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Good post, and worth reading if you're stuck with vim and don't like it. But, reading this reminds me of how much I like GUIs. Yup these movements are great. I

Good post, and worth reading if you're stuck with vim and don't like it. But, reading this reminds me of how much I like GUIs. Yup these movements are great. I get the appeal of turning selecting text into a dumb programming trick, I'm sure it makes you feel very clever and productive. Of course I can do all this stuff and more without even consciously thinking about it using a mouse. Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Look what I can do by finding a menu item! Douglas Adams used to talk about how powerful formatting features in word processors were a great way to procrastinate.

dmethvin 15y ago
> Of course I can do all this stuff and more without even consciously thinking about it using a mouse. One of the reasons vi/vim is so much faster for me is that there isn't a need to move between the mouse and keyboard with the requisite hand/eye/mouse/re-home coordination. Yes the key combos are bizarre, but so is the querty keyboard layout for that matter. Once you learn it, your fingers act as a direct connection between your brain and the editor. A mouse can't do that.
- blahedo 15y ago
  > querty Ooh, I think we found part of your problem.
- kalleboo 15y ago
  Once Apple released the Magic Trackpad, all my mouse annoyances disappeared. It's always right there, and it has a tactility on par with keyboards.
larsberg 15y ago
> Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Is there something it does that's better than M-x grep? I'm asking honestly, not to be snarky. And either way, it's not that menu items are bad... it's just, well, I've been using Emacs for ~20 years now. Across god knows how many different platforms, installations, and technology tool chains. How many times have you re-found that menu item? And how does their menu item differ from the one in (TextMate|VisualStudio|XCode|Eclipse|...). If BBedit is the only editor you've ever used or will use, great. But honestly, I don't want to find move next paragraph, spell check region, or reindent block ever again. They may be in the editor, in some menu somewhere. It may even be similar to the place I found it last time...
LiveTheDream 15y ago
> Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Look what I can do by finding a menu item! Isn't this just using ack? (:Ack in vim, not sure of the equivalent in emacs)
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  You might find this binding useful. Does an ack on the word your cursor is currently on. :nmap <C-f> :!ack <cword><CR>
Game_Ender 15y ago
> Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Using ack and the emacs mode http://nschum.de/src/emacs/full-ack/ http://nschum.de/src/emacs/full-ack/ I search a hundreds of megs in source in ~5 seconds. I have yet to think of something that there is not already an emacs mode for.
xyzzyz 15y ago
Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Look what I can do by finding a menu item! You mean something like this: http://i.imgur.com/0pieh.png http://i.imgur.com/0pieh.png ? It has been almost 10 years now since GNU Emacs got GUI, and XEmacs (as the name suggests) had it even earlier, and yet many people still believe that Emacs has only console interface. I think the main reason is that most Emacs users (me included) turn off menu and tool bars so that they're not distracted by them -- almost nobody uses them anyway, because moving hand from keyboard to mouse and clicking through menus is so annoyingly slow. There are many uninformed opinions in this thread, about Vim, Emacs and heavyweight IDEs like MSVS or Eclipse as well. Please, refrain from bashing things you do not know, because it usually sounds silly for those who do know them. But, yeah, all's fair in love and war, especially when you're fighting for your loved editor.
exDM69 15y ago
Vim's :grep does what you want, and also displays the results in a nicely navigable form in the quickfix list or the location list.

dmethvin 15y ago

> Of course I can do all this stuff and more without even consciously thinking about it using a mouse. One of the reasons vi/vim is so much faster for me is that there isn't a need to move between the mouse and keyboard with the requisite hand/eye/mouse/re-home coordination. Yes the key combos are bizarre, but so is the querty keyboard layout for that matter. Once you learn it, your fingers act as a direct connection between your brain and the editor. A mouse can't do that.

blahedo 15y ago
> querty Ooh, I think we found part of your problem.
kalleboo 15y ago
Once Apple released the Magic Trackpad, all my mouse annoyances disappeared. It's always right there, and it has a tactility on par with keyboards.

larsberg 15y ago

> Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Is there something it does that's better than M-x grep? I'm asking honestly, not to be snarky. And either way, it's not that menu items are bad... it's just, well, I've been using Emacs for ~20 years now. Across god knows how many different platforms, installations, and technology tool chains. How many times have you re-found that menu item? And how does their menu item differ from the one in (TextMate|VisualStudio|XCode|Eclipse|...). If BBedit is the only editor you've ever used or will use, great. But honestly, I don't want to find move next paragraph, spell check region, or reindent block ever again. They may be in the editor, in some menu somewhere. It may even be similar to the place I found it last time...

LiveTheDream 15y ago

> Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Look what I can do by finding a menu item! Isn't this just using ack? (:Ack in vim, not sure of the equivalent in emacs)

burgerbrain 15y ago
You might find this binding useful. Does an ack on the word your cursor is currently on. :nmap <C-f> :!ack <cword><CR>

Game_Ender 15y ago

> Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Using ack and the emacs mode http://nschum.de/src/emacs/full-ack/ http://nschum.de/src/emacs/full-ack/ I search a hundreds of megs in source in ~5 seconds. I have yet to think of something that there is not already an emacs mode for.

xyzzyz 15y ago

Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Look what I can do by finding a menu item! You mean something like this: http://i.imgur.com/0pieh.png http://i.imgur.com/0pieh.png ? It has been almost 10 years now since GNU Emacs got GUI, and XEmacs (as the name suggests) had it even earlier, and yet many people still believe that Emacs has only console interface. I think the main reason is that most Emacs users (me included) turn off menu and tool bars so that they're not distracted by them -- almost nobody uses them anyway, because moving hand from keyboard to mouse and clicking through menus is so annoyingly slow. There are many uninformed opinions in this thread, about Vim, Emacs and heavyweight IDEs like MSVS or Eclipse as well. Please, refrain from bashing things you do not know, because it usually sounds silly for those who do know them. But, yeah, all's fair in love and war, especially when you're fighting for your loved editor.

exDM69 15y ago

Vim's :grep does what you want, and also displays the results in a nicely navigable form in the quickfix list or the location list.