Ask HN: Why do you still use Emacs/Vim?
Modern IDE’s have many nice, fancy features. Yet I still find myself preferring Emacs. I also have much respect for those who use Vim. So, why do you (or not) use Emacs or Vim?
Along the way I realised I wanted a text editor with live-coding capability. I wanted to be able to write code on the fly in some sort of DSL to manipulate text while I was working on it, in conjunction with normal gui manipulation tools.
I started thinking about writing my own editor with Qt and V8 until a friend told me that Emacs could pretty much do what I wanted.
I had always been aware of Emacs but I thought it was just an old editor with an ugly gui with thousands of features and keyboard shortcuts I'd struggle to remember :) I didn't know it was an interactive Lisp programming environment.
While plenty of editors have plugins, to the best of my knowledge only Emacs offers an interactive programming environment where writing code is part of how you use the software. I mean, you can actually write Elisp code straight into the text/html/c document you're working on and run it.
So as long as there are no other editors with that kind of capability, I'll carry on using Emacs. The only thing that would replace it for me would be some kind of Super-Emacs running Common Lisp within a modern graphical interface.
I still use IDEs all the time though for Java and C++. My least favourite programming activity is dealing with project settings, build tools and configuration so I let the IDE handle that :) I use Emacs for everything else.
General form of the command in Vim is: nOm meaning repeat n times operator O acting over motion command m. There are motion commands to move by letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, code blocks, XML/HTML tags etc. There are delete, change, insert, etc operators.
So for example: 3dw says 3 times (d)elete (w)ord (i.e. delete 3 words). di{ says delete everything inside code block.
Vim is also modal, there is distinct mode for editing by issuing commands, and there is insert (also replace, visual etc) mode(s) which is what all other editors have as the only mode. This makes it incredibly powerful, and it is possible to make large sweeping changes with very few key strokes.
Also, vim discourages mouse use. The context switch of your arm moving to the mouse is like CPU doing a cache miss and going to disk to fetch data. It's a huge distraction and if you add time to actually find the mouse pointer, select something etc, it really slows you down compared to Vim.
So, I still (since 1993) use Vim because it makes me really productive and I can edit text really fast with it. With that said, Vim is not an IDE (even though with language server and background tasks support it can be made into surrogate IDE). So, the best of both worlds is to have a good IDE with good Vim support. Jetbrains products have solid Vim support (much much better than say VS Code), so if you need to work with verbose language or work with unfamiliar libraries, IDEs are still useful.
However, I also love the ability to work in plain Vim when I work on code base I know really well and don't need IDE type of help. Vim is also great at working though SSH remotely, tmux etc.
> has the best vim emulation mode
Good point. XD I must ask, have you tried Emacs’ “viper” or “evil” modes?
So, the only people who got to run emacs were the sysadmins, and they were really good about warning everyone else away from it.
It also helped that emacs is a great OS from the 1970s, and the only thing it lacks is a decent text editor. ;)
That’s a funny joke. It’s made funnier by the fact that Emacs can emulate Vim. (“Viper” and “Evil” modes.)
It's hackable enough to have various plugins built for it that I need to use sometimes. For example, proof general and modes for specific languages.
Also, I like that Emacs is extremely polished. When I am working with someone who uses VS on windows they will typically have projects break for no reason and generally a more buggy experience
Enter meme about emacs OS.
My big issue with emacs is that it isn't installed by default everywhere, whereas at least vi is pretty nearly everywhere (except windows). Vi is pretty good, vim is better, and emacs is a different beast altogether.
However, I'm considering switching to emacs because it's not just an editor. I think org mode is awesome, and I'm playing with it using evil mode so I get the best of both worlds. I've seen awesome renderers hacked into it (LaTeX, PDF, HTML, etc), and pretty much every emacs user gloats about the crazy features that they've thrown in (e g. web browser).
People seem to use emacs because it's more than an editor, and people seem to use vim because it's just an editor. Yes, you can do crazy stuff in vim as well, but people in general seem to prefer simpler configs in vim and more crazy configs in emacs.
Yes, emacs doesn't try to be an IDE like Visual Studio, but it also tries to be more than a simple text editor like nano or vim.
- slow - visually distracting - lightweight in text manipulation - built around seldom use features
I rarely need a debugger or type information, yet the entire interface bends over backwards to include those features. In fact, I feel that IDEs encourage more complicated code structure because it makes dealing with them reasonable.
The only time I use an IDE is when:
- the build process is too complicated (mobile, .NET or Java, game engines) - I'm unfamiliar with the platform - everyone else is using it, so I'd have to maintain the CLI build process myself - I need a fancy debugger
That being said, I've only fired up an IDE a couple times in the last year or so, so vim has been more than capable at solving my problems.
I have used IDEs in the past and it was an overall pleasant experience. Visual Studio is okay, XCode is fine, Eclipse is all right, but what bothered me most was that all three were necessary to be able to develop for common platforms. I would find a game changing plugin for one and then want it in another (not happening). The integration between language and editor is the beauty of IDEs and that's the best and the worst thing about them, the reason that they're never going to replace the venerable text editor for me. The other issue is that IDEs discourage experimentation into new languages because using a new language means learning a new editor and getting comfortable with all new tooling. I'd much rather use the same editor for everything, with easy-to-get modes for every kind of language imaginable instead of learning yet another okay-ish IDE for each language.
Really don’t need the extra overhead of an IDE.
(Actually, I use another text editor on the desktop, but still don’t need an IDE. Vim on the server. Someday someone will make an extension to support both Mac and Vim keybindings together in my text editor, and my life will be complete.)
I chose Emacs primarily from pairing with some other developers. I was blown away by how fast they were able to do things in the environment. I really wanted to be able to move that fast without my editor getting in the way. The flexibility of customizing my environment with lisp is also an added benefit. Plus with how heavyweight other editors are in terms of memory usage, Emacs still works great on machines with less RAM.
2. Emacs keyboard shortcuts mean I don't have to use a mouse at all - makes typing and navigating so much quicker.
3. It's one editor for all your files. No matter whether you're working on a markdown, Lisp, Python, Julia, C document or whatever else, Emacs has you covered. And that doesn't just mean syntax highlighting - there's interactive interpreters for many scripting languages available.
The only time I find myself wanting a real IDE is when I'm working on a large Java project: I sometimes go back to Eclipse for that. But thankfully, I haven't had to do much work at all in Java in the last few years.
1) Key chords/features have become a second nature. I've tried using Idea when working on legacy Scala/Java codebases and its Emacs compatibility mode caused a lot of frustration: enough key bindings implemented to make me forget it's not Emacs and then fall hard on my face when I tried using a more advanced Emacs-ism without thinking.
2) Latency. Again, tried using Idea and couldn't get used to the feeling of it being sluggish compared to Emacs. It's like listening to a low bitrate MP3 or something.
Easy to move between words, sentences, pages.
Macros are amazing.
IDE's are really, really slow to load when you just want to edit one thing.
Sometimes the syntax highlighting errors that aren't there can be an eye sore, ES6 syntax on Webstorm for example.
So many things seem unnecessary in an IDE, I won't ever need some tab or button, so why clutter my screen with it? I would say it's also true for a lot of the features you get. You probably don't need most of them, but there they are distracting you.
Shortcuts in either editor allow quick editing compared to non Vi(m)/Emacs editors.
Also, I have a finely tuned tool-chain outside of GVim that (so far) does what I want better than what IDE's provide, depending on the language or target platform.
(I still use IDE's with java, for example)
If and emacs-like in configurability with less cruft comes around I'll probably switch to it.
Or is that another in a long line of "yes, in theory, but…"s?