8 ms·

> the wisdom that "Emacs is a good operating system, it just needs a decent text editor". that's not wisdom; that's a sarcastic quip by the vim side of the em

• bitwize 13y ago
  Sorry, I meant to say "conventional wisdom".
  • vvhn 13y ago
    eh ? like your parent comment pointed out - it's a quip by us vi users, not "wisdom" (conventional or otherwise) :-)
• evincarofautumn 13y ago
  It might be a joke, but it’s quite true. Vim is an excellent and efficient text editor, and Vim users consequently tend to see Emacs as a powerful but massively inefficient text editor. Which of course it is, but it’s also a massively efficient keyboard interface to an interactive text-based Lisp environment. If you’re just using Emacs to edit text, you’re missing out.
  • rat87 13y ago
    These days many users of vim tend to use many plugins making it in some ways a lot like emacs. Also emacs isn't particularly inefficient on modern machines other then problems with the ui and single threading which I believe vim shares.
    • evincarofautumn 13y ago
      I meant human efficiency, not the computer kind.
      • Ma8ee 13y ago
        In what way is Emacs inefficient for humans?
        • danielbarla 13y ago
          My guess would be the Emacs pinky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#Emacs_pinky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#Emacs_pinky As a novice Vim user who has at times wanted to try out Emacs, this has always been an irritation. I think it's telling that one of the suggested work-arounds according that article is: > Emacs' built-in "Viper-mode" that allows use of the vi key layout for basic text editing and the Emacs scheme for more advanced features.
        • regularfry 13y ago
          Try this task for an example: underline an arbitrary line of text with '=' characters. In vim that's 11 keypresses across 3 operations, possibly less if there's a shortcut I haven't thought of. How many keypresses does emacs take out of the box? Emacs, especially with paredit, is fairly well optimised for editing s-expressions and the like. Vim is very well optimised for line-based editing, but I don't get on with its buffer management at all.
          • taylanub 13y ago
            Came up with this in 10 seconds: C-a C-k C-k C-y C-y C-p C-SPC C-e M-x repl RET reg RET . RET = RET You can't really count key-presses the same way in Emacs because e.g. Ctrl+x is not the same as "x, y", and especially "Ctrl+x, Ctrl+y" is not the same at all as "x, y, z, t" because you can hold Ctrl then press x then y. Also, in the M-x repl RET reg RET bit, the "repl" and "reg" can be touch-typed naturally, which will probably be faster than hitting individual command keys, due to mental over-head and what-not (bring in the neurologists!). It's probably still a bit more finger movement than Vim's 11 keypresses, but I'd invite everyone to stop mast*rbating and be as fine with this ~20 key-press solution which came to mind in 10 seconds and takes less than 10 seconds to execute. If you want to use it often, record it as a macro and bind it to a key.
          • 13y ago
  • yarrel 13y ago
    The screeching brakes sound of context switches in Vim is not more "efficient" than just pressing a key combination to perform whichever transformation on text you wish to effect in Emacs. I use Emacs to edit text, and I have limbs I'd rather lose than have to perform that task with Vim's airbag in my face.
    • jlgreco 13y ago
      > Vim is not more "efficient" than just pressing a key combination Vim and Emacs both use key combinations... Vim's just require fewer fingers at once. You type Vim key combinations as you would type words in a language with a latin alphabet.
      • NotOscarWilde 13y ago
        I think a lot of features -- especially if you want them accessible inside INSERT mode -- are accessible through CTRL+letter, no? At least omni-completion, the most useful one, used to be when I last tried it. (Has that changed? I'm not doing much editing in vim these days, so I may be wrong.)
        • jlgreco 13y ago
          Any command that I can think of can be mapped to work while in insertion mode. The key however is understanding that if you are insertion mode, then key sequences start with the escape key, or, insertion commands are completed with the escape key. There is no "context switching". No more-so then having to press ctrl along with the rest of your key sequence in Emacs is "context switching".
• smrtinsert 13y ago
  its arguable there are far less emacs commands to learn to get started coding compared to vims modes and key combinations.