[ prog / sol / mona ]

prog


confused whether to use vim or emacs

1 2022-08-18 15:56

I am a vim user and have been using emacs for a while. I kinda hate everything about but dont know if I stick around. Will I be missing anything if I continue using vim?

2 2022-08-18 17:38

>>1
Take the official GNU Emacs tour: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/index.html
You should use evil-mode or Doom Emacs if you want vim keybindings. If GNU Emacs is too slow for you, run it as daemon and enable native compilation (JIT compilation for elisp).

Will I be missing anything if I continue using vim?

* magit: https://magit.vc
* org-mode, it's really versatile: you can use it for notes, agenda and even spreadsheets! https://orgmode.org/features.html
* dired: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DiredMode
* GDB GUI: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Debuggers.html
* SLY or SLIME (for common lisp) and Geiser (for scheme).
* M-x regex-builder
* M-x man, read man-pages with hyperlinks!
* Many fun amusements: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Amusements.html
* elisp, the superior language for writing extensions (Lua in NeoVim is also decent but VimScript is bad). I think you need to restart (Neo)Vim when you change your config file, but on Emacs you can just run M-x eval-buffer. Emacs also has easy customization using M-x customize etc.

Also, I think Vim has recordable keyboard macros, too? (if not, you are missing an important feature!)

3 2022-08-19 01:28

As someone who learned all Emacs bindings, went through all the packages, hooked some custom elisp: I am using neovim today.

background:
First editor was vim without configs
Then moved to vscode, then to emacs, then to (neo)vim with some sensible defaults

The reason I am using vim today is because emacs is overwhelming.
You can do anything in it.

...But you can also do _anything_ in it, and that's bad.

Because, depending on your personality, you will find yourself figuring out workflows and tinkering with your config more often than doing things worth the time.
And, more often than not, there aren't any _sensible_ defaults in emacs.

Everytime you open emacs you may feel like "it's not enough".
Using evil mode in emacs doesn't make sense; it is a patch that forces you to do even more configuration and keybinding management.

Use emacs if you find devtooling an inherently interesting problem space
Otherwise you will find emacs gets more in your way than not.

Do note that I do not use any LSP or auto-completion, because it doesn't help as much as you think it does.

I will always be thankful toward GNU/Emacs for lisp and useful term keybindings
Other than that, depending on what interests you, it's just work.

>>2
* magit
Is the only one I miss, but the git cli is fine for 90% of cases
* org-mode
tried it, again, depends on whether or not you like "tooling" - I never got much out of it.
It's _work_ to figure out good workflows.
The above sentence applies to the rest of the things you listed.

Everytime I think about emacs now I just sigh, because it was just so much work

4 2022-08-19 14:13

>>1
I think you should switch to ed or vi to avoid all the non-standard bloated software such as emacs and vim.

5 2022-08-20 08:38

>>3
I must be the most boring emacs user, I don't even remember when was the last time I changed anything in my config.

6 2022-08-20 14:13

>>5
How many hours of programming do you do in a day and how many packages have you installed and how many lines of code in your init.el?

7 2022-08-20 14:35

Consider using the minimalist mg (MicroEMACS) instead of the bloated emacs.

8 2022-08-22 07:02

>>7
Tell me how I will benefit from using mg instead of emacs

9 2022-08-22 07:04

>>8
You will not be spending endless hours tweaking your emacs configuration over doing real work. You will also avoid bloat.

10 2022-08-22 07:06

>>6
It's 150 lines of code (212 in total) on my work computer that I use for around 8 hours on workdays.

package-selected-packages has 21 entries and package-activated-list 32.

11 2022-08-26 09:39

>>9
Define bloat.

12 2022-08-26 12:13

>>9
Just because you can configure something to your liking, it doesn't mean that you will spend all your time tweaking your config file. Just configure it once to work the way you want and add new stuff only when you need to.

You will also avoid bloat.

With Emacs you don't pay for what you don't use.

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