct them when they play a bad note.

_benj 6y ago
Your reference to musical instruments resonates with me (I play piano) and the fact that emacs call they keyboard bindings "chords" further complements that view. I guess the issue that is being handled here thought is that, just like the piano, the road for those actions to become unconscious is a long painful one. When I started using Golang for work the first thing that I did was buy GoLand from jetbrains. It just works, and I'm paid for "playing piano", not for "learning how to play piano" I wish I was able to use emacs professionally but until I'm able to dedicate (usually unpaid) time to learn it, it's just easier to use something else
- necubi 6y ago
  It's really not that painful. In college I spent two weeks forcing myself to use emacs for everything. I printed out a reference card and unplugged my mouse to prevent cheating. It was not a productive two weeks, but afterwards I was proficient in emacs editing and have been ever since. (Of course true emacs mastery goes much deeper, but it really doesn't take that long to become proficient.)
  - quanticle 6y ago
    A broke college student with nothing to lose but time and a professional programmer have entirely two different definitions of "painful". A broke college student will spend two weeks learning emacs to avoid paying for a $100 IDE. A professional developer will happily pay for a $100 IDE if it saves him two weeks of time.
    - antepodius 6y ago
      In this case, it isn't about money, but proficiency.
      - quanticle 6y ago
        Proficiency? Proficiency in what? Proficiency in learning a completely irrelevant language to spend two months getting up to the same level everyone else gets to in two weeks?

paledot 6y ago

I came to vim (years ago now) because I was experiencing RSI from all of the chorded keyboard shortcuts I was using in Coda. Emacs doesn't help with that, but vim does (if you `map ; :`). Any editor feels clunky for the first week of using it, Vim and Emacs most of all. Nobody wastes the headspace in staying current on multiple editors. So I don't know that you'll ever see an objective comparison of the two. But they're both solid ways to write code, it just takes way too long to get either one dialed in to do the things we expect modern editors to do out of the box, like code completion.

honr 6y ago
Heh, most of my emacs shortcuts start with ; Perhaps ironically, mac OS text input boxes are where I use most of the traditional emacs C-/M- keybindings these days.
bluenose69 6y ago
I switched from emacs to vim for the same reason. I was doing a lot of typing, and my left hand started aching when I was stretching my fingers and eventually it just started aching all the time. So I thought, why not try vim, which I had used many decades before. Things were very slow for a few days, and there was a lot of swearing, as I got weird results from hitting a wrong key. But after about a week I was able to get along adequately, and after another one, I was at the point where I was making choices for optimal methods without really thinking about whether typing 2w would be better than holding j for a while. I think the key was that I made the switch during a vacation, when my workload was lower and I would not be so frustrated by learning enough that I could select between methods. Learning either vim or emacs in a rush is not good because you are likely to become habitualized on a small subset of methods, and will be blocked from learning other methods that will increase your productivity some day.

nineteen999 6y ago

I know I fell into it because I originally learnt UNIX on shitty XENIX servers which were basically AT&T SVR4 on x86. The internet and Linux weren't around then. Later on I had to work with a number of different versions of different UNIX platforms on a daily basis (Tru64, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX) as well as multiple varieties of Linux, and vi was a common denominator on all of them.

umanwizard 6y ago

Funnily enough, Bill Joy (creator of vi) said he would have made a modeless editor if he had thought of it, he just didn’t. I use vi-family editors for the same reason I use grep: it’s installed everywhere. I’m not religious about its benefits.