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Comment by dom0 | Hacker News Reader

Emacs is pretty lightweight (sic!) compared to IDEs. I use it as a general-purpose editor (text, C, Python, shell, configuration files, HTML [web-mode is pretty good]). It's "snappy" even on very slow machines. Add-on modes are often pretty good. Has interesting shortcuts (C-x h M-q).

FTR I've been using Emacs for over two years and didn't bother yet to learn "real" navigation commands. I use arrow keys + Shift/C and/or mouse/trackpoint.

For most bigger projects I use the appropriate IDE (normally JetBrains or QtCreator) unless I'm on a laptop.

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There are only nine movement commands you need to know for efficient emacs use:

-C-f

-C-b

-C-n

-C-p

-C-v

-M-v

-C-s

-C-r

-And finally, whatever key you bound ace-jump-mode to. Seriously, if you are on Emacs, you really need acejump. It's just that good.

Exactly, if you want efficient jumping around, ace mode is amazing. Basic flow is: look where you want to place the cursor, press jj, then the character you are looking at. Doesn't matter where the cursor was.

jj? only if you're using evil mode. And why would you do that?

I enabled chords to trigger some functions. I think I got the habit from early prelude, but typically use my own config now.

It lets you directly jump to a specific character without bothering with movement keys. Basically what happens is, suppose you have 5 x's on your screen. You'd bring up ace jump (or its replacement, avy), and then hit x. It'd convert the first x to a, second to b, ... fifth to e. Suppose you wanted to go to the fifth one, you'd then hit e, and your point would move there. It's kind of cool. I have it installed, but truthfully don't use it very often.

Edit: Oh you meant "why would you use evil mode". Disregard.

I think that you only need isearch + occur (M-s .), not ace-jump.

I tried ace-jump and have it configured for months, I never use it. neither do I use swiper, because it is too slow to start.

Also, don't forget C-M-{left, right, up, down} commands :)

Movement keys in other IDEs like JetBrains is still lacking in my opinion. I haven't seen another IDE which lets you move between buffers(documents) as easily as Emacs. I've tried a bunch of IDEs and will support one style of movement like move split right / left but lack something like move other split etc...

Another thing is that Emacs movement is also very fast relative to some IDEs which sometimes pop up other windows which you have to interact with like in JetBrains Switcher.

That being said if you write IDEs just look at how fast, easy to configure, and complete buffer movement is in Emacs. We want these features!

You should set your keymap to Emacs then, its pretty close, and very cool.

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