It's simply impossible to become as quick in Emacs as one might be in vim. I've been trying, I've really been trying hard to like Emacs, because I want a decent IDE for Lisp. But it's just terrible. The editor is always getting in my way.
I have a new purpose in life. To clone vim in Common Lisp. This isn't reinventing the wheel, because whatever vi-mode they have in Emacs is still corrupted. A new viitor must surface, pure and handsome, with all the Lisp-friendliness of Emacs and all the awesomeness of vi.
I just wanted to get this off my chest, /prog/.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 11:08
>>1
If the vi modes are bothering you, use M-x term and just load real vi in that ;)
It's simply impossible to become as quick in Emacs as one might be in vim
I'm faster in emacs than I ever was in vim, but that comes with experience, I guess.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 11:54
Emacs is a good OS. It just needs a better text editor.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 12:49
Oh, emacs trolling!
Anyway, I've been using emacs for a few years, now I'm using vim again and I still think both are good. It just depends on your habits/preferences
Anyone who takes the time to master either of these 70's freewares is wasting at least 200 hours of their lives they could use to learn how to code better instead of thinking they will magically become smarter by using deprecated cultural artifacts of hacker lore.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 16:55
>>9
I'd rather use my 70's freewares than a 90's copy of 70's environments
>>10
I'd rather open files with my mouse and read through them with my mousewheel because it's convenient. Programming is not a sport you win at by choosing the most cumbersome equipment.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 17:16
>>12
Emacs isn't cumbersome though (personal opinion), YOU CAN USE THE MOUSE OMG, and what I was getting at is that "modern IDEs" aren't substantially better than what smalltalk had
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Anonymous2010-01-16 17:37
M-x mouse-mode
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Anonymous2010-01-16 17:58
>>12
Vim suits my needs just fine. It's especially great when you're working with long files (say a JavaScript file) - the folding + multiple viewports + keyboard navigation + modal-based editing combo is really unbeatable for those. When you get really good at Vim, things become really automatic and the editor "follows" your toughts; moving to a certain portion of the code or doing a search & replace becomes a bit like typing, or poking one's nose. You don't really think about doing it: it just happens.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 18:30
Who let vi users in here? Finish doing your penance.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 18:49
>>15 folding
Code folding in vim sucks. Also I never really used multiple viewports, I usually just have a few workspaces.
And I think I never managed to master keyboard navigation :(
Love modal-based editing though.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 19:10
I pretty much feel like >>15, except code folding in Vim does suck. But it sucks in almost all languages though. That being said, I do favor short files, so I don't really care. Keyboard navigation in vim+project is awesome, especially quick search through the file list. So great. I'm way more productive than when I'm clicking about in an IDE.
Code folding doesn't suck in Visual Studio C#, though that's an IDE. But I think it worked pretty well in Notepad++ too.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 19:54
Tried both, but emacs' key combinations are a lot harder to remember (and harder on the fingers.) vi just feels more like typing.
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Anonymous2010-01-16 20:54
>>20
Yeah? Well in Emacs, typing is typing. And you just have a bad memory. I wouldn't bring it up, but the amount of vi-faggotry in this thread is unbelievable—talk about unusable pieces of shit.
>>1
Emacs+SLIME+Paredit is bliss for editing CL code. I'm fairly productive in it, but I have no idea how productive you are in vi.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 7:25
>>28
The reason why I said ``simply impossible'' has to do with the modal interface. Emacs' commands are just too long and involve too many key combinations. You can only get really quick in Emacs if you emulate vi, but Viper-mode is to vi what masturbation is to sex.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 7:28
>>29
Enjoy `donating' money to Ugandian hookers to get your sex.
>>31
I'd love to have a keyboard with such a layout. I could finally try out one of those Lisp machine emulators without getting angry at myself for pressing the wrong keys (rubout/backspace confusion being most annoying). >>29
Just define your own key combinations if you want them to be shorter. Emacs commands are defined in a hierarchical manner. For example, I press C-c (SLIME's commands) and C-x (general Emacs commands) quite often, and C-c s (SLIME selector) even moreso. One could bind those to another key, like F12 and F11 for faster typing.
>>29
Complex commands get complex key combinations, but all the basics are 1 or 2. e.g. Reverse-search is C-s, yanking text is C-y and saving is C-x, C-s. Which is similar to the situation in vi(/,y,:w respectfully), except that you start in a command mode, instead of an insert mode, so you don't have to "press control"
>>34
The need to press C is an obstacle by itself. Again, modal editing allows for much faster commands. The fact simple commands are simple to type is no surprise; but I want to see you doing some complex stuff in just a few keystrokes like you can do in Vim.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 8:54
>>36
It's not any more of an obstacle, than having to press escape to get back to command mode and to be honest I never notice it.
but I want to see you doing some complex stuff in just a few keystrokes like you can do in Vim.
Exactly like vim? Or just complex?
If vim, and you want weird regexp stuff, I never bothered to learn it (although it will be in the emacs manual somewhere) and am happy with M-x replace-regexp (before you complain that this is a lot of typing, there is tab completion).
One thing I like about Emacs is that the commands are modified in obvious ways. Take C-k, this kills a line (d$ ?). what if I want to kill a sentence? M-k. A sexp? C-M-k. Transposition is similar C-t = transpose letters, M-t is transpose words and C-M-t is transposing sexps. And emacs' modes allow for mode specific nuances without having to relearn a bunch of commands, e.g. C-j (newline-and-indent) does language specific indentation.
This may not meet your definition of complex (as in take this line do a transformation and then append to each line, or whatever), but it's a lot more useful in day to day life than knowing how to compose some one-offs.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 9:37
It's not any more of an obstacle, than having to press escape to get back to command mode and to be honest I never notice
Experienced vimmers will stay in command mode or input mode most of the time, only rarely switching between the two. Also, ^[ is faster than Esc, one of the few times when I use the modifier keys in vi.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 10:53
>>37
Say I have a file with 300 similarly separated sections of 5 lines each. Might be a code file. I want to modify characters 3-10 in each line in each section in the same way, and I want to add some text after each line:
qa
/<separator>
h2l
C-v
4h6l
c<modifications> (or maybe :s<modifications, in which case ditch the following escape)
<Escape>
q
299@a
Might seem like a lot of commands, but it's actually done very quickly.
Also, what >>38 said is very true. Any vimmer will confirm this. And in the rare event that I change modes, I'll do it with a quick jj, which I binded to <Esc>.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 10:55
>>37
By the way, Vim has similar command simmetry to that of Emacs.
I've been too lazy to learn vim, and Emacs was my first love. But it's terrible and I must break away from my laziness and use vim.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 15:24
>>41
Wut. Are you leaving Lisp for C++ too? That's about as rational.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 15:29
>>39
You've adequately proved that Vimmers are the kind of people who optimize random portions of their code rather than saving their effort for inner loops. Now, why is this useful?
>>41
I had the opposite experience about a year ago, and am happier with emacs. A key factor in this was that emacs has better help facilities built in which made it much easier to learn. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 15:35
After five years, I switched from vi to Emacs.
After another five years, I switched from Emacs to acme.
>>43
That's a pretty nonsensical conclusion.
That specific example was bad, yes, but this kind of stuff is always useful. For example: at work I often have to edit other people's html. Sometimes I have to mass change/add classes or modify lots of little things quickly. Vim's recording features, regexp support and editing modes (like visual block) make complicated tasks easy.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 16:32
>>44
Different strokes indeed. I always found Vim's help much easier to deal with. :h <whatever>, that's it. Emacs' help command is confusing.
>>49
You completely missed the point. Emacs can do anything, everybody knows that. But in Vim I do it disconcertingly quickly, with just a few keystrokes.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 16:41
>>47
I don't believe the time spent composing a macro could ever vary significantly because of how easy the keys are to press, even if you assume that the user has not learned to operate their modifier keys.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 16:44
>>51
You're completely missing the point. Shaving keystrokes off a task the speed of which is not bound by typing is pointless.
>>51
It doesn't take more than that in emacs. Take visual mode, for instance, you would use v to enter it and you would move the point to highlight what you want. It's the same thing in emacs, but you use C-space instead of v.
>>52,53
You're completely missing the point. A Vim user internalizes the commands in a way that he barely has to think before achieving something. This is possible because of the way Vim's commands were designed - the operator/command/motion setup, and because of their short length. How familiar can you get to a long combination of C-crap? When composing a macro, what matters is how quickly you can get your thoughts to the editor. And in this aspect Emacs is unimpressive.
>>56
I can honestly say that in 99% of cases, I have to look at the keyboard to know which command I am pressing in emacs. THIS IS THE CASE FOR EVERY PROGRAM YOU USE A FUCKLOAD.
When composing a macro, what matters is how quickly you can get your thoughts to the editor. This is what vimmers actually believe
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Anonymous2010-01-17 17:43
Mastery of vi can be compared to the mastery of kung-fu. The young apprentice must harden his body and enhance his strength; only the toughest may survive. He must be accostumed to difficult situations, and the best way to practice is by complicating his everyday habits. He shall not use the pathway when he walks to the mountain - he must go through the jungle. Likewise, the vi user begins his journey by getting used to the idea that he will never touch arrow keys again: he must instead replace them with hjkl.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 17:51
>>59
Does Vi Jesus reveal that the world is wireframe in the end?
>>59
Nice, but one thing bothers me Likewise, the vi user begins his journey by getting used to the idea that he will never touch arrow keys again: he must instead replace them with hjkl.
There is nothing wrong with hjkl or C-f,C-b,C-n,C-p, and I don't know why so many people complain about this. If they want to use the arrow keys they can, quit whining like little children.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 18:29
>>61
what about them being miles apart on the keyboard??
>>61
They are easy enough to remember: forward, backward, next, previous and were chosen because of that.
The only way that their distance would be a problem is if you are not a touch typist (in which case you should be using the arrow keys anyway) or you are playing games inside emacs, which, while possible, is where I draw the line.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 18:39
>>37 One thing I like about Emacs is that the commands are modified in obvious ways. Take C-k, this kills a line (d$ ?). what if I want to kill a sentence? M-k. A sexp? C-M-k. Transposition is similar C-t = transpose letters, M-t is transpose words and C-M-t is transposing sexps. And emacs' modes allow for mode specific nuances without having to relearn a bunch of commands, e.g. C-j (newline-and-indent) does language specific indentation.
These are not great examples of commands you would use on a regular basis, and some are lisp-centric, which is an unfair comparison since emacs is obviously tailored to lisp (uselessly so, for 99% of developers), whereas vim is much more general purpose.
Your example of "obviousness" also makes no sense. Why does M+k kill a sentence but M+t transpose words? This is not symmetric at all. All you know about M versus C is that it's 'bigger'. How do I kill a word or transpose sentences? Killing words and transposing sentences would seem far more useful than any of the commands you mentioned; in particular, the killing n words combination in vi is probably the command I use the most doing any kind of text editing.
That being said:
kill a letter: x
kill a word: dw
kill a line: dd
kill a sentence: v(hx
kill a sexp: v%x
transpose letters: xp
transpose words: dwwP
transpose lines: ddp
transpose sentences: v(hx(p
transpose sexps: v%x%p
newline and indent (and insert mode): o<TAB>
One thing you might notice about these is that none of them are actual individual commands in Vi. They arise naturally by combining much simpler operations of navigation, selection and copy/paste. This isn't possible in Emacs because it's not modal, so every character in the above would require combining with a modifier key. They HAVE to make high-level operations to make it useful, and you have to memorize a huge amount of them, because doing the selection and copy and paste yourself with modifier keys is actually really inefficient.
This is why I find vim to be so much more versatile and useful in text editing of *any* kind, not just programming (though I mainly use it for programming in a variety of languages, and for HTML/CSS.)
>>64
Sexps in emacs do not refer to them in the lisp sense, e.g. you could use sexp commands on C blocks delimited by {}
From the manual The other commands deal with expressions or sexps. The word `sexp' is derived from s-expression, the ancient term for an expression in Lisp. But in Emacs, the notion of `sexp' is not limited to Lisp. It refers to an expression in whatever language your program is written in. Each programming language has its own major mode, which customizes the syntax tables so that expressions in that language count as sexps.
Sexps typically include symbols, numbers, and string constants, as well as anything contained in parentheses, brackets or braces.
Killing words would be M-d (kill-word), which would be the "super" version of delete
killing 6 words would then be M-6 M-d (or C-u 6 M-d)
newline-and-indent (C-j) is just a habit I've got into, you can use return and tab if you want.
Transpose lines is C-x C-t
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Anonymous2010-01-17 18:50
Oh also, >>64-san here, and I just want to say that learning hjkl is *not* important. I've been using vim for many years and I still use the arrow keys more often than hjkl; it's just easier, and the arrow keys are just burned into my brain.
You can still always use the arrow keys in virtually all scenarios. I really don't know why all Vim tutorials emphasize hjkl so much; that is something you should learn WAY after the incredibly useful higher-level navigation commands (such as wbe%(){}), and after you learn basic copy-pasting and visual mode.
The main place I really do use hjkl is when I want to combine it with # to do something quick; e.g. to delete a block of code, v5jx . This is when you should learn these, because they're only really quicker when you combine them with numbers (or when arrow keys are actually broken, i.e. if you're stuck in a misconfigured terminal.)
>>65 newline-and-indent (C-j) is just a habit I've got into, you can use return and tab if you want.
Ah but note that the vi command o doesn't require you to be at the end of the line; it opens a new line and jumps the cursor there.
>>64
I'd also like to take issue with your "they have to use high level constructs". You could build them together from other commands if you want to, but, and I shouldn't have to tell a programmer this, it's a stupid thing to do. It's like saying that you shouldn't use high level control structures because you have conditional goto.
>>69
Scratch that, there is a command C-o, but that acts like O in vim rather than o.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 19:13
>>68 I'd also like to take issue with your "they have to use high level constructs". You could build them together from other commands if you want to, but, and I shouldn't have to tell a programmer this, it's a stupid thing to do.
That's the whole point, it's a stupid thing to do *in emacs* because it's inefficient. Whereas it's extremely efficient in Vi.
In Emacs, I just press Enter for newline and indent. If I'm at the end of a function/macro/definition/... it would just place the cursor at the start of the line, which is the behaviour one would normally want.
>>71
Even if I agree it is the `vi thing to do', why go through this every time? Why not bind your own key? Presumably you can.
It's a stupid thing to do *in emacs* because it's inefficient.
Nonsense, it's not any more inefficient than vi in the common case, since if you are doing multiple commands you would keep Control held down.
>>72
Yes, technically that's the smart thing to do. But for some reason it bothered me when I tried rebinding it and went back to C-j.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 19:36
>>73
Of course you can bind your own key. You do that if it's something you do often. I can't imagine transposing words, for instance, is something you do often enough to warrant a bind; that's why you just do it naturally from lower level commands when you need it.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 19:49
>>73
If you actually learned Vim I'm pretty sure you'd change in your mind.
"But you can extend Emacs to do that!" is the silliest argument you Emacsers use. If I'm going to extend Emacs to do the same stuff that Vim does I'll rather use Vim.
>>75
I've done it a number of times, but I see your point. I still think that I'd rather have it anyway for when I do need it. Having similar commands with similar bindings means that it doesn't require real effort to remember it, so I get the command for free.
>>76
You would only need to do it in the cases where emacs doesn't actually do it, it often already can. Extensibility is useful, because no one tool can do everything, or even always do it in the way you want. It's the same argument for metaprogramming, which you are probably also against.
>>76
You can extend that argument to apply to anything that has extensions(including vim) "My tool does X, I don't care if your tool can be extended to do X"
also relevant is this image from Xach, http://www.xach.com/img/lisp-and-vim.png
I think it's just part of the culture for emacsers (and lispers) to add the features they want rather than bitching about what they don't have, but I agree that it is not a compelling argument for a new user.
>>80
Sorry to disappoint you, but OP is talking about Lisp, and most developers that develop write lisp use Emacs. I learned Emacs because I wanted to develop in CL.
P.S: I only posted in this thread once.
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Anonymous2010-01-17 20:31
>>78,79
Stop trying to make this argument wider than it actually is. I'm not arguing against extensibility, nor do I hold any views against metaprogramming. I'm arguing against programming Emacs to mimic a certain style of text-editing, an idea which apparently is appealing to you. To me, it seems pointless.
>>82
I wasn't trying to mimic the style of vi (even if I did there is VIPER mode), I merely stated that if I wanted that particular function I would add it.
>>83
That's kind of an impasse, because both emacs and vi are very extensible. You might as well both write your own editor from the grounds up, and then sit and shout at each other that "if I wanted that feature I'd just write it."
>>84
Indeed, as I said earlier, vi and emacs are actually very similar. I move that we end this discussion and pick on the gedit users, who's with me ;)
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Anonymous2010-01-17 20:46
Shaving keystrokes off a task the speed of which is not bound by typing is pointless.
Implying that emacs users think slower than vi users.
I really don't know why all Vim tutorials emphasize hjkl so much
It's a lot more convenient than reaching for the arrow keys, and unlike emacs, you can also operate them with one hand. Countless times I've scrolled through files with my right hand while doing something else with my left.
>>86 It's a lot more convenient than reaching for the arrow keys, and unlike emacs, you can also operate them with one hand.
I already said I don't mind the emacs navigation keys, but I do agree with you that vim is rather convenient in this aspect. Quite a few major modes steal this and I am happy they do.
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Anonymous2010-01-18 6:10
>>56
You're an idiot. Did you maybe stop to think that Emacs commands seem hard to remember to you because you don't use Emacs enough to be enlightened?
Emacs is a programmer's tool and therefore is fair discussion in this board.
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Anonymous2010-01-18 8:46
in after Vim being superior
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Anonymous2010-01-18 12:32
>>53 Shaving keystrokes off a task the speed of which is not bound by typing is pointless.
Good programmers are of course bound by typing. I agree with >>86. I am very proficient in vim, and my programming productivity is still quite limited by the speed at which I can pour my thoughts into the computer. This is why I have lots of little scripts and binds to automate boilerplate and refactoring, and this is why I use vim.
And before you say it, yes, I agree that you should spend more time thinking and designing than actually coding. This time for good developers happens away from the keyboard.
If you don't find that all editors have barriers to your productivity, then you must just be a hugely unproductive programmer.
>>119
I use a happy hacking keyboard, so mod-keys are sparse.
Plus I like my mod keys to be symmetric and I have yet to find a decent keyboard that looks like [a][b][c][space][c][b][a].