4 ms·

I meant human efficiency, not the computer kind.

by evincarofautumn 13y ago

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.
  - intractable 13y ago
    > underline an arbitrary line of text with '=' characters. In vim that's 11 keypresses across 3 operations Sounds like a vimgolf challenge to me. Here's my entry: YpVr=
    - swah 13y ago
      I'm wondering now that the creativity to come up with those things might actually be beneficial to coding.
      - danielbarla 13y ago
        I'd agree with that, and also - an intense dislike of unnecessary repetition / work is definitely a good thing. I'm not sure using Vim causes that, but it definitely reinforces it. For those that are interested, I would recommend "Practical Vim", and it includes many examples (including the above one) which really accelerate the learning process: http://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim http://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim There are definitely cheaper alternatives (including free ones), but this book really laid the concepts out very clearly for me.
    - regularfry 13y ago
      Well, that Vr= soundly beats my :s/./=/g.

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.
- intractable 13y ago
  > underline an arbitrary line of text with '=' characters. In vim that's 11 keypresses across 3 operations Sounds like a vimgolf challenge to me. Here's my entry: YpVr=
  - swah 13y ago
    I'm wondering now that the creativity to come up with those things might actually be beneficial to coding.
    - danielbarla 13y ago
      I'd agree with that, and also - an intense dislike of unnecessary repetition / work is definitely a good thing. I'm not sure using Vim causes that, but it definitely reinforces it. For those that are interested, I would recommend "Practical Vim", and it includes many examples (including the above one) which really accelerate the learning process: http://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim http://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim There are definitely cheaper alternatives (including free ones), but this book really laid the concepts out very clearly for me.
  - regularfry 13y ago
    Well, that Vr= soundly beats my :s/./=/g.