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In general though Emacs single handedly can do most of everything required in software development. One could practically spend all ones development time inside

In general though Emacs single handedly can do most of everything required in software development. One could practically spend all ones development time inside it, so I would say Emacs workflows are more impressive than Vi ones, especially since so much of great functionality is baked into it without even needing pluggins. This I say after a couple of recent days in which the GUD gdb interface was a great help in solving a few of the problems I was working on. Does VI has something similar built in? Or for any of the common workflows like these which work out of the box, without needing plugins or extra configuration: 1. Remote file editing on other computers. 2. Rectangular/columnar text edits and manipulations. 3. Essentially infinite kill ring, i.e, a very easy to use copy-paste history: This I find is very useful, one becomes acustomed to building, blocks of text by assembling things from the kill ring. Also plays nice with point 4, easy macro record/replay. 4. Easy macro record/replay of even complicated edit sequences. 5.Inbuilt calculator, with both rpn and algebraic modes. 6. The Dir-ed mode provides a very convenient file manager.

seszett 6y ago
All these points are also natively handled by vim. Except for 5 which needs an external cli calculator.
- billfruit 6y ago
  But are those functionality available natively without plugins? All these are in the default emacs distribution possibly since more than 20 years, and are in a very usable, stable state of functionality.
  - seszett 6y ago
    Some of them do take plugins (the netrw plugin I think) but this plugin is included and active in a default install.
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    Aren't these technically plugins for emacs that are shipped with the editor? Org-mode is a plugin for emacs too right?
    - jolux 6y ago
      Sure but what’s the difference? That’s the beauty (and occasional curse) of Emacs. There’s no hard line between “native” code and plugins, outside of the Emacs Lisp interpreter.
      - animal_spirits 6y ago
        Exactly. Its the basically same way with vim. Some plugins are distributed with the editor and some are not
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- JNRowe 6y ago
  Even without resorting to external tools the expression register(:h @=) can act as a surprisingly good builtin calculator, and there is a moderately large builtin math library(:h functions). Like all registers you can abuse it in many ways too, like as dirty inplace calculator when you're writing docs. For example, yank a example calculation, insert from register(:h i_CTRL-R_=), operate on your yank(:h @").
u801e 6y ago
> This I say after a couple of recent days in which the GUD gdb interface was a great help in solving a few of the problems I was working on. Does VI has something similar built in? Or for any of the common workflows like these which work out of the box, without needing plugins or extra configuration Not quite, but the help page does mention a plugin called termdebug[1] that can be used with vim's new terminal feature. > 1. Remote file editing on other computers. The netrw plugin which comes with the default vim installation allows for this > 2. Rectangular/columnar text edits and manipulations. You can select text in column mode and delete, replace, or insert text before or after the column (which can be wider than a single column). 3. Essentially infinite kill ring : This I find is very useful, one becomes accoustomed to building blocks of text by assembling things from the kill rings. Also plays nice with point 4, easy macro record/replay vim has registers that correspond to every ascii letter (I think emacs has this as well). From what I recall, when you delete or yank text, it goes through registers 1 through 9 which each subsequent operation shifting the previous operation to the higher numbered register. After register 9, the delete or yank is lost. But, if you use the capital letter registers, you can append a subsequent deletion or yank to what's already in the register, which I believe would effectively act as an infinite kill ring. I'm not sure if emacs can do the same with its registers. > Easy macro record/replay of even complicated edit sequences Vim has this as well, and you can store one macro in each of the ascii letter and number registers as well. > 5.Inbuild calculator, with both rpn and algebraic modes. There may be a plugin for that, but you could certainly pipe a line of text through dc or bc and get the result in vim. > 6. The Dired mode provides a very convenient file manager. You can get this through the netrw plugin as well. [1] https://vimhelp.org/terminal.txt.html#terminal-debug https://vimhelp.org/terminal.txt.html#terminal-debug
pksebben 6y ago
neither emacs nor vim workflows are half as impressive as emacs-evil workflows, though. the unique strengths of each are lethal when combined.
p00f 6y ago
all except 5, natively

seszett 6y ago

All these points are also natively handled by vim. Except for 5 which needs an external cli calculator.

billfruit 6y ago
But are those functionality available natively without plugins? All these are in the default emacs distribution possibly since more than 20 years, and are in a very usable, stable state of functionality.
- seszett 6y ago
  Some of them do take plugins (the netrw plugin I think) but this plugin is included and active in a default install.
- animal_spirits 6y ago
  Aren't these technically plugins for emacs that are shipped with the editor? Org-mode is a plugin for emacs too right?
  - jolux 6y ago
    Sure but what’s the difference? That’s the beauty (and occasional curse) of Emacs. There’s no hard line between “native” code and plugins, outside of the Emacs Lisp interpreter.
    - animal_spirits 6y ago
      Exactly. Its the basically same way with vim. Some plugins are distributed with the editor and some are not
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JNRowe 6y ago
Even without resorting to external tools the expression register(:h @=) can act as a surprisingly good builtin calculator, and there is a moderately large builtin math library(:h functions). Like all registers you can abuse it in many ways too, like as dirty inplace calculator when you're writing docs. For example, yank a example calculation, insert from register(:h i_CTRL-R_=), operate on your yank(:h @").

u801e 6y ago

> This I say after a couple of recent days in which the GUD gdb interface was a great help in solving a few of the problems I was working on. Does VI has something similar built in? Or for any of the common workflows like these which work out of the box, without needing plugins or extra configuration Not quite, but the help page does mention a plugin called termdebug[1] that can be used with vim's new terminal feature. > 1. Remote file editing on other computers. The netrw plugin which comes with the default vim installation allows for this > 2. Rectangular/columnar text edits and manipulations. You can select text in column mode and delete, replace, or insert text before or after the column (which can be wider than a single column). 3. Essentially infinite kill ring : This I find is very useful, one becomes accoustomed to building blocks of text by assembling things from the kill rings. Also plays nice with point 4, easy macro record/replay vim has registers that correspond to every ascii letter (I think emacs has this as well). From what I recall, when you delete or yank text, it goes through registers 1 through 9 which each subsequent operation shifting the previous operation to the higher numbered register. After register 9, the delete or yank is lost. But, if you use the capital letter registers, you can append a subsequent deletion or yank to what's already in the register, which I believe would effectively act as an infinite kill ring. I'm not sure if emacs can do the same with its registers. > Easy macro record/replay of even complicated edit sequences Vim has this as well, and you can store one macro in each of the ascii letter and number registers as well. > 5.Inbuild calculator, with both rpn and algebraic modes. There may be a plugin for that, but you could certainly pipe a line of text through dc or bc and get the result in vim. > 6. The Dired mode provides a very convenient file manager. You can get this through the netrw plugin as well. [1] https://vimhelp.org/terminal.txt.html#terminal-debug https://vimhelp.org/terminal.txt.html#terminal-debug

pksebben 6y ago

neither emacs nor vim workflows are half as impressive as emacs-evil workflows, though. the unique strengths of each are lethal when combined.

p00f 6y ago

all except 5, natively