Why aren't you using Vim for all of your text editing needs?
Using Vim (or Emacs if you're a macfag) literally allows you to get better at editing text with time. Time spent with the editor gains rent.
Compare this to using an IDE, you will always be as good at editing text as you were when you first started. The ability to get better at editing text doesn't exist with IDEs.
>>16
Paying ridiculous amount of money for a text editor that has less editing functionality, extension support, documentation, and community support than something free and comes automatically with nearly every *nix distribution is ludicrous.
vim is okay for quick, simple edits to files whose formatting is highly line oriented (any tool that counts AT&T Research as an influence probably uses such files). Short scripts and config files are ideal for vim.
It starts sucking horribly, however, when you try to use it for something more complicated, like refactoring a large C codebase. I'm currently considering switching to emacs because it feels like I'm slowly reimplementing it anyway, one line of vimscript at a time.
>>24
Renaming identifiers is trivial in any editor. I mean bigtime refactoring, like breaking up header files, modifying type signatures everywhere they appear, or breaking up and recombining long functions. Doing that with a regex is at best painful and at worst, impossible.
>>25
Modifying type signatures everywhere they appear is pretty doable with regexes. For everything else, just edit. Is it really that much more effort? So many motion commands to aid you there.
I don't use vim because it's extremely rare that writing code is constrained to how fast I can type it on my computer. Most of the time is spent designing the algorithm on paper.
It would probably take me 30ish hours to really learn vim from scratch, but I really wouldn't gain anything from it.
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!L33tUKZj5I2012-09-21 15:16
I learnt vim first and now I've learnt it and memorised enough to work with it I stubbornly refuse to learn anything else.
Emacs is shit anyway, I remember when I was choosing which editor to learn first I had a bit of a go at it and was like wtf? I don't want to learn a key combination longer than the finishing moves in MORTAL KOMBAT! just to be able to save a fucking file or whatever.
>>32
Yea. A lot of shit in Emacs I think is really cool. The possibilities are endless, it seems. But, the implementation seemed shitty as hell.
I'm fine losing some of the cool things about Emacs because in Vim I don't have to hold down Control just to move the fucking cursor.
I've seen an analogy that Emacs is used in chords, like in music. But, in my experience using it, it just seemed like a random mish-mash of bullshit I had to memorize for each little thing I did. I couldn't derive any of it.+
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Anonymous2012-09-21 15:57
Your argument is retarded. Why the fuck would I want to get good at Notepad with macros and hotkeys, if I have an IDE?
Also, what kind of shitty programmer are you that you need to be editing and moving your shit around so much? Netbeans or Eclipses autocomplete >> shit >> Vim
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Anonymous2012-09-21 16:17
What if we had menus and a pointing device that intuitively allowed us to perform routine tasks quickly?
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Anonymous2012-09-21 16:32
Vim a shit. Why use a text ediotr when you can have a compiler and interpreter?
lame programmers needs to "edit" code: I only need cat
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!L33tUKZj5I2012-09-21 17:12
>>33 I've seen an analogy that Emacs is used in chords, like in music.
I'd bet my left nut that whoever said that knows jack shit about music theory. It's nothing like chords. With chords, you can work out what one would be if you know the rules. Emacs is just memorising shit afresh each time, like you said.
>>27 Modifying type signatures everywhere they appear is pretty doable with regexes.
Now you've got two problems. Seriously don't do it. Use a real parser.
>>31 It would probably take me 30ish hours to really learn vim from scratch, but I really wouldn't gain anything from it.
That's probably bullshit. Unless you never have to debug or iterate the design (because someone changed the requirements) all of these operations can be made smoother with a good editor.
I'm not saying Vim is best for you, but the time I spend not touching the mouse is huge. If your editor can't present you with exactly what you need within a few keystrokes you are missing out. The question is: how quickly would that amortize?
>>35 What if we had menus and a pointing device that intuitively allowed us to perform routine tasks quickly?
Well the term 'menus' is already taken and we'd have to name that other thing something other than 'mouse'. Might be cool though.
>>46
Yeah, in practice that's what happens. The major downside is Vim starts running slowly. Syntastic + colorscheme seems to equate to 2 reparses on change.
>>34
Are you saying that Vim is stupid because it doesn't have autocomplete or code-completion?
If so, you are probably relying on the above too much. Past that, both Vim and Emacs can autocomplete and code-complete while still having superior editing capabilities than whatever IDE you are currently using.
Does anyone know if vi mode in emacs is any good?
It's about as good as trying to compile C with a Java compiler, and it's about as slow as reimplementing ed in Java every time you want to edit some text.
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Anonymous2012-09-21 18:55
>>49
I've heard people talk about it and complain most about the plugins they no longer have. I think I could re-implement some of these more easily in elisp than fixing the speed issues in poorly written vimscript.
As much as I love vim, it seems arbitrary a lot of the time. And I'm not sure if vimscript is just slow or if people suck at writing parsers in it. I see people writing state machines, which should be fairly fast. I'd rather see a built-in parser (maybe with DSOs?) though, so writing a colorscheme could amount to little more than picking some colors.