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A couple of suggestions (in no particular order, and from an ex-Emacs/Xcode/Jetbrains/VSCode and current nvim user): 1. Don't. There's no need to 'switch'. The

A couple of suggestions (in no particular order, and from an ex-Emacs/Xcode/Jetbrains/VSCode and current nvim user): 1. Don't. There's no need to 'switch'. There are marvellously 'productive' developers using every editor under the sun, and neither the quality nor quantity of their work is strongly related to their choice of editor. There are world-class developers who do everything in a vanilla Sublime Text. Others who have a fully tricked-out emacs who dream in org mode. Some use a mouse in one hand and do keyboard shortcuts in the other. None of it matters much. Ignore antiempirical self-attestations to the contrary - they're entertaining but informationally worthless. If self-attestations were relevant, then everything (from quack medicines to cult healing methods to levitation) would be true, because everything has more utterly self-convinced dataless self-attestations than you could absorb in all a bodhisattva's recalled lifetimes. [all scare quotes intended]. 2. Do. Emacs and vim/nvim are great and will serve you well if one matches your preferences. Pick one using your preferred criteria, and commit to it for a period. Your 1-2 weeks just isn't enough - I'd say 2 months at least. Put that commitment in your calendar. If it slows you down too much for practicality to start with, limit its use (to an an hour a day, or to a side project), but stick with it for the full period regardless. In the first week or two, go through enough basic tutorials to be able to do essential editing with their basic keybindings without plugins. With reasonable fluency established, just keep a note in which to jot down what's missing compared to your IDE, and pick them off, one-by-one, over time. Sort the list once a week to keep it fresh, and just pick the next item to configure/learn. Get fluent with each new item before moving on to the next.

tylerchurch 4y ago
Reinforcing #1: It's amazing how productive you can be if you're creating things instead of endlessly trying, configuring, and comparing editors.
- xcambar 4y ago
  Whether you call it over-engineering or procrastination, customizing an editor is a delicious waste of time.
  - aussiesnack 4y ago
    I'm certainly not knocking it. I have enjoyed it in the past, particularly with emacs. But it's an activity which some enjoy for its own sake and some don't. It's just not a necessary condition for becoming a 'productive' developer. Those who do enjoy it to the point of writing some of the great open source plugins available, do the rest of us a terrific service.
    - xcambar 4y ago
      Just as you, I certainly don't relate productivity and editor config. My co fig now is really simple: I rely on other's work: I find powerline-10k + LunarVim to make for a more than good enough terminal environment.
- saurik 4y ago
  I mean, you're going to be programming for the rest of your life, right? I put a bunch of time into customizing vim... god, I think it was 15 years ago? Whenever this comes up, people make it sound like you are somehow going to be doing that every single day for the rest of your life or something... and then, awkwardly, I tend to see them screwing around constantly with some new IDE-of-the-week that crashes constantly and slows them down at every turn gloating about how they "saved time" by not spending a small amount of time forever ago to figure out what the hell they actually wanted :/.
  - aussiesnack 4y ago
    > I tend to see them screwing around constantly with some new IDE-of-the-week that crashes constantly and slows them down at every turn gloating about how they "saved time" by not spending a small amount of time forever ago to figure out what the hell they actually wanted This is just as much a caricature as the one you're objecting to. People do good work using all of the available tools. Some use more than one! There are people who like both emacs and IntelliJ! We really don't have to tribalize over every little choice people make.
    - saurik 4y ago
      I'm totally cool if you want to use IntelliJ. I'm somewhat less cool if you are telling me how awesome IntelliJ is this year after trying to get me to use Eclipse on your last project but are now looking at VSCode as an alternative because you are sick of switching between this stack and Xcode and PyCharm after you stopped just trying to use Sublime for everything... and I certainly lose all sympathy when these same people actively defend this insanity by saying they don't think it makes sense to "waste time" "over-engineering" their text editor setup. Like, if you want to tell me "I use nothing but notepad, and I'm a god at it" I'm going to be "holy hell yeah, I want to feast my eyes upon this marvel"... but, first off, I'm betting at that point you are going to have gotten really good at using notepad, along with all of the little warts of how it interacts with Explorer... and second off, the people who are coming out always to bash on the people who bother to learn and optimize their tools to prepare for a lifetime of software development generally aren't people who simply chose a different tool.
Scarbutt 4y ago
Why did you switch to nvim from emacs?
- aussiesnack 4y ago
  Well I don't use the 'switch' term - cliches cloud thought, and I've only at some points in my programming life used a single editor for everything, and for me it's been more a pragmatic journey than anxious 'switch'. Also I don't always work as a programmer - so sometimes, returning to the field after a few years away, I start afresh with new tools. I did once use emacs extensively. I stopped because at the time I moved almost exclusively into iOS work, which mostly meant XCode. I disliked that enough that I tried and enjoyed the only real alternative - Jetbrains' AppCode. So then when I moved on again to non-iOS work I had fallen for the Jetbrains approach, so mostly used IntelliJ. I did have one small spell again with emacs, when writing some clojure (for which it's a good fit), but found it overwrought for my more recent taste. But all this time I had used vim for small on-off and in-terminal edits, and mostly used vim keybinds in other editors. Anyway, via a couple more shifts (including using VSCode for a while), the advent of LSP and treesitter really makes neovim close enough to matching IntelliJ's features for my purposes. I just like neovim and its ecosystem, and it works well enough for me. But so would emacs or IntelliJ or VSCode or vim or emacs. I probably make several choices a week far more significant than what text editor to use.
avean 4y ago
I can only confirm this. Only change if you feel real need and progress with another tool. Learning a new IDE takes time. I've been using Emacs for over 20 years and I'm still discovering new features. The goal is not to become an Emacs superhero but to gain confidence and efficiency. Some features may seem useless to you until you have a suitable use for them. For example, for a long time I ignored Emacs' natural keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor, preferring to use the arrow keys until I felt the need to use them and felt that I was doing my job more efficiently. I tried VS Code as well but did not enjoy the experience. Back to Emacs with which I have too many habits and a long love affair. I also use Atom a bit for some tasks but it's more rare. You also don't need to configure your IDE from the start. It's a bit of a thankless task but not that difficult or incomprehensible. It took me a few years before I started messing with my Emacs configuration. The advantage is that it is portable and I can find my environment on any computer just by copying a folder.

tylerchurch 4y ago

Reinforcing #1: It's amazing how productive you can be if you're creating things instead of endlessly trying, configuring, and comparing editors.

xcambar 4y ago
Whether you call it over-engineering or procrastination, customizing an editor is a delicious waste of time.
- aussiesnack 4y ago
  I'm certainly not knocking it. I have enjoyed it in the past, particularly with emacs. But it's an activity which some enjoy for its own sake and some don't. It's just not a necessary condition for becoming a 'productive' developer. Those who do enjoy it to the point of writing some of the great open source plugins available, do the rest of us a terrific service.
  - xcambar 4y ago
    Just as you, I certainly don't relate productivity and editor config. My co fig now is really simple: I rely on other's work: I find powerline-10k + LunarVim to make for a more than good enough terminal environment.
saurik 4y ago
I mean, you're going to be programming for the rest of your life, right? I put a bunch of time into customizing vim... god, I think it was 15 years ago? Whenever this comes up, people make it sound like you are somehow going to be doing that every single day for the rest of your life or something... and then, awkwardly, I tend to see them screwing around constantly with some new IDE-of-the-week that crashes constantly and slows them down at every turn gloating about how they "saved time" by not spending a small amount of time forever ago to figure out what the hell they actually wanted :/.
- aussiesnack 4y ago
  > I tend to see them screwing around constantly with some new IDE-of-the-week that crashes constantly and slows them down at every turn gloating about how they "saved time" by not spending a small amount of time forever ago to figure out what the hell they actually wanted This is just as much a caricature as the one you're objecting to. People do good work using all of the available tools. Some use more than one! There are people who like both emacs and IntelliJ! We really don't have to tribalize over every little choice people make.
  - saurik 4y ago
    I'm totally cool if you want to use IntelliJ. I'm somewhat less cool if you are telling me how awesome IntelliJ is this year after trying to get me to use Eclipse on your last project but are now looking at VSCode as an alternative because you are sick of switching between this stack and Xcode and PyCharm after you stopped just trying to use Sublime for everything... and I certainly lose all sympathy when these same people actively defend this insanity by saying they don't think it makes sense to "waste time" "over-engineering" their text editor setup. Like, if you want to tell me "I use nothing but notepad, and I'm a god at it" I'm going to be "holy hell yeah, I want to feast my eyes upon this marvel"... but, first off, I'm betting at that point you are going to have gotten really good at using notepad, along with all of the little warts of how it interacts with Explorer... and second off, the people who are coming out always to bash on the people who bother to learn and optimize their tools to prepare for a lifetime of software development generally aren't people who simply chose a different tool.

Scarbutt 4y ago

Why did you switch to nvim from emacs?

aussiesnack 4y ago
Well I don't use the 'switch' term - cliches cloud thought, and I've only at some points in my programming life used a single editor for everything, and for me it's been more a pragmatic journey than anxious 'switch'. Also I don't always work as a programmer - so sometimes, returning to the field after a few years away, I start afresh with new tools. I did once use emacs extensively. I stopped because at the time I moved almost exclusively into iOS work, which mostly meant XCode. I disliked that enough that I tried and enjoyed the only real alternative - Jetbrains' AppCode. So then when I moved on again to non-iOS work I had fallen for the Jetbrains approach, so mostly used IntelliJ. I did have one small spell again with emacs, when writing some clojure (for which it's a good fit), but found it overwrought for my more recent taste. But all this time I had used vim for small on-off and in-terminal edits, and mostly used vim keybinds in other editors. Anyway, via a couple more shifts (including using VSCode for a while), the advent of LSP and treesitter really makes neovim close enough to matching IntelliJ's features for my purposes. I just like neovim and its ecosystem, and it works well enough for me. But so would emacs or IntelliJ or VSCode or vim or emacs. I probably make several choices a week far more significant than what text editor to use.

avean 4y ago

I can only confirm this. Only change if you feel real need and progress with another tool. Learning a new IDE takes time. I've been using Emacs for over 20 years and I'm still discovering new features. The goal is not to become an Emacs superhero but to gain confidence and efficiency. Some features may seem useless to you until you have a suitable use for them. For example, for a long time I ignored Emacs' natural keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor, preferring to use the arrow keys until I felt the need to use them and felt that I was doing my job more efficiently. I tried VS Code as well but did not enjoy the experience. Back to Emacs with which I have too many habits and a long love affair. I also use Atom a bit for some tasks but it's more rare. You also don't need to configure your IDE from the start. It's a bit of a thankless task but not that difficult or incomprehensible. It took me a few years before I started messing with my Emacs configuration. The advantage is that it is portable and I can find my environment on any computer just by copying a folder.