Emacs is terrible

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/.

>>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.

Emacs is a good OS. It just needs a better text editor.

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

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode

And I suppose you want to have a REPL in the corresponding command mode?

>>6
There's going to be a REPL mode, silly.

>>5
lacks a second p

>>http://dis.4chan.org/vip/

JEWS

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.

>>9
I'd rather use my 70's freewares than a 90's copy of 70's environments

>>9

This.

Pico > *

>>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.

>>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

M-x mouse-mode

>>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.

Who let vi users in here? Finish doing your penance.

>>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.

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.

>>18
Vim
languages
wat

Code folding doesn't suck in Visual Studio C#, though that's an IDE. But I think it worked pretty well in Notepad++ too.

Tried both, but emacs' key combinations are a lot harder to remember (and harder on the fingers.) vi just feels more like typing.

>>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.

>>18,19
Whoops, s/languages/editors/

>>21
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1717&aid=-1
Sure seems like some people use it...

vim forever fags

To bad vi doesn't even have a decent irc client.

emacs is for the blind and disabled.

>>26
That's true, I knew a blind person who used to hang out on #emacs.

>>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.

>>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.

>>29
Enjoy `donating' money to Ugandian hookers to get your sex.

There is an explanation.
Emacs was built for use with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard

type  :help hookers<Enter>       for information

>>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
s/reverse-search/searc

>>33
F12 for faster typing? Are you kidding?

>>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.

>>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.

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.

>>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>.

>>37
By the way, Vim has similar command simmetry to that of Emacs.