6 ms·

I switched from vim to Webstorm, which is based on IntelliJ. I agree with most of this article. IdeaVim is a pretty good vim emulator (although not perfect, but

by city41 6y ago

I switched from vim to Webstorm, which is based on IntelliJ. I agree with most of this article. IdeaVim is a pretty good vim emulator (although not perfect, but none of them are). There's something to be said by having sane defaults that do exactly what you want. Probably my biggest issue with vim is you can easily find yourself in no man's land because your setup inevitably becomes uniquely your own. For example I used coc.nvim in vim, and although it worked great overall, I would often find autocomplete text sitting in an unnamed buffer that I would have to clean up. Despite googling like crazy and even asking for help in a couple vim communities, I could not solve this problem that seemingly only I had. The article touches upon this as well, saying a 50 line tsx file doesn't work for the author in vim. For me a 1000 line tsx file works just fine, so the author managed to dig a unique hole for themselves there too, most likely.

pw6hv 6y ago
Totally agree with your point. Tools that allow great personalization are obviously more prone to generate weird problems unless you know what you're doing™. Or to quote a famous philosopher "With great power comes great responsibility".
theCodeStig 6y ago
Emacs Evil mode is the exception here. It’s possibly better than Vim itself.
- scruple 6y ago
  I keep hearing statements like this and I want to believe. I really, really do. I see the value in Emacs Lisp vs. vimscript immediately, though I feel that Lua in neovim is making up ground there. I've tried evil-mode a few times over the years. Most recently I tried Doom Emacs twice. I _really_ want to experience the hype of org-mode. I want something like org-mode in my life. I am a heavy notes taker and I can see the value org-mode offers and I am willing to make the jump for it alone... But, I can't figure out how to get a proper workflow in Emacs that gets me to where I am in vim today. I just can't get it to click. For what it's worth, I've been using vi(m) since the early/mid 2000s and my workflow is almost entirely terminal based for almost everything that I have ever done as a professional and hobbyist programmer. To the point that I feel like I cannot be as productive in ecosystems that are GUI based.
  - adimitrov 6y ago
    I started using Vim in mid/late 2000s, and successfully switched to Emacs. Without knowing your specific gripes, it's hard no know what'll end up helping you, but here are my two cents: - use emacsclient and have aliases for emacsclient -c and and emacsclient -n for popping up a new frame or using the console, respectively. I even have a window manager binding to open a new Emacs client window - Rainer König is the best at getting across org mode workflows. if you like watching nerdy videos, go watch him. - keep vim around, I still use it, sometimes, but with no or veery minimal config. - centaur tabs and the new tab stuff can help vim people who like tabs. I just got used to buffers. - M-x is really Emacs' primary UI. don't try to think of a million and one key bindings up front, just bind what you find yourself using M-x a lot for. You just need a nice completing read like ivy, helm or so, but doom has that. - use magit. While many claim that org-mode is the Emacs killer feature, I'd say magit is even more important if you code. There simply is no better git interface, nothing comes close. You think git the new porcelain is cool? Magit is a git jacuzzi.
    - scruple 6y ago
      Thank you for this list, I appreciate the effort. I've got some time off of work next week and the kids won't be home, so I'll spend the day digging into this.
      - cyrialize 6y ago
        To add onto this - I'm a huge org-mode user. If you're on iOS I highly recommend BeOrg[1]. It's the best org-mode app for iphones. It's highly extensible on it's own since you can put in settings and run scheme in a config file[2]. You can purchase extensions for it which are all pretty cheap. You can also pay for a membership to get all extensions - this costs only $10 a year. The creator of the app is very active in the forums and is constantly updating and improving the app. I love it and it has made my usage of org-mode on the go much easier. [1]: https://beorgapp.com/ https://beorgapp.com/ [2]: https://beorgapp.com/manual/scripting/ https://beorgapp.com/manual/scripting/
      - skosch 6y ago
- cyrialize 6y ago
  I used to use Evil mode and now I use God-mode[1]. Evil is great, but you end up having to know Vim keybindings and some Emacs keybindings since Evil doesn't cover everything. It certainly can with additional Evil extensions and modifying your .emacs, but I still felt like there were some parts of Emacs where I needed to know Emacs key bindings. God-mode works since it just makes it so that you can use Emacs keybindings without modifier keys. Everything works out of the box. Best part is that you can install extensions without needing to come up with Evil keybindings for them. [1] https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode
- CountSessine 6y ago
  Is it possible to do inoremap jk <ESC> yet in Evil? That's a huge optimization for a really large minority of Vim users and without that, Evil definitely isn't Vim's equal.
  - srcreigh 6y ago
    Key chord is a nice package for vanilla Emacs at least https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord
  - Scarbutt 6y ago
    That's really no challenge ;)
  - dfinninger 6y ago
    Have you taken a look at Evil-Escape[0]? I've bound the keys to "fd", because that feels natural, but it's trivial to do "jk". This package works on much more than just insert/normal mode switching as well. [0] https://github.com/syl20bnr/evil-escape https://github.com/syl20bnr/evil-escape
- mssdvd 6y ago
  Can you explain why do you think Evil is so good? I'm an Evil user too and I'm happy with it but I fail to see why it is better than many vi clones.
- dotancohen 6y ago
  I've recently been picking up Emacs for org-mode. Evil does not support settings such as `:set nu` or a thousand other settings that I use once in a blue moon but expect to just work. Even `:wq` attempts to close all buffers, `:e` doesn't open files as expected, I could go on. IdeaVIM get 90% of VIM right, and some things wrong (such as `u` for undo also undoing movements). Evil gets 95% of VIM right. But I have high hopes for NeoVIM allowing an actual first-class VIM implementation to be embedded, not copied, into an IDE or even Emacs.
  - theCodeStig 6y ago
    Can you expand on that? For me, :wq closes the current buffer. For me, :e works as expected. There might be a built in alternative to :set nu. How do you expect that to work?
    - dotancohen 6y ago
      For me, `:wq` saves the current file and attempts to close all buffers, though thankfully asks if other unsaved buffers should be saved before closing. I was wrong about `:e`, it does work. Instead of `:set nu` I'm using Alt-X UpArrow+ to find `display-line-numbers-mode`, which does what it says. But there are other settings which I have on muscle memory macro that do not work, such as `:set wrap!` which I use often with my portrait monitor.

by city41 6y ago

pw6hv 6y ago

Totally agree with your point. Tools that allow great personalization are obviously more prone to generate weird problems unless you know what you're doing™. Or to quote a famous philosopher "With great power comes great responsibility".

theCodeStig 6y ago

Emacs Evil mode is the exception here. It’s possibly better than Vim itself.

scruple 6y ago
I keep hearing statements like this and I want to believe. I really, really do. I see the value in Emacs Lisp vs. vimscript immediately, though I feel that Lua in neovim is making up ground there. I've tried evil-mode a few times over the years. Most recently I tried Doom Emacs twice. I _really_ want to experience the hype of org-mode. I want something like org-mode in my life. I am a heavy notes taker and I can see the value org-mode offers and I am willing to make the jump for it alone... But, I can't figure out how to get a proper workflow in Emacs that gets me to where I am in vim today. I just can't get it to click. For what it's worth, I've been using vi(m) since the early/mid 2000s and my workflow is almost entirely terminal based for almost everything that I have ever done as a professional and hobbyist programmer. To the point that I feel like I cannot be as productive in ecosystems that are GUI based.
- adimitrov 6y ago
  I started using Vim in mid/late 2000s, and successfully switched to Emacs. Without knowing your specific gripes, it's hard no know what'll end up helping you, but here are my two cents: - use emacsclient and have aliases for emacsclient -c and and emacsclient -n for popping up a new frame or using the console, respectively. I even have a window manager binding to open a new Emacs client window - Rainer König is the best at getting across org mode workflows. if you like watching nerdy videos, go watch him. - keep vim around, I still use it, sometimes, but with no or veery minimal config. - centaur tabs and the new tab stuff can help vim people who like tabs. I just got used to buffers. - M-x is really Emacs' primary UI. don't try to think of a million and one key bindings up front, just bind what you find yourself using M-x a lot for. You just need a nice completing read like ivy, helm or so, but doom has that. - use magit. While many claim that org-mode is the Emacs killer feature, I'd say magit is even more important if you code. There simply is no better git interface, nothing comes close. You think git the new porcelain is cool? Magit is a git jacuzzi.
  - scruple 6y ago
    Thank you for this list, I appreciate the effort. I've got some time off of work next week and the kids won't be home, so I'll spend the day digging into this.
    - cyrialize 6y ago
      To add onto this - I'm a huge org-mode user. If you're on iOS I highly recommend BeOrg[1]. It's the best org-mode app for iphones. It's highly extensible on it's own since you can put in settings and run scheme in a config file[2]. You can purchase extensions for it which are all pretty cheap. You can also pay for a membership to get all extensions - this costs only $10 a year. The creator of the app is very active in the forums and is constantly updating and improving the app. I love it and it has made my usage of org-mode on the go much easier. [1]: https://beorgapp.com/ https://beorgapp.com/ [2]: https://beorgapp.com/manual/scripting/ https://beorgapp.com/manual/scripting/
    - skosch 6y ago
cyrialize 6y ago
I used to use Evil mode and now I use God-mode[1]. Evil is great, but you end up having to know Vim keybindings and some Emacs keybindings since Evil doesn't cover everything. It certainly can with additional Evil extensions and modifying your .emacs, but I still felt like there were some parts of Emacs where I needed to know Emacs key bindings. God-mode works since it just makes it so that you can use Emacs keybindings without modifier keys. Everything works out of the box. Best part is that you can install extensions without needing to come up with Evil keybindings for them. [1] https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode
CountSessine 6y ago
Is it possible to do inoremap jk <ESC> yet in Evil? That's a huge optimization for a really large minority of Vim users and without that, Evil definitely isn't Vim's equal.
- srcreigh 6y ago
  Key chord is a nice package for vanilla Emacs at least https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord
- Scarbutt 6y ago
  That's really no challenge ;)
- dfinninger 6y ago
  Have you taken a look at Evil-Escape[0]? I've bound the keys to "fd", because that feels natural, but it's trivial to do "jk". This package works on much more than just insert/normal mode switching as well. [0] https://github.com/syl20bnr/evil-escape https://github.com/syl20bnr/evil-escape
mssdvd 6y ago
Can you explain why do you think Evil is so good? I'm an Evil user too and I'm happy with it but I fail to see why it is better than many vi clones.
dotancohen 6y ago
I've recently been picking up Emacs for org-mode. Evil does not support settings such as `:set nu` or a thousand other settings that I use once in a blue moon but expect to just work. Even `:wq` attempts to close all buffers, `:e` doesn't open files as expected, I could go on. IdeaVIM get 90% of VIM right, and some things wrong (such as `u` for undo also undoing movements). Evil gets 95% of VIM right. But I have high hopes for NeoVIM allowing an actual first-class VIM implementation to be embedded, not copied, into an IDE or even Emacs.
- theCodeStig 6y ago
  Can you expand on that? For me, :wq closes the current buffer. For me, :e works as expected. There might be a built in alternative to :set nu. How do you expect that to work?
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    For me, `:wq` saves the current file and attempts to close all buffers, though thankfully asks if other unsaved buffers should be saved before closing. I was wrong about `:e`, it does work. Instead of `:set nu` I'm using Alt-X UpArrow+ to find `display-line-numbers-mode`, which does what it says. But there are other settings which I have on muscle memory macro that do not work, such as `:set wrap!` which I use often with my portrait monitor.