3 ms·

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 v

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.

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.