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Using emacs AND vim isn't some mutually exclusive impossible thing. There's lots of nice features in emacs. Look at it as a suite of tools (applications) that

Using emacs AND vim isn't some mutually exclusive impossible thing. There's lots of nice features in emacs. Look at it as a suite of tools (applications) that has an editor-like interface; debugging, email, even spreadsheet calculations - you can totally still edit files with vim and find emacs really useful. For instance, you want a really powerful calculator? https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.htm... try that out Try giving the "Grand Unified Debugger" a spin as well. The ease of Visual studio debugging is one of the only things I miss from Windows dev and GUD really comes close. I use vim as my daily editor but fire up GUD frequently for stepping through code. Don't view the tools as mutually exclusive.

pmoriarty 5y ago
I used vim for over 25 years before switching to Emacs, so I'm perfectly capable of using both, and do use both.. but for me Emacs does virtually every that vim does and more, while vim only does a couple of things that I need that Emacs can't, and I find myself needing vim pretty rarely.
- colordrops 5y ago
  Do you use some sort of extension or plugin to get Emacs to use modal editing and the home row like vim? Or did you switch over to the Emacs key bindings?
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    I use Evil to get modal editing, and have spent countless hours configuring Emacs to be as vim-like as possible. As a result I can easily switch between vim and Emacs and feel completely comfortable editing in both.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      I'd love to switch, but have spent a significant portion of the last four months moving all my personal infra to NixOS. Will need to take a break and spend more time with the kids before diving into something like this again haha
      - mplanchard 5y ago
        When and if you do, be sure to check out the emacs-overlay! It makes it super easy to build/install development versions of emacs, to compile with native-comp, and so on
- ducktective 5y ago
  Professor Moriarty, a couple of questions: Is this switch because you've moved on to LISPs? Doesn't startup time and lag of emacs (compared to vim) bother you?
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    The startup time of Emacs is not an issue because I only start the Emacs server once and keep it running for a long time, connecting the Emacs client to it as needed. Once the Emacs server is running then connecting to it is as fast or faster than starting vim from scratch. Even restarting Emacs from scratch can be effectively instant, if you don't have a giant config like I do. Vim startup time can be slow too, by the way, if you have a lot of plugins. So, effectively, vim and Emacs don't differ on startup time these days like they used to. As to your question about Lisp, it definitely was a huge draw to Emacs because I fell in love with Lisp and almost the entire ecosystem of Emacs is written in Lisp... and I'd certainly much rather program in Lisp than vimscript, or even Python (or any of the other more mainstream languages). I remember coming across various things I wanted to do in vim that were pretty awkward to do because of how clunky vim and vimscript were. Lisp and Emacs just made doing what I needed much easier overall (though some things were still easier in vim.. for example, vim has some powerful features in its regex engine that don't exist in Emacs, even when using Evil). This was before neovim, so maybe it's better there, though since both vim and neovim lack Emacs' Lisp ecosystem, I doubt they'll ever be able to match Emacs in this respect. There were a lot of other reasons for the switch to Emacs, like having deep web browser and shell integration, being able to read my email from within Emacs, and do a ton of other things from it.. org-mode was another draw.
    - ducktective 5y ago
      While you were using vim, did you use tilling window managers? Did you use a dmenu-driven workflow that calls bash scripts and unix utilities? When people talk about "composability" and "integration" of EMACS, it strikes to me that, vim+i3+unix setup is essentially the same. Just instead of LISP, bash/python is the glue language.
      - 5y ago
- elteto 5y ago
  Professor, is it true that Holmes is a Notepad++ user?
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    More of a hardware user. Hard drugs, hard thought. It's funny Arthur Conan Doyle says Sherlock Holmes is based on I think two guys, but there's a third guy he's also based on Conan Doyle didn't talk about, and that was the guy who cracked cases the hardest, just never talked about because of he was the one the whole coke-injection trances was based on (which was legal at the time). Protected his privacy, you understand. Kind of like Paul Erdos.
JNRowe 5y ago
I'm one of those weird users who works in both, and I've also never really understood the need to pick a side. I initially used emacs for years, and now I've used both for years. I also don't pick a side in the tea and coffee debate, sometimes I want rooibos and others espresso. Admittedly, my emacs usage at this point is largely to treat it as a collection of distinct apps; fire up in nov-mode¹ mode to read books, fire up in magit-status² to mangle git repository, etc. It really feels like there are a collection of best of breed apps that just happen to built on emacs as a toolkit, most of which are fully functional without buying in to emacs for life(not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with that). The only time I really use emacs as an actual editing tool is when I'm working on documentation, and that is largely because I like being able to see inline screenshots in that instance. That could equally flip again should I see some feature I want. ¹ https://github.com/wasamasa/nov.el https://github.com/wasamasa/nov.el ² https://magit.vc/ https://magit.vc/
- deleted 5y ago
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- AndyMcConachie 5y ago
  I reget I have but one upvote to give you. I use different editors for different things and I could not agree with this sentiment more. I use Emacs almost exclusively for note taking and for writing software. But I use vim for editing config files, or for smallish files in /etc/. I really like Emacs for writing software, but I have used vim for this as well. Over the years I've used many different editors and I expect I will use many different editors in the future.
- taude 5y ago
  I use both, a lot, too. They both have their places. I'm using vi/vim whenever I shell onto a machine; I typically use ripgrep to search a huge codebase for the file I'm looking for and then typically open that single file in VIM. (I read more code than I write these days). I use Emacs (Doom) more for Org-Mode and note taking, and sometimes as client for accessing APIs (through verb package). I'd like to get my SQL for the various types of databases I connect to to go through emacs. But once the connection history is in my bash history, and how easy it is to press ctrl-x ctrl-e to edit the command (in VIM), it hasn't been painful enough to put the time in. And ironically, I use neither for my main code editor.
aulin 5y ago
I use vim for quick and fast terminal editing: little shell scripts, config files, commit messages. Emacs for anything serious.
emptysongglass 5y ago
Agreed, anyone who brings up the culture war between Emacs and Vim users is acting as an agent of discord. I love and appreciate Vim users and love and appreciate Emacs users. I "use" both thanks to evil, an Emacs package that brings vim emulation to Emacs.
deleted 5y ago
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lazyier 5y ago
Evil Emacs is a better Vi them Vim IMO. Although NeoVim is pretty special.
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
I crack open Emacs for Steel Bank Common Lisp. But Neovim for everything else. They are pushing the boundaries of Vim like no other with Treesitter, LSP etc.

pmoriarty 5y ago

I used vim for over 25 years before switching to Emacs, so I'm perfectly capable of using both, and do use both.. but for me Emacs does virtually every that vim does and more, while vim only does a couple of things that I need that Emacs can't, and I find myself needing vim pretty rarely.

colordrops 5y ago
Do you use some sort of extension or plugin to get Emacs to use modal editing and the home row like vim? Or did you switch over to the Emacs key bindings?
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  I use Evil to get modal editing, and have spent countless hours configuring Emacs to be as vim-like as possible. As a result I can easily switch between vim and Emacs and feel completely comfortable editing in both.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    I'd love to switch, but have spent a significant portion of the last four months moving all my personal infra to NixOS. Will need to take a break and spend more time with the kids before diving into something like this again haha
    - mplanchard 5y ago
      When and if you do, be sure to check out the emacs-overlay! It makes it super easy to build/install development versions of emacs, to compile with native-comp, and so on
ducktective 5y ago
Professor Moriarty, a couple of questions: Is this switch because you've moved on to LISPs? Doesn't startup time and lag of emacs (compared to vim) bother you?
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  The startup time of Emacs is not an issue because I only start the Emacs server once and keep it running for a long time, connecting the Emacs client to it as needed. Once the Emacs server is running then connecting to it is as fast or faster than starting vim from scratch. Even restarting Emacs from scratch can be effectively instant, if you don't have a giant config like I do. Vim startup time can be slow too, by the way, if you have a lot of plugins. So, effectively, vim and Emacs don't differ on startup time these days like they used to. As to your question about Lisp, it definitely was a huge draw to Emacs because I fell in love with Lisp and almost the entire ecosystem of Emacs is written in Lisp... and I'd certainly much rather program in Lisp than vimscript, or even Python (or any of the other more mainstream languages). I remember coming across various things I wanted to do in vim that were pretty awkward to do because of how clunky vim and vimscript were. Lisp and Emacs just made doing what I needed much easier overall (though some things were still easier in vim.. for example, vim has some powerful features in its regex engine that don't exist in Emacs, even when using Evil). This was before neovim, so maybe it's better there, though since both vim and neovim lack Emacs' Lisp ecosystem, I doubt they'll ever be able to match Emacs in this respect. There were a lot of other reasons for the switch to Emacs, like having deep web browser and shell integration, being able to read my email from within Emacs, and do a ton of other things from it.. org-mode was another draw.
  - ducktective 5y ago
    While you were using vim, did you use tilling window managers? Did you use a dmenu-driven workflow that calls bash scripts and unix utilities? When people talk about "composability" and "integration" of EMACS, it strikes to me that, vim+i3+unix setup is essentially the same. Just instead of LISP, bash/python is the glue language.
    - 5y ago
elteto 5y ago
Professor, is it true that Holmes is a Notepad++ user?
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  More of a hardware user. Hard drugs, hard thought. It's funny Arthur Conan Doyle says Sherlock Holmes is based on I think two guys, but there's a third guy he's also based on Conan Doyle didn't talk about, and that was the guy who cracked cases the hardest, just never talked about because of he was the one the whole coke-injection trances was based on (which was legal at the time). Protected his privacy, you understand. Kind of like Paul Erdos.

JNRowe 5y ago

I'm one of those weird users who works in both, and I've also never really understood the need to pick a side. I initially used emacs for years, and now I've used both for years. I also don't pick a side in the tea and coffee debate, sometimes I want rooibos and others espresso. Admittedly, my emacs usage at this point is largely to treat it as a collection of distinct apps; fire up in nov-mode¹ mode to read books, fire up in magit-status² to mangle git repository, etc. It really feels like there are a collection of best of breed apps that just happen to built on emacs as a toolkit, most of which are fully functional without buying in to emacs for life(not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with that). The only time I really use emacs as an actual editing tool is when I'm working on documentation, and that is largely because I like being able to see inline screenshots in that instance. That could equally flip again should I see some feature I want. ¹ https://github.com/wasamasa/nov.el https://github.com/wasamasa/nov.el ² https://magit.vc/ https://magit.vc/

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AndyMcConachie 5y ago
I reget I have but one upvote to give you. I use different editors for different things and I could not agree with this sentiment more. I use Emacs almost exclusively for note taking and for writing software. But I use vim for editing config files, or for smallish files in /etc/. I really like Emacs for writing software, but I have used vim for this as well. Over the years I've used many different editors and I expect I will use many different editors in the future.
taude 5y ago
I use both, a lot, too. They both have their places. I'm using vi/vim whenever I shell onto a machine; I typically use ripgrep to search a huge codebase for the file I'm looking for and then typically open that single file in VIM. (I read more code than I write these days). I use Emacs (Doom) more for Org-Mode and note taking, and sometimes as client for accessing APIs (through verb package). I'd like to get my SQL for the various types of databases I connect to to go through emacs. But once the connection history is in my bash history, and how easy it is to press ctrl-x ctrl-e to edit the command (in VIM), it hasn't been painful enough to put the time in. And ironically, I use neither for my main code editor.

aulin 5y ago

I use vim for quick and fast terminal editing: little shell scripts, config files, commit messages. Emacs for anything serious.

emptysongglass 5y ago

Agreed, anyone who brings up the culture war between Emacs and Vim users is acting as an agent of discord. I love and appreciate Vim users and love and appreciate Emacs users. I "use" both thanks to evil, an Emacs package that brings vim emulation to Emacs.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lazyier 5y ago

Evil Emacs is a better Vi them Vim IMO. Although NeoVim is pretty special.

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago

I crack open Emacs for Steel Bank Common Lisp. But Neovim for everything else. They are pushing the boundaries of Vim like no other with Treesitter, LSP etc.