7 ms·

Why is anyone using anything else?

by aag 3mo ago

francoisdevlin 3mo ago
I use vi because I'm not a savage
- mesrik 3mo ago
  Vi is fine. It's superior and to bare ed - The Standard Editor*, when you don't have anything else available. I made much of my living coding vi 7 years in -80's. And I still use vi, when emacs is not there or system has so little memory that emacs is too much. Which is usually with a embedded systems or some old Unix on single mode fixing unbootable system. *) https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard_text_editor.html* https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard...
- bbkane 3mo ago
  NeoVim because it's fun!! So many plugins and colorschemes! So customizable- these days Claude will just change it for you, no need to learn the APIs if you're just interested in the result. Yes you're AI-slopping your config, but the drawbacks to that are super low (it's a personal editor, not something I'm inflicting on others)
  - prinny_ 3mo ago
    AI slopping my config is what allowed me to learn vim without going through the pain of setting it up. I can ask AI to teach me about some motions or set up some configs for m in lua without ever know lua. This is the biggest impact of AI in my professional life.
- zhxhhshshs 3mo ago
  You will be downvoted into oblivion. For speaking the truth. Vi-lets, engage!
  - em-bee 3mo ago
    why do we run from the police dad? they use emacs, we use vi, son.
- wafflemaker 3mo ago
  If emacs is not installed on a system, I use sed. In addition to not getting stuck inside it when you don't remember the magic exit incantation, you can immediately reuse the command on a different file. And it doesn't play sounds while you do it. Plus when you're typing the sed command, you can use emacs key bindings to move around!
  - bananamogul 3mo ago
    "If emacs is not installed on a system, I use sed." Bill Joy (creator of vi) once said that if he sits down on a foreign system, he reaches for ed [1]. To be fair, both emacs and vi have "magic exit incantations", though if you have emacs perhaps you have a menu in GUI mode. If not, C-x C-c is really not any more memorable than :wq! The vi one at least has an obvious mnemonic ("write quit") but either way, you need to know an arbitrary sequence of keystrokes. [1] http://xahlee.info/comp/interview_with_bill_joy.html http://xahlee.info/comp/interview_with_bill_joy.html
- iLemming 3mo ago
  I'm a die-hard vimmer. I use vim-motions everywhere - they permeate my editors/IDEs, browsers, terminal, I use them system wide (e.g. to change volume or control media or my WM). One day I woke up with the realization of the fundamental truth - Emacs simply vims better. Much better than even Neovim. I just had to master Vim and grok some Lisp to arrive to that conclusion. People fighting Vim vs. Emacs are materially wrong - they focus on superficial (albeit substantial) angle, instead of considering the core ideas behind them. Vim's augmentation of modality is an incredible, beautiful, practical concept. Lisp - yet another grandest idea in all history of computer science. And these ideas are not overlapping. Lisp-powered vimming grants you genuinely joyful experience - surprisingly empowering and enormously liberating. Emacs' Lisp interpreter is so capable - accurately simulating vim in it is not impossible, while pretty much every other editor/IDE has failed - not a single VSCode plugin, not Sublime, not IntelliJ with IdeaVim have ever fully implemented vim motions to the degree where it doesn't feel foreign, while Evil-mode in Emacs feels like a built-in feature. Until recently, bolting Lisp into Vim seemed impossible, today you can get a pseudo-Lisp engine with Fennel. Even though it unlikely ever feel like Emacs. If you're sticking to one thing only due to some muscle memory, sure you're not a savage, you're just a bit ignorant.
  - dotancohen 3mo ago
    Almost all my vimming is in Emacs now. I started with Org mode - now I can't find any feature of any TODO application that Org mode doesn't do better.
    - fladd 3mo ago
      Functional and comfortable syncing with your mobile?
      - dotancohen 3mo ago
        I suppose that you mean via some third party cloud. I personally sync my Org mode notes via adb when I backup the phone occasionally. I read on the phone using Orgro. You might be able to sync with Dropbox.
sph 3mo ago
Likely because they haven't seen the light just yet. Or they are lost to the evil forces.
- shimman 3mo ago
  The only reason why I was taught vim is that a coworker wanted someone to know it so they can explain why emacs is better. It didn't work and I've transitioned to neovim.
dismalaf 3mo ago
I use Lem. It's an "emacs" but not a clone of GNU Emacs. It's written in Common Lisp, extensible in Common Lisp and it's way more performant than GNU Emacs. Obviously less features and plugins but for my needs (writing Lisp code mostly) it's great.
- sl_convertible 3mo ago
  How is it now compared to 6 months ago? I tried it back then, and just... I don't know, couldn't get into it.
  - dismalaf 3mo ago
    Dunno, I've been trying it off and on since it was first released in like 2018. I don't theres any particularly noticeable changes from 6 months ago specifically. I also used Emacs way back in the day but have been Vim/Neovim for the last 5 years or so. But I recently started a new Lisp project so revisited Lem, actually set it up the way I want (with LazyVim-like bindings), and found with my changes and comfort hacking on it (it's all Common Lisp top to bottom so it's easy to change) that it can replace LazyVim for me now. Just using the ncurses front end BTW.
ux266478 3mo ago
I don't like keyboard-centric text editing. Yes GNU Emacs supports the mouse, but just like Vim the experience is miserable. You can spend a lot of time configuring it, but at some point you're just writing extensions of extensions just to get a basic GUI flow that isn't painful, and no matter what it'll never feel quite "right". The program just wasn't built with the idea of a mouse in mind, and bolting it on really wasn't sufficient. Add onto that pretty nasty performance issues, internals that aren't exactly well thought-out, and the experience in general having a high background noise of jank, where it's not uncommon for simple things like rainbow parens to randomly break. I understand why other people like it, but it's really just not for me. I'll stick with Lite-XL.
- jjav 3mo ago
  > I don't like keyboard-centric text editing. Interesting? Unless you're using voice dictation, isn't text editing 100% keyboard based input?
  - ux266478 3mo ago
    No. Even most keyboard-centric text editors implement mouse inputs, with only a few exceptions coming to mind, almost none of which anybody uses today, for example ed. In fact, most editors don't even restrict text insertion and deletion to keyboard input, which is what you might be confusing with "text editing", which might be more clearly expanded to "operating a text editor".

Why is anyone using anything else?

by aag 3mo ago

Why is anyone using anything else?

francoisdevlin 3mo ago

I use vi because I'm not a savage

mesrik 3mo ago
Vi is fine. It's superior and to bare ed - The Standard Editor*, when you don't have anything else available. I made much of my living coding vi 7 years in -80's. And I still use vi, when emacs is not there or system has so little memory that emacs is too much. Which is usually with a embedded systems or some old Unix on single mode fixing unbootable system. *) https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard_text_editor.html* https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard...
bbkane 3mo ago
NeoVim because it's fun!! So many plugins and colorschemes! So customizable- these days Claude will just change it for you, no need to learn the APIs if you're just interested in the result. Yes you're AI-slopping your config, but the drawbacks to that are super low (it's a personal editor, not something I'm inflicting on others)
- prinny_ 3mo ago
  AI slopping my config is what allowed me to learn vim without going through the pain of setting it up. I can ask AI to teach me about some motions or set up some configs for m in lua without ever know lua. This is the biggest impact of AI in my professional life.
zhxhhshshs 3mo ago
You will be downvoted into oblivion. For speaking the truth. Vi-lets, engage!
- em-bee 3mo ago
  why do we run from the police dad? they use emacs, we use vi, son.
wafflemaker 3mo ago
If emacs is not installed on a system, I use sed. In addition to not getting stuck inside it when you don't remember the magic exit incantation, you can immediately reuse the command on a different file. And it doesn't play sounds while you do it. Plus when you're typing the sed command, you can use emacs key bindings to move around!
- bananamogul 3mo ago
  "If emacs is not installed on a system, I use sed." Bill Joy (creator of vi) once said that if he sits down on a foreign system, he reaches for ed [1]. To be fair, both emacs and vi have "magic exit incantations", though if you have emacs perhaps you have a menu in GUI mode. If not, C-x C-c is really not any more memorable than :wq! The vi one at least has an obvious mnemonic ("write quit") but either way, you need to know an arbitrary sequence of keystrokes. [1] http://xahlee.info/comp/interview_with_bill_joy.html http://xahlee.info/comp/interview_with_bill_joy.html
iLemming 3mo ago
I'm a die-hard vimmer. I use vim-motions everywhere - they permeate my editors/IDEs, browsers, terminal, I use them system wide (e.g. to change volume or control media or my WM). One day I woke up with the realization of the fundamental truth - Emacs simply vims better. Much better than even Neovim. I just had to master Vim and grok some Lisp to arrive to that conclusion. People fighting Vim vs. Emacs are materially wrong - they focus on superficial (albeit substantial) angle, instead of considering the core ideas behind them. Vim's augmentation of modality is an incredible, beautiful, practical concept. Lisp - yet another grandest idea in all history of computer science. And these ideas are not overlapping. Lisp-powered vimming grants you genuinely joyful experience - surprisingly empowering and enormously liberating. Emacs' Lisp interpreter is so capable - accurately simulating vim in it is not impossible, while pretty much every other editor/IDE has failed - not a single VSCode plugin, not Sublime, not IntelliJ with IdeaVim have ever fully implemented vim motions to the degree where it doesn't feel foreign, while Evil-mode in Emacs feels like a built-in feature. Until recently, bolting Lisp into Vim seemed impossible, today you can get a pseudo-Lisp engine with Fennel. Even though it unlikely ever feel like Emacs. If you're sticking to one thing only due to some muscle memory, sure you're not a savage, you're just a bit ignorant.
- dotancohen 3mo ago
  Almost all my vimming is in Emacs now. I started with Org mode - now I can't find any feature of any TODO application that Org mode doesn't do better.
  - fladd 3mo ago
    Functional and comfortable syncing with your mobile?
    - dotancohen 3mo ago
      I suppose that you mean via some third party cloud. I personally sync my Org mode notes via adb when I backup the phone occasionally. I read on the phone using Orgro. You might be able to sync with Dropbox.

sph 3mo ago

Likely because they haven't seen the light just yet. Or they are lost to the evil forces.

shimman 3mo ago
The only reason why I was taught vim is that a coworker wanted someone to know it so they can explain why emacs is better. It didn't work and I've transitioned to neovim.

dismalaf 3mo ago

I use Lem. It's an "emacs" but not a clone of GNU Emacs. It's written in Common Lisp, extensible in Common Lisp and it's way more performant than GNU Emacs. Obviously less features and plugins but for my needs (writing Lisp code mostly) it's great.

sl_convertible 3mo ago
How is it now compared to 6 months ago? I tried it back then, and just... I don't know, couldn't get into it.
- dismalaf 3mo ago
  Dunno, I've been trying it off and on since it was first released in like 2018. I don't theres any particularly noticeable changes from 6 months ago specifically. I also used Emacs way back in the day but have been Vim/Neovim for the last 5 years or so. But I recently started a new Lisp project so revisited Lem, actually set it up the way I want (with LazyVim-like bindings), and found with my changes and comfort hacking on it (it's all Common Lisp top to bottom so it's easy to change) that it can replace LazyVim for me now. Just using the ncurses front end BTW.

ux266478 3mo ago

I don't like keyboard-centric text editing. Yes GNU Emacs supports the mouse, but just like Vim the experience is miserable. You can spend a lot of time configuring it, but at some point you're just writing extensions of extensions just to get a basic GUI flow that isn't painful, and no matter what it'll never feel quite "right". The program just wasn't built with the idea of a mouse in mind, and bolting it on really wasn't sufficient. Add onto that pretty nasty performance issues, internals that aren't exactly well thought-out, and the experience in general having a high background noise of jank, where it's not uncommon for simple things like rainbow parens to randomly break. I understand why other people like it, but it's really just not for me. I'll stick with Lite-XL.

jjav 3mo ago
> I don't like keyboard-centric text editing. Interesting? Unless you're using voice dictation, isn't text editing 100% keyboard based input?
- ux266478 3mo ago
  No. Even most keyboard-centric text editors implement mouse inputs, with only a few exceptions coming to mind, almost none of which anybody uses today, for example ed. In fact, most editors don't even restrict text insertion and deletion to keyboard input, which is what you might be confusing with "text editing", which might be more clearly expanded to "operating a text editor".