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Are there any other former vi/emacs users (like, hardcore - I used to browse the web in emacs) who ditched it for an IDE? I've used both emacs and vim extensiv

Are there any other former vi/emacs users (like, hardcore - I used to browse the web in emacs) who ditched it for an IDE? I've used both emacs and vim extensively, but have never "ditched" either for an IDE. However, what I have found is that in some dev environments I'll use the IDE as the primary editor. IDEs at their best have great tools for maintenance, navigation, and comprehension of existing codebases. But when it comes time for e.g. many kinds of textual heavy lifting or whole-cloth new code I'll switch right over to emacs/vim. FWIW, I'm really hoping that the long-term architectural changes in neovim will open the door to first-class IDE style feature sets. There's definitely been some good work that way in recent years, but those efforts are often hobbled by the classic editors' long legacies.

bch 12y ago
What are the first-class IDE-style features you want?
- millstone 12y ago
  I am not the person to whom you replied, but the feature I use most often in Xcode is Go To Definition (with command-click). This integrates with clang, so it knows how to navigate templates, overloads, etc. It also integrates with the build system, so it knows the correct header search paths, preprocessor macros, etc. I imagine there are some plugins available for vi and emacs that try to provide these features, but I would guess they require some configuration and won't work as reliably.
  - aerique 12y ago
    Whether they work as reliably depends on the language. Emacs + Slime for Common Lisp is fine. Nowadays there's luckily a lot of editor / IDE independent tools like Jedi, ycmd, eclim which improves the situation for Emacs and Vim considerably. C++ has always been had issues but for me it's good enough especially since I move between languages and OSes a lot. If I was just doing C# on Windows I would probably use an IDE tuned for it.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      I find that it depends on what kind of languages you work in. Boilerplate-y languages like Java require way too much hand-holding to be nice to do in an editor. On the other hand, Haskell/OCaml in Vim are fairly nice with the right plugins, as long as you don't mind refactoring via sed.
  - bch 12y ago
    For "go to definition" I use either ctags or cscope. Cscope can work as a front-end and launch -whatever- editor you want. In nvi, I have good interfaces to both cscope and ctags, and I believe most vi clones have ctags interfaces, and emacs has etags.

bch 12y ago

What are the first-class IDE-style features you want?

millstone 12y ago
I am not the person to whom you replied, but the feature I use most often in Xcode is Go To Definition (with command-click). This integrates with clang, so it knows how to navigate templates, overloads, etc. It also integrates with the build system, so it knows the correct header search paths, preprocessor macros, etc. I imagine there are some plugins available for vi and emacs that try to provide these features, but I would guess they require some configuration and won't work as reliably.
- aerique 12y ago
  Whether they work as reliably depends on the language. Emacs + Slime for Common Lisp is fine. Nowadays there's luckily a lot of editor / IDE independent tools like Jedi, ycmd, eclim which improves the situation for Emacs and Vim considerably. C++ has always been had issues but for me it's good enough especially since I move between languages and OSes a lot. If I was just doing C# on Windows I would probably use an IDE tuned for it.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    I find that it depends on what kind of languages you work in. Boilerplate-y languages like Java require way too much hand-holding to be nice to do in an editor. On the other hand, Haskell/OCaml in Vim are fairly nice with the right plugins, as long as you don't mind refactoring via sed.
- bch 12y ago
  For "go to definition" I use either ctags or cscope. Cscope can work as a front-end and launch -whatever- editor you want. In nvi, I have good interfaces to both cscope and ctags, and I believe most vi clones have ctags interfaces, and emacs has etags.