4 ms·

NeoVIM seems like a big upgrade over a lot of editors. As a very casual Emacs user who never got excited enough for the "self-documenting and programmable edit

NeoVIM seems like a big upgrade over a lot of editors. As a very casual Emacs user who never got excited enough for the "self-documenting and programmable editor" idea, VIM gets more appealing by the day for me. I am also using Spacemacs for a year or so and it's definitely better than normal Emacs. Haven't tried Doom Emacs and I doubt that I will, regardless of a lot of positive feedback. I mean, Emacs is alright but I am just not in the club of the people who'll use 25% of their workday chasing an Elisp error and maybe fix a plugin in the process. Always hated the heavy IDEs like Eclipse and IDEA so this led me to Emacs but I still prefer stuff to come semi-configured out of the box. I know that NeoVIM will require some love for that but I'm prepared to do it because it looks like much less work than Emacs. I'll try Emacs' `native-comp` branch for supposed quicker Elisp operation but I don't have much hope that it will help my grievances. Sadly, my 19 years of casual Emacs usage are coming to an end soon. I'm looking forward to trying NeoVIM.

gosukiwi 5y ago
For me, Spacemacs with evil mode and Vim are quite similar, but I always end up going back to Vim because it's just a) way faster for me, and b) it integrates into my workflow better. For example, I don't want an extension to take care of git for me (magit), it's easier for me to just alt tab or bring a terminal in vim and do it there. I find Emacs users prefer to do everything in the editor, while I'd rather have one tool do one job. Of course what job exactly should a tool do is subjective, and varies from user to user :) Vim surely tales some "learning tax", new users are encouraged not to add every plugin they can find, instead, try to do things "the vim way". But that is also subjective. My experience with Vim was just make it more friendly first (installing things like NerdTREE and making it behave more like other editors I was used to), then slowly learn how to do what those plugins do with just vanilla vim, and see if I can either remove them or replace them with a more "barebones" and "vim-compatible" plugin. For example, I now use vim-dirvish which is like a better `netrw` (Vim's default file browser). I am biased of course, but I think Vim/Neovim is just great, and always worth checking out.
iLemming 5y ago
> I am just not in the club of the people who'll use 25% of their workday chasing an Elisp error Yes, experienced Emacs users do write some emacs-lisp all the time. But despite the popular belief, it's not about chasing and fixing Elisp errors. I, for example, write emacs-lisp functions just because I can. Here are some typical examples: - I have a GitHub link to an issue or a pull-request, I want to download the description of it and make it a proper Org-mode link. - I want to automatically make a git branch name based on a ticket number (it retrieves the title and shortens it up) - I want to turn a piece of EDN to JSON and vice-versa - I want to diff two last pieces I copied into clipboard (side-by-side or otherwise) - I want to grab a specific value for a Heroku app (based on the context I'm in) And much more. Of course, one can use any scripting language to do all that, but it won't be integrated with your IDE.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  I am not here to shit on Emacs -- I recognize that I am not its audience. Took me a long time because I was in denial but eventually I figured it out. But I get Elisp warnings and errors every day. And mind you, I did abandon my monstrous init file a year ago and just yielded to Spacemacs with very minimal changes like font, cursor customization et. al. -- basically just 7-8 of these. It has a ton of stuff in it though. Spacemacs isn't a lightweight Emacs. Being on macOS might be another thing, too, I don't know. Even with that, there is trouble on a regular basis. I would think an all-in-one package deal would have better debugging and proper care but oh well. :( Again, not here to degrade Emacs itself, I am only here to share that the amount of effort I am willing to invest to maintain my local installation is apparently not enough to have a well-running editor, and that I will be giving up on it because of that.
  - iLemming 5y ago
    > Spacemacs isn't a lightweight Emacs No, it's not. Many people make a mistake, thinking that Doom, Prelude, or Spacemacs are ready-to-use, out-of-the-box solutions. They are more like collections of recipes. You have to judiciously remove things. You need to know how to use the built-in profiler. > and that I will be giving up on it because of that And that's okay. I myself abandoned Emacs and moved back to other things several times, until I finally learned how to make it work for me.
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> ...still prefer stuff to come semi-configured out of the box Maybe I'm weird, but stock GNU Emacs as out of the box is perfect for me. Tried configuring it with various bells-and-whistles over the years, but I always come back to stock Emacs. (And no, despite using Emacs for 25 years I don't write elisp.)
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Well it absolutely isn't for me, f.ex. I constantly need project-wide functionality like find files by name or contents. Just using C-x C-f all the time is much more inefficient.

gosukiwi 5y ago

For me, Spacemacs with evil mode and Vim are quite similar, but I always end up going back to Vim because it's just a) way faster for me, and b) it integrates into my workflow better. For example, I don't want an extension to take care of git for me (magit), it's easier for me to just alt tab or bring a terminal in vim and do it there. I find Emacs users prefer to do everything in the editor, while I'd rather have one tool do one job. Of course what job exactly should a tool do is subjective, and varies from user to user :) Vim surely tales some "learning tax", new users are encouraged not to add every plugin they can find, instead, try to do things "the vim way". But that is also subjective. My experience with Vim was just make it more friendly first (installing things like NerdTREE and making it behave more like other editors I was used to), then slowly learn how to do what those plugins do with just vanilla vim, and see if I can either remove them or replace them with a more "barebones" and "vim-compatible" plugin. For example, I now use vim-dirvish which is like a better `netrw` (Vim's default file browser). I am biased of course, but I think Vim/Neovim is just great, and always worth checking out.

iLemming 5y ago

> I am just not in the club of the people who'll use 25% of their workday chasing an Elisp error Yes, experienced Emacs users do write some emacs-lisp all the time. But despite the popular belief, it's not about chasing and fixing Elisp errors. I, for example, write emacs-lisp functions just because I can. Here are some typical examples: - I have a GitHub link to an issue or a pull-request, I want to download the description of it and make it a proper Org-mode link. - I want to automatically make a git branch name based on a ticket number (it retrieves the title and shortens it up) - I want to turn a piece of EDN to JSON and vice-versa - I want to diff two last pieces I copied into clipboard (side-by-side or otherwise) - I want to grab a specific value for a Heroku app (based on the context I'm in) And much more. Of course, one can use any scripting language to do all that, but it won't be integrated with your IDE.

pdimitar 5y ago
I am not here to shit on Emacs -- I recognize that I am not its audience. Took me a long time because I was in denial but eventually I figured it out. But I get Elisp warnings and errors every day. And mind you, I did abandon my monstrous init file a year ago and just yielded to Spacemacs with very minimal changes like font, cursor customization et. al. -- basically just 7-8 of these. It has a ton of stuff in it though. Spacemacs isn't a lightweight Emacs. Being on macOS might be another thing, too, I don't know. Even with that, there is trouble on a regular basis. I would think an all-in-one package deal would have better debugging and proper care but oh well. :( Again, not here to degrade Emacs itself, I am only here to share that the amount of effort I am willing to invest to maintain my local installation is apparently not enough to have a well-running editor, and that I will be giving up on it because of that.
- iLemming 5y ago
  > Spacemacs isn't a lightweight Emacs No, it's not. Many people make a mistake, thinking that Doom, Prelude, or Spacemacs are ready-to-use, out-of-the-box solutions. They are more like collections of recipes. You have to judiciously remove things. You need to know how to use the built-in profiler. > and that I will be giving up on it because of that And that's okay. I myself abandoned Emacs and moved back to other things several times, until I finally learned how to make it work for me.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago

> ...still prefer stuff to come semi-configured out of the box Maybe I'm weird, but stock GNU Emacs as out of the box is perfect for me. Tried configuring it with various bells-and-whistles over the years, but I always come back to stock Emacs. (And no, despite using Emacs for 25 years I don't write elisp.)

pdimitar 5y ago
Well it absolutely isn't for me, f.ex. I constantly need project-wide functionality like find files by name or contents. Just using C-x C-f all the time is much more inefficient.