3 ms·

The line between "IDE" and "text editor" has blurred to the point where I'm not sure they're super useful terms anymore. When I used vim up till about 2019, I h

The line between "IDE" and "text editor" has blurred to the point where I'm not sure they're super useful terms anymore. When I used vim up till about 2019, I had it configured with all the toys to the point where it wasn't all that far off of where my VSCode setup is today. Also, you know, insert Emacs joke here assuming if you still have enough RAM to post, etc.

kstrauser 3y ago
I don’t believe there’s a useful distinction, at least for more advanced editors. For instance, I’m not aware of anything you can do in, say, PyCharm that you can’t do in Emacs or Vim. I don’t mean that in a curmudgeonly way like “nothing I care about, because we don’t need those fancy features to write a pageful of Fortran on my 1997 laptop”. I mean, I don’t know of a single feature of any kind that doesn’t exist on essentially all modern editors.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > I mean, I don’t know of a single feature of any kind that doesn’t exist on essentially all modern editors. All composed commands. Like Repeat. As in `repeat the following command 5 times`. Like `d5` in Vim (delete 5lines). Or y30 (Copy 30 lines). Or `V?^func` (select text from current cursor position to the beginning of the function). None of those are memorised commands. They're simply one command composed with another. Composability is the real killer feature in Vim. Even in Emacs, I don't get the same ease of composability as I do in Vim.
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    In emacs your repeat commands are C-u <number> <other command>. Your selection would be C-space C-s func M-b. M-b causes it to go back to the beginning of the word and search ends, you can still adjust the selection with other movements. It's not as tight as V?<regex> but it's still composable. Or you use evil mode and get those vi-style bindings in the editor. EDIT: Actually, playing around with your `V?` command doesn't it select that entire line rather than to that pattern? So the emacs equivalent would actually be: C-space C-M-s ^func C-e
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Well, ok. I’m specifically talking about what might count as an IDE feature. Vim and Emacs can run in a terminal, but that’s not a defining characteristic of an IDR. More like, everything can do interactive debugging, and syntax highlighting, and code completion, edit-time error flagging, etc. etc.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > Well, ok. I’m specifically talking about what might count as an IDE feature. Well, that changes things. I replied to the 'programming text editor' part.
dingnuts 3y ago
It's even blurrier when you realize how many people are using LSP. Emacs with elgot is literally just a different UI in front of the same IDE tooling as VSCode. The editor wars are over and everyone won because of separation of concerns. Yay!

kstrauser 3y ago

I don’t believe there’s a useful distinction, at least for more advanced editors. For instance, I’m not aware of anything you can do in, say, PyCharm that you can’t do in Emacs or Vim. I don’t mean that in a curmudgeonly way like “nothing I care about, because we don’t need those fancy features to write a pageful of Fortran on my 1997 laptop”. I mean, I don’t know of a single feature of any kind that doesn’t exist on essentially all modern editors.

lelanthran 3y ago
> I mean, I don’t know of a single feature of any kind that doesn’t exist on essentially all modern editors. All composed commands. Like Repeat. As in `repeat the following command 5 times`. Like `d5` in Vim (delete 5lines). Or y30 (Copy 30 lines). Or `V?^func` (select text from current cursor position to the beginning of the function). None of those are memorised commands. They're simply one command composed with another. Composability is the real killer feature in Vim. Even in Emacs, I don't get the same ease of composability as I do in Vim.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  In emacs your repeat commands are C-u <number> <other command>. Your selection would be C-space C-s func M-b. M-b causes it to go back to the beginning of the word and search ends, you can still adjust the selection with other movements. It's not as tight as V?<regex> but it's still composable. Or you use evil mode and get those vi-style bindings in the editor. EDIT: Actually, playing around with your `V?` command doesn't it select that entire line rather than to that pattern? So the emacs equivalent would actually be: C-space C-M-s ^func C-e
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Well, ok. I’m specifically talking about what might count as an IDE feature. Vim and Emacs can run in a terminal, but that’s not a defining characteristic of an IDR. More like, everything can do interactive debugging, and syntax highlighting, and code completion, edit-time error flagging, etc. etc.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > Well, ok. I’m specifically talking about what might count as an IDE feature. Well, that changes things. I replied to the 'programming text editor' part.

dingnuts 3y ago

It's even blurrier when you realize how many people are using LSP. Emacs with elgot is literally just a different UI in front of the same IDE tooling as VSCode. The editor wars are over and everyone won because of separation of concerns. Yay!