Comment by jchiu1106 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jchiu1106 | Hacker News Reader

Vim is one of those things you have to suck it up and learn it but after you did, it's so much more productive than most other editors. Editors like subl may seem friendly to beginners but your productivity never grows the more you use it. I use vim exclusively and I have co-workers who only use subl, and I can confidently say I can edit code at near the speed of thinking, which is not something I can say for subl users after pair-programming with them.

You just have to learn it, period. It seems daunting but it's not as hard as some people make you believe it is. I admit vim's plugin system is bad and vim doesn't have a nice API subl has for extensions, but there are experts who write great vim plugins so you don't have to and worse comes to worse, you don't have to load up your vim with plugins to be productive. I have another co-worker who uses vim and is very productive and does not use any plugin at all.

Finally, if you're a new developer, don't listen to the op. Spend a few weeks to learn vim, or emacs for that matter, and you'll be so much better off in the long run.

I learned emacs first and became reasonably proficient in it. Some years ago, I joined a company where most people used vi. I saw it as an opportunity to use vi (also vim) and I already knew a bit of vi from editing unix config files.

I spent almost 3 years working exclusively in vi. I got used to it enough to handcraft my own .vimrc file, use multiple buffers, integrate with ctags, etc etc. I think I was reasonably proficient in vim at that time.

At around that time, I did a coding project with a friend who was an emacs user and when I say him code I thought to myself "Wow, he flies!". That day I dumped vi and went back to emacs. I've never looked back.

Emacs' macros, different modes, integration, shells, etc, etc, let you deal with all sorts of systems in a pleasant way. Learning emacs is a much better investment than vim.

... you should read up on the new hotness in emacs, finally making people really proficient editors -- it is called "EVIL" mode, it is taking the emacs community by storm.

Just hit 1.0 as well.

I hear you. My point is either vim or emacs is a much better choice than those "beginner-friendly" editors that the op would recommend to new devs. Simple: no pain, no gain. Both vim and emacs are painful enough for most people to learn, but the reward is substantial and long-lasting.

Side note: I think I'd love emacs if I hadn't learned vim first. Having a real programming language (elisp) for configuration and extension is nice.

Sure, but for the record, Sublime isn't exactly a "beginner-friendly" editor in the "click and drool sense". It offers menus for common operations, but I think of it more as Emacs But With Python than something I'd hand to a new user.

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