8 ms·

Gah, the tutorial keybindings! They are mad. I've been using emacs for a very long time, and I can't imagine using those to navigate. Emacs has perfectly reason

Gah, the tutorial keybindings! They are mad. I've been using emacs for a very long time, and I can't imagine using those to navigate. Emacs has perfectly reasonable default keybindings these days, they just aren't the ones mentioned in the tutorial. Command: move down one line What vi uses: j What the emacs tutorial suggests: C-n What I use in emacs: the down arrow

bastih 12y ago
But that means your fingers have leave home row! :(
- asuffield 12y ago
  Thankfully I am blessed with the ability to move my forearms. I've heard a lot of people talk about keeping their fingers on the home row, and I more or less do that when I'm typing text like this, but for general navigation? I've sat next to a number of people who do it, and I get around my editor faster than they do. Based on this anecdotal evidence, I don't think moving my hand a short distance to reach another key is a significant speed cost.
  - jimm 12y ago
    Then how do you move multiple lines at a time (4, 16, 64, 256)? To move 16 lines down, I press C-u C-u C-n (of course, the control key stays down the whole time). You either have to press C-u C-u then move your forearm to the arrow key and press down, or press the arrow key 16 times. (Each C-u is a power of 4. You can specify any number by typing it after the C-u, for example C-u 100 C-n to move down 100 lines.)
    - asuffield 12y ago
      I cannot recall the last time I wanted to move 16 lines - that would imply I stopped to count the lines. What I invariably want to do is "move down one paragraph" (C-down) or "move to that spot I can see on the screen" (1-6 lines, tap up/down; 6-30 lines, hold the down key for about a second until I'm within a line or two, then tap up/down a couple times; >30 lines and use pgup/pgdown to get closer). For anything further away than that, I'm going to use isearch to get closer. Sometimes I want to make a complicated motion in the horizontal and vertical axes at the same time in a context which is not well-formatted source code and hence has no good paragraph/word landing points. For this I move my hand slightly further and grab the mouse. It always amuses me watching people try to do it "the right way" and then spend 30 seconds trying to work out what sequence of buttons will get them there, then spend another 30 seconds remembering what they wanted to do when they got there. I'm not trying to minimise the number of logical keystrokes, I'm trying to minimise the time and distraction of navigation. A few simple operations combined with key repeat seems to work really well. Lots of people seem to neglect the power offered by key repeat. I'd love to meet somebody who could navigate source code faster than me and learn how they do it. When I do, I'll probably change my approach. However, I've worked with a lot of different people who used a lot of different approaches (yes, including that one where you display the line offset from point and type the number of every jump) and in the past decade I have not found any of them to be faster than me - although I have found a few who were roughly the same speed.
      - nilkn 12y ago
        > I cannot recall the last time I wanted to move 16 lines - that would imply I stopped to count the lines I'm sure something like this is possible in Emacs, but in vim I have it set up so that my current line shows the absolute line number and other lines show the relative line number. If I'm eyeing a particular line that I want to jump to, I just read off its relative line number and hit j or k, according to whether it's down or up from where I'm at -- I'm there. Because I use relative line numbers, the number is never more than two digits. For more precise navigation (jumping to a particular spot on a particular line), I use a plugin called EasyMotion, which basically lets me jump to any text object on the screen with a few key strokes.
        gknoy 12y ago
        I like the idea of knowing relative line numbers, but I have been unwilling to relinqish seeing absolute ones due to how prevalent it is to see them -- diffs, linting errors, and stack traces often include line numbers, and I find it really helpful to be able to easily find that. Go-to-line is supremely useful, but I also find the visual reminder helpful as well.
        MAGZine 12y ago
        In VS, I use VSVim which lets me actually have both absolute and relative line numbers, but it probably wouldn't be difficult to write a vimbinding to bind enabling/disabling the line numbers plugin to a chord/hotkey.
      - gknoy 12y ago
        Shoot! I meant to upvote you! (I'm sorry.)
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      In vim, one would type 64↓.
- Touche 12y ago
  What key do you press in Vim more often than any other? Esc! Not on the home row (although I'm sure you'll say you remap it to tab).
  - vitalique 12y ago
    If you remap Esc to jk you don't even have to lift your fingers.
    - Touche 12y ago
      What is jk?
      - vitalique 12y ago
        Just key 'j' followed by 'k'. I have this in my vimrc for quickly jumping out of insert mode: inoremap jk <ESC>
        Touche 12y ago
        To each his own. I'm very fluid with my esc key hitting. I find it to be a very satisfying motion.
      - sozforex 12y ago
        imap jk <Esc> In insert mode. First press j, in the same second press k.
    - vacri 12y ago
      Another common one is Capslock.
      - vutekst 12y ago
        Mapping capslock to be esc is what made vim possible for me.
        12y ago
- akg 12y ago
  This seems to be one of those arguments where we programmers tend to optimize for the wrong problem. Sure, we may be able to input more text more comfortably with the merits of one text editor over another, but really, I think most of the time spent during programming is reading APIs, headers, other code and most importantly thinking. Typing is hardly the bottleneck.
  - mbrock 12y ago
    Except when it is... If you can edit fluently and quickly, _then_ coding is more of a nonissue, you're free to try things out, you can find and fix an error and Alt-Tab without blinking, you can harness this kind of physical flow of noninterrupted work, etc. I've worked alongside programmers for whom typing and editing were indeed quite the bottlenecks. Of course, any programming editor is probably good enough if you learn it.
yulaow 12y ago
Usually the strong defenders of emacs tell you that you must use c-n c-p c-b c-f to move because those are better and you will adapt in a short time. Then the strongest defenders of emacs tell you that you must use whatever you want because the purpose of emacs is that the editor must adapt to you and not the opposite.
- jerf 12y ago
  It's the vim defenders who will claim that the home key navigation is a must. Emacs advocates don't much care from what I've seen. Some of them will be roused to suggest that you learn to use searching better.
  - MetaCosm 12y ago
    Vim defenders will also tell you to use search. Also, why would even Emacs fans recommended corded combos over single keypresses? Give my pinky a break man!
    - sjolsen 12y ago
      Because it means you don't have to jump in and out of different modes. The biggest thing that kept me from using vim was _constantly_ typing in normal mode and trying to issue commands in insert mode. Is constantly hitting the Escape key (even remapped to Caps Lock, or using ^[) really any better on your pinky?
      - leishulang 12y ago
        It actually is. At least it's a "home-row pinky". However, I remapped esc to be "jk" to avoid the pinky abusing. Now, if I ssh between different unix box a lot without the time to pull my .vimrc from github, then I still have to resort to pinky-escape.
        sjolsen 12y ago
        At least it's a "home-row pinky" with Emacs' Ctrl, too. :) Personally, though, I don't find the worst strain comes from the placement of Ctrl. The worst comes from the awful staggered layout of keyboards that serves no purpose save for a long chain of HCI backwards compatibility with the typewriter. I hope someday keyboards like the TEK (which, incidentally, gives a perfect spot for Alt or Ctrl under the left thumb) become more commonplace, or eye movement-based systems supplant the use of one's hands for focus control.
mbrock 12y ago
I use C-{n,p,f,b} all the time, though admittedly their placement is more convenient with Dvorak. Though I also tend to use M-f and M-b a lot to navigate by words instead of characters. I also often navigate by incremental search.
- conistonwater 12y ago
  Speaking of incremental search: try ace-jump-mode, it's really good. Here is a video that shows it at work: http://emacsrocks.com/e10.html http://emacsrocks.com/e10.html
  - klibertp 12y ago
    Also iy-goto-char
  - michaelcampbell 12y ago
    How long did it take you to get used to that? Replacing the searched-for letter with (essentially) a marker seems a bit mind-altering.
- acomjean 12y ago
  The nice thing about the C-{n,p,f,b,a,e} is they work on the bash shell command line by default. So learning them is actually really useful, even outside of emacs.
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    That's only because emacs keybindings are the default in bash. A quick `set -o vi` will give a vimmer his or her `w` and so on.
Touche 12y ago
I use the arrow keys in both Vim and Emacs. There are enough keys to remember (most of which I forget all of the time... like paging up and down, have to look that one up every time) that I don't need another set of keys to remember. Arrow keys work just fine.
gnuvince 12y ago
Tell you the truth, I've used Emacs for a long time now (~10 years) and I don't know if I use the C-{n,p,f,b} or arrow keys. I'm more likely to move in larger chunks: search, move by word (M-f, M-b), line (C-a, C-e), etc. If I need to edit a word, I will kill it entirely and re-write it.
- Chmouel 12y ago
  same exactly for me, i use sometime the arrows or the other keys or c-s etc.... i don't mind the jk vim keys as well when i am in vim, either way it's all about your brain being good enough to context swift in .... context
rdtsc 12y ago
> ... the down arrow Why? Isn't that more inefficient because you have to move your hand off to the side. I can type 3 C-n before moving my to the right to do a single down arrow. Maybe I am just used to it by now, and forgot how hard it was when I started, but it makes complete sense to me.
MarcScott 12y ago
I stick with the default emacs key bindings because many of them work outside of emacs. Muscle memory has me constantly using C-k to kill a line for instance, and this also works in Mac Mail and Safari.
cgag 12y ago
I can't imagine entering into this career or hobby and not bothering to learn how to edit text.
fantasticsid 12y ago
I usually rest my palm naturally on the control key when using emacs (yes I use my palm to press the control key), so ctrl-n becomes just n for e.g. Yes it's hard to get started, but once you get the hang of it navigation in emacs just becomes so painless. Also it's hard or even impossible at first to do it on laptops but trust me you will be able to do it.
- tomsthumb 12y ago
  > I use my palm to press the control key that's the old-school Starcraft way. try mapping caps-lock to control sometime, just to see, it's such wasted real-estate. nothing beats muscle memory and years of practice though.
  - reedlaw 12y ago
    Caps-lock as control is a nice but unsymmetrical mapping. If you want to avoid pain you might want to use the opposite hand to hold control while hitting a key combo. At least, this is what works best for me. I never have to twist my hand into unnatural positions.
Chattered 12y ago
Using the down arrow requires me to take my fingers off the home row.

bastih 12y ago

But that means your fingers have leave home row! :(

asuffield 12y ago
Thankfully I am blessed with the ability to move my forearms. I've heard a lot of people talk about keeping their fingers on the home row, and I more or less do that when I'm typing text like this, but for general navigation? I've sat next to a number of people who do it, and I get around my editor faster than they do. Based on this anecdotal evidence, I don't think moving my hand a short distance to reach another key is a significant speed cost.
- jimm 12y ago
  Then how do you move multiple lines at a time (4, 16, 64, 256)? To move 16 lines down, I press C-u C-u C-n (of course, the control key stays down the whole time). You either have to press C-u C-u then move your forearm to the arrow key and press down, or press the arrow key 16 times. (Each C-u is a power of 4. You can specify any number by typing it after the C-u, for example C-u 100 C-n to move down 100 lines.)
  - asuffield 12y ago
    I cannot recall the last time I wanted to move 16 lines - that would imply I stopped to count the lines. What I invariably want to do is "move down one paragraph" (C-down) or "move to that spot I can see on the screen" (1-6 lines, tap up/down; 6-30 lines, hold the down key for about a second until I'm within a line or two, then tap up/down a couple times; >30 lines and use pgup/pgdown to get closer). For anything further away than that, I'm going to use isearch to get closer. Sometimes I want to make a complicated motion in the horizontal and vertical axes at the same time in a context which is not well-formatted source code and hence has no good paragraph/word landing points. For this I move my hand slightly further and grab the mouse. It always amuses me watching people try to do it "the right way" and then spend 30 seconds trying to work out what sequence of buttons will get them there, then spend another 30 seconds remembering what they wanted to do when they got there. I'm not trying to minimise the number of logical keystrokes, I'm trying to minimise the time and distraction of navigation. A few simple operations combined with key repeat seems to work really well. Lots of people seem to neglect the power offered by key repeat. I'd love to meet somebody who could navigate source code faster than me and learn how they do it. When I do, I'll probably change my approach. However, I've worked with a lot of different people who used a lot of different approaches (yes, including that one where you display the line offset from point and type the number of every jump) and in the past decade I have not found any of them to be faster than me - although I have found a few who were roughly the same speed.
    - nilkn 12y ago
      > I cannot recall the last time I wanted to move 16 lines - that would imply I stopped to count the lines I'm sure something like this is possible in Emacs, but in vim I have it set up so that my current line shows the absolute line number and other lines show the relative line number. If I'm eyeing a particular line that I want to jump to, I just read off its relative line number and hit j or k, according to whether it's down or up from where I'm at -- I'm there. Because I use relative line numbers, the number is never more than two digits. For more precise navigation (jumping to a particular spot on a particular line), I use a plugin called EasyMotion, which basically lets me jump to any text object on the screen with a few key strokes.
      - gknoy 12y ago
        I like the idea of knowing relative line numbers, but I have been unwilling to relinqish seeing absolute ones due to how prevalent it is to see them -- diffs, linting errors, and stack traces often include line numbers, and I find it really helpful to be able to easily find that. Go-to-line is supremely useful, but I also find the visual reminder helpful as well.
        MAGZine 12y ago
        In VS, I use VSVim which lets me actually have both absolute and relative line numbers, but it probably wouldn't be difficult to write a vimbinding to bind enabling/disabling the line numbers plugin to a chord/hotkey.
    - gknoy 12y ago
      Shoot! I meant to upvote you! (I'm sorry.)
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    In vim, one would type 64↓.
Touche 12y ago
What key do you press in Vim more often than any other? Esc! Not on the home row (although I'm sure you'll say you remap it to tab).
- vitalique 12y ago
  If you remap Esc to jk you don't even have to lift your fingers.
  - Touche 12y ago
    What is jk?
    - vitalique 12y ago
      Just key 'j' followed by 'k'. I have this in my vimrc for quickly jumping out of insert mode: inoremap jk <ESC>
      - Touche 12y ago
        To each his own. I'm very fluid with my esc key hitting. I find it to be a very satisfying motion.
    - sozforex 12y ago
      imap jk <Esc> In insert mode. First press j, in the same second press k.
  - vacri 12y ago
    Another common one is Capslock.
    - vutekst 12y ago
      Mapping capslock to be esc is what made vim possible for me.
      - 12y ago
akg 12y ago
This seems to be one of those arguments where we programmers tend to optimize for the wrong problem. Sure, we may be able to input more text more comfortably with the merits of one text editor over another, but really, I think most of the time spent during programming is reading APIs, headers, other code and most importantly thinking. Typing is hardly the bottleneck.
- mbrock 12y ago
  Except when it is... If you can edit fluently and quickly, _then_ coding is more of a nonissue, you're free to try things out, you can find and fix an error and Alt-Tab without blinking, you can harness this kind of physical flow of noninterrupted work, etc. I've worked alongside programmers for whom typing and editing were indeed quite the bottlenecks. Of course, any programming editor is probably good enough if you learn it.

yulaow 12y ago

Usually the strong defenders of emacs tell you that you must use c-n c-p c-b c-f to move because those are better and you will adapt in a short time. Then the strongest defenders of emacs tell you that you must use whatever you want because the purpose of emacs is that the editor must adapt to you and not the opposite.

jerf 12y ago
It's the vim defenders who will claim that the home key navigation is a must. Emacs advocates don't much care from what I've seen. Some of them will be roused to suggest that you learn to use searching better.
- MetaCosm 12y ago
  Vim defenders will also tell you to use search. Also, why would even Emacs fans recommended corded combos over single keypresses? Give my pinky a break man!
  - sjolsen 12y ago
    Because it means you don't have to jump in and out of different modes. The biggest thing that kept me from using vim was _constantly_ typing in normal mode and trying to issue commands in insert mode. Is constantly hitting the Escape key (even remapped to Caps Lock, or using ^[) really any better on your pinky?
    - leishulang 12y ago
      It actually is. At least it's a "home-row pinky". However, I remapped esc to be "jk" to avoid the pinky abusing. Now, if I ssh between different unix box a lot without the time to pull my .vimrc from github, then I still have to resort to pinky-escape.
      - sjolsen 12y ago
        At least it's a "home-row pinky" with Emacs' Ctrl, too. :) Personally, though, I don't find the worst strain comes from the placement of Ctrl. The worst comes from the awful staggered layout of keyboards that serves no purpose save for a long chain of HCI backwards compatibility with the typewriter. I hope someday keyboards like the TEK (which, incidentally, gives a perfect spot for Alt or Ctrl under the left thumb) become more commonplace, or eye movement-based systems supplant the use of one's hands for focus control.

mbrock 12y ago

I use C-{n,p,f,b} all the time, though admittedly their placement is more convenient with Dvorak. Though I also tend to use M-f and M-b a lot to navigate by words instead of characters. I also often navigate by incremental search.

conistonwater 12y ago
Speaking of incremental search: try ace-jump-mode, it's really good. Here is a video that shows it at work: http://emacsrocks.com/e10.html http://emacsrocks.com/e10.html
- klibertp 12y ago
  Also iy-goto-char
- michaelcampbell 12y ago
  How long did it take you to get used to that? Replacing the searched-for letter with (essentially) a marker seems a bit mind-altering.
acomjean 12y ago
The nice thing about the C-{n,p,f,b,a,e} is they work on the bash shell command line by default. So learning them is actually really useful, even outside of emacs.
- JadeNB 12y ago
  That's only because emacs keybindings are the default in bash. A quick `set -o vi` will give a vimmer his or her `w` and so on.

Touche 12y ago

I use the arrow keys in both Vim and Emacs. There are enough keys to remember (most of which I forget all of the time... like paging up and down, have to look that one up every time) that I don't need another set of keys to remember. Arrow keys work just fine.

gnuvince 12y ago

Tell you the truth, I've used Emacs for a long time now (~10 years) and I don't know if I use the C-{n,p,f,b} or arrow keys. I'm more likely to move in larger chunks: search, move by word (M-f, M-b), line (C-a, C-e), etc. If I need to edit a word, I will kill it entirely and re-write it.

Chmouel 12y ago
same exactly for me, i use sometime the arrows or the other keys or c-s etc.... i don't mind the jk vim keys as well when i am in vim, either way it's all about your brain being good enough to context swift in .... context

rdtsc 12y ago

> ... the down arrow Why? Isn't that more inefficient because you have to move your hand off to the side. I can type 3 C-n before moving my to the right to do a single down arrow. Maybe I am just used to it by now, and forgot how hard it was when I started, but it makes complete sense to me.

MarcScott 12y ago

I stick with the default emacs key bindings because many of them work outside of emacs. Muscle memory has me constantly using C-k to kill a line for instance, and this also works in Mac Mail and Safari.

cgag 12y ago

I can't imagine entering into this career or hobby and not bothering to learn how to edit text.

fantasticsid 12y ago

I usually rest my palm naturally on the control key when using emacs (yes I use my palm to press the control key), so ctrl-n becomes just n for e.g. Yes it's hard to get started, but once you get the hang of it navigation in emacs just becomes so painless. Also it's hard or even impossible at first to do it on laptops but trust me you will be able to do it.

tomsthumb 12y ago
> I use my palm to press the control key that's the old-school Starcraft way. try mapping caps-lock to control sometime, just to see, it's such wasted real-estate. nothing beats muscle memory and years of practice though.
- reedlaw 12y ago
  Caps-lock as control is a nice but unsymmetrical mapping. If you want to avoid pain you might want to use the opposite hand to hold control while hitting a key combo. At least, this is what works best for me. I never have to twist my hand into unnatural positions.

Chattered 12y ago

Using the down arrow requires me to take my fingers off the home row.