The way that this article characterizes Vim/Emacs as residue from a past era seems to miss the point that Vim continues to attract new users for a variety of reasons other than some weird nostalgia for a time we weren’t even alive for. I thought I’d be slower because moving around a file, or multiple files, without being able to use the mouse sounded like it’ll be very painful and difficult. We don’t hate anyone, really. Thats also because I don’t have to take the hands of the keyboard to use a mouse. The only thing that is currently brief compatible is very expensive. I’ve learned a lot of IDEs over my career so far but vim is so far the most full-fledged. I don’t want vim to try to guess which namespaces I need to import when I type out a method that is out of scope, because VS does that extremely well. The article is just entirely spouting off their ignorance of Vim and Emacs. That said, I put quite a bit of effort into getting Eclipse working at a company, and since I could not make it mandatory, no one started to use it. I know about vim and emacs from way back, but never used them in anything other than command line editing. This contains lots of tools a programmer needs such as a text editor, a compiler, a run environment, probably a visual GUI editor, some sort of source code control. It is disappointing to see that Visual Studio thinks that svn names map to git actions, making their version very confusing to use. Clojure itself alone already has a pretty steep learning curve. the REPL + Editor integration workflow. Emacs ‘ consistent textual interface spoiled me so much for years that seeing all these panels in modern editors that each have their own rules disappoints me. Whether you want to automate part of your programming workflow, or just don’t want to switch screens to post questions to Stack Exchange and search the answers, you can implement it right in Emacs itself or often find a package someone already wrote for it (and when they haven’t, there’s still a decent chance to use a library that makes it easy enough to write). June 2020 Welcome to ISSUE #25 of the Overflow! You don't need to install 10 different IDEs and learn 10 different workflows for 10 different projects. There’s no advantage to doing source control on your editor over doing git on the command line. So. I’ve lost count of how many times both Vim and popular, new, IDE users have proudly shown me features they think are awesome super special modern abilities, only for me to realize they’re excited about something I’ve been doing since the 90s in Emacs. I tried a bunch of IDEs at different companies already but there is always something that I find inefficient or even annoying about them which makes me come back to vim. With code completion, Git control, and even automatic deployment systems, modern IDEs are a Swiss Army Knife of features. Additionally: There’s one little “secret” than many die-hard VIMers (like my former self) that don’t know about something new: Yup, all that stuff you love for editing, the thing that made you a vim fan, is now available in many IDE’s. Of course I should give up the productivity I get with vi/gvim because some opinionated person thinks that I am “unable to let go of the past, unwilling to fully embrace the future of code editing.” What hubris. Emacs is arguably one of the most powerful things ever developed, and I can make it do anything I want by writing Lisp. Vim and Emacs user environments are well-designed and functional. Probably that’s also because vim is always where I need it (or installed in seconds). They are just great. Hmm then who where all these other IDE’s created for? I tried Emacs, but I didn’t like it; that’s just me though. But I eventually come back to Emacs. We get it… you like shiny things, just keep using it. VNC in unless you are constrained by the network. I feel like Vscode users don’t like to customize their editors other than installing plugins/themes and that’s ok (it’s not even possible to write functions without writing a plugin), some vim/emacs users also don’t like to have IDE-like features and that’s ok too. There’s no reason you have to replace your whole OS distro with Emacs, right? I doubt that this changes much with an IDE. Vim is a safe haven for every developer who has ever finished typing a line of text and stared despondently at the screen while the IDE struggled to display it a bloody character at a time. Or I could open 3 ssh windows, one for vim, and the others for running the code and watching logs. you are being a bit condescending toward the modern IDE’s and today’s developers, you ‘re pontificating from your comfort zone worn out like an old shoe. Whatever war might be raging behind the screens of coders between Vim, Emacs, and IDEs really doesn’t matter. Text editor purists often impose odd and highly personalized constraints and conventions on their team just to ensure that their fragile workflows and habits aren’t challenged. Thanks to its communities both vim and emacs are easily as powerful as modern IDEs plus having the potential benefit of being heavily customizable. ¹ Well, technically it’s a “vimolin” now, but close enough. It’s opensource and it integrates natively with Unix in a way that no modern IDE would even…consider. Which kind of proves my point. Vscode is great but it’s significantly less extensible than emacs by design and when I finally got fed up with the consequences of those limitations and switched to (spac)emacs, I found the latter did everything I liked from the former better. So i stayed with default emacs and built up from that. It will take a while for me to get a me a replacement laptop, so, I had to use something lighter. Most of the so-called modern tools do a lot for their users. With marcos, registers, and the modal nature of vim you can format, modify, create code significantly faster than if constrained by mouse movements and precise clicks. The authors are talking about emacs and vim like they stopped being developed in the 70s. If you’re using git and not in Emacs, then you’re not really using git. Now i am using a lot of packages, customized to meet my needs. But the ms language server was eating up every bit of ram it found. I read this with an open mind looking for the ‘magic’ of IDEs. The author of the Medium article is using Atom with Vim keybindings. I think OP just doesn’t know that TUI does not mean “old” or “bad.” I currently use VScode as I’m unfamiliar with certain parts of vim but having a text editor within my terminal would be great and I’m currently trying to vim full-time. I’m not ashamed to admit that if I could get all that ultra-bling, consistently, on every single platform I need to work on — I would probably call the energy company and tell them to fire up another coal plant for all my bling, but at the moment there’s nothing coming even remotely close to being both as portable and productive as a plain vim. there. They could start by listing some IDE features that V&E don’t have? I was surprised with how good it was as an IDE. [Editor’s note: I think there’s some valuable discussion in this comment, but I removed a lot of the hostility. Reply. ____ Framing it as “willful defiance” and “stubborn resistance” betrays the authors’ ignorance. In Vim, you have Insert mode (in which you insert text) and Command mode (in which you run commands on the text). Or do you want something that stays out of your way unless you tell it otherwise. No ability to position the terminal the same way as other windows? Personally, I think vim keyboard bindings are great. Then terminal VIM, Then switched back to an IDE (Visual Studio Code). I just became a developer 2 years ago by self teaching and working my ass off, and I _chose_ to use vim in order to have fast and efficient text editing from my keyboard. Vim and emacs are still used not because developers are too stubborn to let go, but because their editing methods are simply more efficient that using mouse for navigating and keyboard for typing. Mike Zamansky's Emacs tutorials. But again just using the git cli gives me more features, and allows me to simply type in what I want into my shell, and it will be done. I use Vim, everywhere, all the time. I tried to get access to the data elements used by Epic and was repeatedly told that was off limits. And spent as much time in it as in an IDE? Everything’s extensible, including the extensions. Vim has caught my attention because I can customize it to be MINE. If IDEs are magic then Emacs must be the Eldrirch truth. Availability and quality of tools like code completion, refactoring, code formatting, debuggers, profilers etc. Others have their entire build infrastructure locally. People learn vim because its always there. That forces developers to learn how to configure and use multiple IDEs in order to be efficient. Developer in 30s, work with many developers in 20s. It’s like a life partner who never tires of trying to guess what you need and make you happy, who cleans up your bedroom while you go out dancing and kisses you goodnight when you come home drunk. I’ve moved from so called “modern IDEs” to Emacs not because “I used to” Emacs *I didn’t know Emacs at the time* but because it did what I needed it to do. However, VS Code’s integration with the modern languages I write in today (and tomorrow), as well as superior intellisense and autocompletion (yeah I know Emacs _can_ but…) means adopting a modern IDE is a no-brainer, even for an old hand like me. per says: 11 Nov 20 at 6:11. Like Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings. As someone who transitioned from VS Code to Vim this article really comes across as very anti Vim. And that is not the only example. For instance, if for some reason you wanted to write a server for testing your web code in real time, you would write it in some other language like Node and then have your typical IDE call Node… but in Emacs you can literally just pull down the web server package and spin up your server in the editor. As stated below, I have recently gone the other way. I’m pretty sure the authors of this article have never used emacs. For a beginner, the ability to discover and use all that, in an intuitive way, was the main advantage. There are two assertions here that are not accurate. The same goes for your choice of file manager, window manager, SQL client, diff tool, terminal, input devices, log viewer, and what-not. Vim allowed me to shred my code while keeping my fingers at the home row. Many IDEs, like Visual Studio or the ones from Borland or Jetbrains, tried to be an all-in-one development environment, not only an editor. Atom … just kept crashing on me the moment I try more complicated things, VSC stoped working correctly on projects of certain sizes, and it’s solution for git integration cannot compare to maggit in emacs. I have linters, git integration, colors preview in CSS. Even those with a good plugin architecture often work very different with each language. C-v for page down and M-v for page up? Then came in Microsoft, started to mess around things. Even with the “vim mode” in PyCharm they dont do 1/100 of what vim does, so I have, sometimes, to copy / paste from Rider to vim, work on the code, and copy / paste back. I usually see a demo with some feature that looks like the killer one that will make this IDE my new favorite too. But my experience is that people waste too much time on them. I don't really want to ditch all the keybindings, just yet. – It hasn’t been about license fees for 10 (15?) I fell in love with the language but the thing that amazed You know, I’ve actually seen a trend of newer devs switching from modern IDEs into VIM. > With code completion, Git control, and even automatic deployment systems, modern IDEs are a Swiss Army Knife of features. Vim won’t ever go away, as you need something to work on all machines including production services. Why are so many IT professionals using Ubuntu and Fedora?”, “Modern cars are magic. I’ll never call myself a Vim master, but I can say that VS Code and Sublime are now the sidekicks and Vim is wearing the cape. wasn't easy for me. I have used vi since my university days in the early 90s, I have a nice set of vimrc & extensions all custom configured that i like to use. No, using Vim keybindings in Atom is leveraging decades’ worth of experience of one set of keyboard shortcuts, and bringing those keyboard shortcuts into a modern IDE. It gives you true power. Atom is a free, open-source text editor that bills itself as being “hackable to the core,” allowing for multiple customizations. After investigating, i found the reason was the ms python language server was taking nearly 6GB of ram. It just take a little configuring. I think the difference is if a team is required to use an IDE then someone else has made this all work for them and only through the IDE can they get necessary resources. Are the authors being obtuse to raise controversy on purpose, or have they really never themselves used vim and emacs? Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered Jobs; Any way to invoke vim from within an org file and on closing vim, the result is … A good example would be managing git repositories. I totally loved (and still love) the philosophy of Vim as well as the hjkl navigation. You might say I have vim in the terminal stages (pun intended). Superheroes need sidekicks and teams, so let’s cut out the binary thinking because there’s room for the superpowers of all tools in the fight against crappy insecure code. And the reason vim survived should be the fact that people do not like switching to new things? Emacs is still the most efficient for me because of my own customizations and the lack of reliance on a mouse. So surly there is still Netbeans? forgot to mention: The second incorrect assertion is that vim users will go out of their way to use vi or to find “Vim mode” on modern IDEs because they’re “unable to let go of the past.” There is some resistance to change, but it’s not stubborn or dogmatic in nature. Emacs has a few tricks under its belt still: when you do a text search (grep/ag/whatever), the results are in a regular text buffer. I still use Emacs for some things and vim for others. Emacs mixes those modes in some ways, unless you have your Emacs set up to use Vim commands (more on that elsewhere). I’m a younger developer who started in IDE’s and moved to emacs instead. Nowadays Vim has LSP client plugins, and I’ve become confident using Vim’s CTags features. My experience transitioning from Vim to Emacs. That is what Vim gave me, a way of thinking. I think it has the best UI of any application I have ever used – seriously. Moving to Vim for me was a choice, and I feel way more productive for doing so. Use the tool correctly, ANY tool, and get the job done in the way that YOU feel most productive. So somehow everything has changed, but vim survived. Of course this doesn’t apply to everyone, but most people I’ve watched use vim were quite slow with it and took forever to do simple things that would be quite easy to do in an IDE or even just a graphical text editor like VSCode. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies. To me, the main selling point was the exceptional out-of-box configuration. Skip to content. He is Emacs Window Manager. win. And where the IDE is for the purpose of facilitating untrained, unknowledgeable or inexperienced programmers, its use in high end technical computing is simply an oxymoron. As one of Shakespeare’s characters once said, “There are more things on heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. I have it set up as a full fledged c++ ide with vi key bindings. Think about it from this perspective – you cannot use an IDE in an IDE, therefore VIM is not an IDE. I can edit multiple lines at once, and substitute text using advanced regular expressions. Apart from ‘code completion’ and ‘Git control’, which Emacs does rather well IMO, I don’t think the article mentioned anything. No, really, he does. And if you need anything extra, you install a plugin. After a decade of using vim I switched to CLion and was very happy since it had vi key bindings. However, it’s really not true now that modern IDEs are ONLY pointy-clicky – they have decent regex support, very good column editing facilities and you can configure them to be basically how you want them to be. I don’t want to put myself in that situation, I want to get work done — not cry and whine about not having My Perfect Bling Setup. Funnily enough, I have needed to set up already-working build systems in IDE’s for GUI-bound people. It’s perceived as more efficient and professional. Aaron Bieber has a great talk on "Evil Mode: Or, How I Learned This resonates with me, although it comes from the other side. there’s no benefit at all in “learning a new IDE”. It could be argued (and I have) that if something called “vi” isn’t installed by default, it’s not a unix-like OS. I’ve got years worth of muscle memory tied up to Vim Key Bindings, so it’s unlikely that I’d have considered this change if it weren’t for evil-mode. Experienced coders benefit from the no-nonsense approach of a text-based editor like VIM. But Emacs is a lifestyle. I’m glad you didn’t take sides . It’s true that modern IDE provide some more functionality out of the box (debugging for instance). The article is low key trying to start something, but people getting angry over it clearly enjoy a fight, too. However, I really love vim’s feature for pointing directly to specific line number on opening text files. It built a project that worked, but it didn’t look like he was used to .. so he spent time needlessly pimping up an already-working Visual Studio project. I clicked this article expecting to learn some of what makes IDEs so useful, or maybe some advice for when to use an IDE over a text editor. The mistake you do is seeing a text editor in vim. It is a shame when, in one way or another, the project structure is affected by the personal choices of development tools. One of the most important I pretty rarely comment on these, but the reason I got into vim was purely because I live in terminals, headless virtual machines, servers, and containers, which don’t lend themselves to running an IDE. It’s this type of comfort that has kept whatever perceived war between those still using Vim or Emacs and the prospect of using IDEs going for as long as it has. Why change from vim to VSCode with the vim mode plugin, when it will use two magnitudes more memory, be slower, and require me to move the mouse around for the menu items? However, a few years ago I was with a contracting outfit doing a lot of Linux work. They show in practically every sentence they don’t even know what it’s like to use them. Steep learning curve, but so worth it. Autocomplete worked just like in VS Code, syntax check was better (because the EC2 instance is very very fast), go to definition and find references worked like a charm. I work with Jetbrains IDEs and I can’t say no to the powerful refactoring features it has. I’m not even sure how you can put it in the same category there. Simply put, it doesn’t matter where I am, I can scp my vimrc over, and get to work without having any sluggishness or inconsistency due to different environments. Git control? Vim made it easy and provided me with an abundance of ways to browse and edit my code. It seems like people aren’t understanding this. It’s like a self-driving car. Regardless I find it more fun and enjoyable to use since it is mine. It’s an amazing plugin. I was a Vim user a couple years back. It required me to have opinions on almost every aspect of the editor Vim — image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Maybe. It has cross-platform editing, four UIs, eight syntax themes and integrates with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Node.js. They are good to have around, just in case, but rarely the optimal choices. However, like learning Vim, there’s a learning curve involved in properly learning Emacs. It’s just that vim simply works best for me. Atom is essentially a vim-inspired editor written in JavaScript with emacs style keybindings, How many times do you lift your hand from the keyboard and reach for the mouse in a coding session? There is much to be annoyed with in emacs and vim, but the newer IDEs need to mine then a heck of a lot more for ideas before I jump so again. An similar article could make the exact same kinds of arguments, and be just as woefully misguided: “Modern operating systems are magic. Vim and Emacs are both extremely powerful text editors, and each has its own rabid following. Muscle memory works both for you and against you – some people have no idea how irritating it is when programs like Gimp will not open a file when you press ALT F O but fail to take your finger off the ALT key before pressing the O. It’s been splendid. All hail magit – it is truly a thing of beauty. In this sense, modal editors can be set up like IDEs, depending on how you want to use them. In VSCode over both Atom and other non-modal editors t quite suit and., even in the end, is grounded in anything had vi key and... You just installed Emacs… vim uses editing modes - most commonly the command line project! Same brush available and it will do absolutely anything license fees for 10 workflows... 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