33 ms·

I'm pretty effective with vim, so much that other 'normal' editors like sublime & other modern gui editors make me feel a little crippled. That is a problem, be

by fdsary 12y ago

I'm pretty effective with vim, so much that other 'normal' editors like sublime & other modern gui editors make me feel a little crippled. That is a problem, because you need to be flexible about things in life. Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? I'm especially curious how I could start using emacs, and actually get up to speed with it instead of using it as Notepad/TextEdit (as I would do if I started today)?

wldcordeiro 12y ago
Sublime Text has an excellent plugin called Vintageous that gives you a lot of Vim's functionality with some of the niceties of Sublime, worth a shot if you felt crippled by it.
- Zelphyr 12y ago
  I have never had success with these plugins. I apparently begin typing too fast after hitting Escape and invariably the plugin can't handle that and it enters things like ":w" as text instead of processing it as a command. Obviously this isn't a problem in Vi/Vim proper but all of the Vi*-style plugins for any of the IDE's or editors I've tried--from Eclipse to Sublime--always break.
  - girvo 12y ago
    The best one I've used that has worked near-perfectly for me is Vi-emulation mode in Komodo IDE. It's really impressively done, to be honest.
- brianpgordon 12y ago
  Sublime comes with the Vintage Mode plugin as well, which emulates Vim.
  - wldcordeiro 12y ago
    Vintage is great but Vintageous adds even more Vim functionality.
mariusmg 12y ago
It's pretty easy actually. Just get drunk one night and bash your head against a wall few times. This will make you forget all the keyboard shortcuts and you're free to learn a new text editor.
- bbcbasic 12y ago
  Since learning VIM I have got (with no addition effort) better at learning keyboard shortcuts for all kinds of different apps I use. Vim (or Emacs etc.) literally makes you smarter. I now use Ctrl-V or "+p depending in gViom depending on what mood I am in. Nice to have a choice.
cdata 12y ago
When I first broke into web development, my editors of choice were Coda, Dreamweaver and Visual Studio (I wonder if I am dating myself here). I made a mid-career move to (non-gui) Vim, mostly out of general interest. The ramp up to Vim coming from GUI-heavy editors was a long one, but I stuck with it and it was worth it for me. So, it's definitely possible to switch, you just have to be able to deal with that ramp up.
- Retra 12y ago
  I've been trying out vim for a while, hoping to get more productive, but the fact that "hjkl" is not "jkl;" -home keys- and that I have to reach all the way across the keyboard to hit [esc] every three seconds is not helping... I pretty much use sublime text for everything these days.
  - TheCoreh 12y ago
    You can map Caps Lock to esc. A lot of people who use Vim do that.
  - grmarcil 12y ago
    You can also remap Esc to jj by adding the following to your vimrc inoremap jj <Esc> The hjkl thing feels weird for a long time but it becomes natural after a while. I used Sublime for a long time with the Vintage plugin (vim like movements and some other vim features) before moving to Vim and that made the transition much easier for me. I still like Sublime, but Vim's full integration with the terminal environment is hard to beat.
  - Dewie 12y ago
    > but the fact that "hjkl" is not "jkl;" -home keys- On American keyboards, anyway. That isn't how the keys are laid out on modern Dutch keyboards, though I don't know what they were like when Vim was created.
    - dunham 12y ago
      Vim inherited the keyboard mapping from vi. vi was designed on a QWERTY (American) keyboard, but the particular terminal that the author used had arrows printed on the hjkl keycaps. More information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi
chipotle_coyote 12y ago
Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? This can only be answered through anecdote, so mine is: it's really tough. I'm competent in both Vim and Emacs, with a mild preference for Vim. But I used Homesite in the very early days of the web and got used to that somewhat CUA/GUI style of editing; when I moved to BeOS (really, I did for a while) I used Pe, the programmers' editor there, and then to the Mac and BBEdit, then TextMate, then Sublime. Despite the fact that I moved across five editors and three platforms, the basics -- opening and saving files, simple navigation by character, line and board, using the clipboard, search/replace, and even basic navigation -- were for practical purposes identical across these editors. I think it's easy for experienced Vim/Emacs jockeys to downplay how important that is. It's the advanced features that make us love our editors, but sitting down in front of a new editor and realizing you're going to need to read a tutorial just to figure out how open a file and oh God what was the key that started the tutorial again is a hurdle which, in a world with a plethora of good editors that all use standard keys we've already known for the basics, often doesn't seem like it's worth jumping through. I've actually put in the effort to try and customize both Emacs and Vim with all sorts of packages that add the features I miss from Sublime and predecessors. I think my Vim setup is probably pretty awesome, tweaked and re-tweaked through multiple iterations. But I've noticed that when I want to work on a big project, almost without thinking about it I'm still going to open either Sublime or BBEdit and be into it for a few hours before I think, "Man, this would have been yet another opportunity to get better with Vim. Oh well."
evmar 12y ago
This just came up recently and my previous comment was upvoted, so please forgive me for repasting a link to an old post of mine where I described switching from vim (~10 years experience) to emacs (now at ~5 years): http://evan-tech.livejournal.com/261214.html http://evan-tech.livejournal.com/261214.html
bbcbasic 12y ago
RE: Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors? I am currently learning Vim and using it with the NERDTree plugin as a fairly nice environment to write Ruby on Rails code in my spare time. It is also nice as I have a low power PC running ubuntu in a virtualbox. So Eclipse is a no-no anyway. At work I use Visual Studio but have a Vim open all the time for where the Vim advantages outweigh the visual studio advantages. Often this is in editing config and xml files. C# Code files are nicer to edit in Visual studio with autocomplete, debugging etc. Main things I love about Vim - being able to split and tab quickly from the keyboard. And all those keyboard shortcuts to do practically anything. And it is fast. I really hate Eclipse now! Visual Studio is OK but Vim is so fast and lightweight.
- weavie 12y ago
  You may find vsVim (https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca-8fe1-0e90e3f79329/ https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3...) useful. I can't use Visual Studio without it.
  - bbcbasic 12y ago
    I tried that, but with no easy way to turn it off (without uninstalling it) it feels a bit 'in the deep end'. Once I am happy with using Vim productively I may try it. Another concern with this is pairing, as there is no easy way to turn it off. Although staying in insert mode and keeping the default bindings for VS may be OK.
    - taternuts 12y ago
      it does allow you to easily default back to visual studio handling all of the commands. In fact, it's quite nice for a tweener vim user because you can have visual studio handle all the more complex keybindings that you don't recognize and just use it for the subset of commands you're comfortable with, and move from there
    - orand 12y ago
      Ctrl+Shift+F12 disables and re-enables VsVim. When disabled it's as if it wasn't installed.
kerr23 12y ago
I moved between being a life-long vi/vim'er to Sublime and more recently Atom. I only use Atom for coding and vim for just about everything else. The most difficult part for me is that i'll open a file in vim and then consciously go "no" <close it> and fire it up in one of the other editors. Why? because I like to keep my vim more clean. I've seen some of the really complex vim configs out there and they just didn't "do it" for me. So if i want complex things like syntax highlighting I go with Atom.
- illicium 12y ago
  "syntax on" is complex?
Semiapies 12y ago
EditPlus to jEdit to Emacs, myself.
tzs 12y ago
I didn't so much change editors as start using multiple editors. On OS X, I regularly use vim, TextMate, and BBEdit. I find that TextMate looks the best. I simply enjoy typing code into TextMate more than I do in vim or BBEdit. Thus, when I'm doing a stretch of writing new code, or straightforward modification of existing code, I'll probably do it in TextMate (although some days it just feels like it is a vim day or a BBEdit day). If I need to make a lot of related changes, I'll switch to vim, and use regular expressions or I'll record a macro to repeatedly apply. If I'm doing something like making some modification at all places that use a particular database table, I'll probably go to BBEdit. I can do a search for that table and click "find all", and it gives a separate window showing all the matches, with an editing section in the bottom part that shows whichever search result I click. This lets me easily see all the places where the table is referenced, and easily edit them, and go back and forth as needed. It works similarly with the results of a multi-file search, which makes it nice when I'm trying to understand crusty old legacy code. If I start a work session in TextMate, and switch to vim to do something with macros, I'll probably stay there and continue editing. When I exit the editor to test the code, then I'll probably head back to TextMate. Same if I go to BBEdit for something--I'll stay there until I need something that is better in vim. I realize I'm not making full use of the capabilities of one or more of these editors. BBEdit can certainly do most of the things vim can do, and all of the things I use vim for, for instance, but I'm fine with simply popping into vim for those things.
- visarga 12y ago
  I use Text Wrangler for quick access by SFTP to my code (open server / edit / save). I don't like the SFTP window much, but it does the job. TW is also very good for processing text: sorting, removing duplicates, applying regex-es, filtering and vertical columns. I tried using Sublime and I did get along well with it for a few projects, but when I am jumping around on various servers, I prefer Text Wrangler's shorter setup. Why doesn't Sublime manage SSH better?
- girvo 12y ago
  Ah I'm the same. I used Komodo IDE for big projects, Vim for stuff when I'm in a terminal or for Hack work (until I finish my Hack plugin for Sublime, anyway) and TextAdept for super quick text editing on big files.
evanspa 12y ago
I was mainly Java dev for 10+ years or so; I was a whiz at Eclipse. Then, one day, I forced myself to learn a Clojure. It just so happened the ecosystem mainly leveraged Emacs. And so, I forced myself to learn Emacs. It took a while - the key bindings, reading up on how to do various things, discovering great packages, learning enough Emacs Lisp to be dangerous. It was very rewarding, and I use Emacs everyday now. Today, I can't imagine not using it.
veidr 12y ago
Just like with web browsers, I use multiple editors all day long on OS X. Currently open, I have: Sublime 3, Textmate 2, BBEdit 11, Xcode 6, Rubymine 6, and (only because I visited this post and just downloaded it) CotEditor 2. There is certainly a tradeoff in the sense that I don't tend to memorize all the features of every editor, so I may not be as effective in any of them as a power user who sticks to one of them. OTOH, the Mac has excellent basic text conventions for word/line/paragraph selection, indent/dedent, etc. Also, I tend to use the different editors for different purposes. Batch find/replace? BBEdit. Objective-C? Definitely Xcode, it't the only native editor with even semi-reasonable autocomplete. Scripts and single-file text documents? These days Textmate 2 (used to be Sublime). So you still end up knowing the shortcuts and advanced features that apply to your editing scenario, even though they may not be in the same editor. But you don't get the raw, low-level text editing power that comes with mastering something like vim (which I do use a lot, too, but with such polygamous editing habits, am unlikely to master). The upside of using multiple editors is that you can pick the one that suits you best for the job at hand; another fringe benefit is that you also get to enjoy countless hours trying out every single new editor that comes out. ;-)
- Tloewald 12y ago
  BBEdit's multi-file search and replace (and it's compare) alone are worth it. I keep coming back to BBEdit for search and replace, even if I prefer other editors for other things. I use a lot of different editors too, rotating among favorites. The one thing I do not consistently use are modal keyboard-centric editors like vim and emacs. I get that some people like them, but they've never done much for me. (And yes, I do know how to use them. I'm old enough that I upgraded to vim early on.)
  - wingerlang 12y ago
    What's different from Sublimes multi file search and replace?
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    > The one thing I do not consistently use are modal keyboard-centric editors like vim and emacs. As a vim-er and not an Emacs-er, asking genuinely and not out of snark, surely Emacs is eminently non-modal (at least, not modal in the same way that vim is)?
tomphoolery 12y ago
> Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? I don't see the point in changing your editor if you don't feel it's necessary. Surely one should gain something from a change of editor...
- hasenj 12y ago
  He already mentioned it kinda: flexibility
eddiezane 12y ago
My original reason for learning vim was so that I could be effective when shelled into a box. I quickly became much more productive with it than any other text editor I tried to use after. Atom caught my attention, but I would up installing the vim bindings and eventually switching back.
davidwparker 12y ago
I switched from Emacs to both LightTable and Atom full-time. While I'm much more efficient in Emacs, integration are the killer features in the other two, in a way that I didn't have my .emacs setup. With LightTable, I do mostly WebGL and I often have a browser tab up with my live WebGL stuff all the time. This is super efficient and extremely nice. With Atom, I do mostly web development. Quickly jumping between files (faster than I did in Emacs) and knowing which files have been changed (they're highlighted in the tree-view) is very helpful for all work-related things.
- tuhdo 12y ago
  How is it faster than Projectile? Demos in here: http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-projectile.html http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-projectile.html. With Projectile, I can jump to any file quickly, even with source tree as large as Linux kernel with more than 36k files. If a file is in a project, regardless of where I see it, even in a plain .txt file, I can jump to it: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-files-dwim-1.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... If you want that live web stuff, you can try skewer-mode: https://github.com/skeeto/skewer-mode https://github.com/skeeto/skewer-mode
agentultra 12y ago
I succeeded. And haven't gone back. It took me about two weeks to transition. I had 10 years of vi(m) behind me when I gave emacs a go. I wrote about it back in 2008[0][1]. I still have the fundamental vi(m) motions in my bones... but I prefer emacs today. [0] http://agentultra.com/2008/11/12/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-holy-war/ http://agentultra.com/2008/11/12/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-... [1] http://agentultra.com/2008/11/19/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-holy-war-part-2/ http://agentultra.com/2008/11/19/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-...
tuhdo 12y ago
You can be quickly productive with my mini manual: http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html. If you write C++, did you check my C/C++ guide: http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html. A few demos: - code navigation: jump to anywhere instantly. DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif. - code completion: context-sensitve completion. DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-boost-demo.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-boost-demo.gif. - code compilation: you can click on the error and it gets you to where you want; work with any build system, while other IDE only supports a specific build system, i.e. for Makefile project, you only get plain text error message. DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-mode.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-mode.gif. - code debugging: provides a frontend for GDB; DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif. - Powerful automatic indentation: https://github.com/Bruce-Connor/aggressive-indent-mode https://github.com/Bruce-Connor/aggressive-indent-mode. It does not only indent the current line, but the whole Semantic context around your cursor. Demos inside the homepage. - Live grep: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/live_grep.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/live_grep.gif. - Access to a list of project with a few key strokes: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-switch-project.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Quickly access any file in your project, as large as Linux kernel, instantly, regardless of where you are in the project, and within a few keystrokes: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-files-1.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Jump to any file depends on context, even if the file path is in a plain ASCII text file; even if there's only a filename without any path information, as long as it's in your project, Emacs can jump to it fine: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-files-dwim-1.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Copy files from anywhere to anywhere: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-file-copy.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Delete files anywhere; files are always at your finger tip to do whatever with them: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-file-delete.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Switch between other files with same names but different extensions: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-other-file.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... Work not only for C/C++ but other languages, and is customizable. You don't have to configure anything, like adding include paths. Everything is automatically done for you. - Jump to tag definition, from its own parser or external parser like GNU Global: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif - Do you like outline tree?: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/sr-speedbar.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/sr-speedbar.gif - Interactive outline tree: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-semantic-or-imenu.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-semantic-or-imenu.g... - References retrieved from its Emacs internal parser: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-symref.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-symref.gif - Beautiful compile output: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-compile.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-compile.gif - Frontend support for GDB: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif - Open man page for symbol at cursor: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-man-woman.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-man-woman.gif - Emacs open 39MB C file: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/performance.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/performance.gif - Emac opens multi-gigabtye file: http://www.emacswiki.org/VLF http://www.emacswiki.org/VLF
Derbasti 12y ago
> Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? I'm especially curious how I could start using emacs, and actually get up to speed with it instead of using it as Notepad/TextEdit (as I would do if I started today)? I used to use Textmate at the University. Then XCode at my first job. Then I learned Vim, since every hacker in the internet seemed to love it, the usual story... (big plus: many IDEs have very good Vim key bindings) Then I simply wanted to know what Emacs would be like. I took a bit of a productivity hit for about a week or two, but not more. Over the next year or so I read the Emacs manual and dove deeply down the rabbit hole. It has been four years now. Somewhere along the way I picked up enough elisp to be dangerous. TL;DR: Want to learn a new editor? Just do it. There's no magic to it. Do the tutorial, RTFM, take the short-term productivity hit.
jevgeni 12y ago
My progression was Vim -> Emacs -> Sublime. Funnily enough, on systems with no Sublime I still tend to use Vim. It took me about a month of consciously making myself work in Emacs to get a hang of it. But I don't use any major features, like macros. Emacs is awesome for Python indenting, for example, but when I switched to a less elaborate indenting convention, I kind of just drifted away from Emacs.
- tuhdo 12y ago
  You should see my other answer to see what Emacs is capable of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8639804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8639804 Definitely not less than Sublime.
  - jevgeni 12y ago
    Just noticed your comment there. And seriously impressive material there. And I've settled with Sublime not because I think it's absolutely superior to Emacs. But mostly because, I've noticed, that I don't use the advanced features that often, and when I do, I always have to look them up in a cheat sheet or my O'Reilly book on Emacs. And Sublime is a bit jiffier on a Mac, then XEmacs or AquaEmacs.
reledi 12y ago
I'm in the process of switching from vim to atom as my primary editor. Loving atom so far. The command palette makes it easy to be productive when you don't know the shortcuts yet, and it's also a very hackable editor. I'll still use vim for quick tasks since it doesn't make me switch out of terminal context.
zaphar 12y ago
I'm in the intermediate to advanced level of Vim user and I switched to emacs. It's easier than you might think thanks to evil-mode. My emacs acts just like vim thanks to that mode. Literally every keybinding and combination I used works. I switched because configuring vim with vimscript is a pain and at the time of my switchover using other languages to configure was even worse. I like elisp as the config language. That's probably not exactly the question you were asking though since It's less like I switched editors and more like I upgraded ViM's configuration language.

by fdsary 12y ago

wldcordeiro 12y ago

Sublime Text has an excellent plugin called Vintageous that gives you a lot of Vim's functionality with some of the niceties of Sublime, worth a shot if you felt crippled by it.

Zelphyr 12y ago
I have never had success with these plugins. I apparently begin typing too fast after hitting Escape and invariably the plugin can't handle that and it enters things like ":w" as text instead of processing it as a command. Obviously this isn't a problem in Vi/Vim proper but all of the Vi*-style plugins for any of the IDE's or editors I've tried--from Eclipse to Sublime--always break.
- girvo 12y ago
  The best one I've used that has worked near-perfectly for me is Vi-emulation mode in Komodo IDE. It's really impressively done, to be honest.
brianpgordon 12y ago
Sublime comes with the Vintage Mode plugin as well, which emulates Vim.
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  Vintage is great but Vintageous adds even more Vim functionality.

mariusmg 12y ago

It's pretty easy actually. Just get drunk one night and bash your head against a wall few times. This will make you forget all the keyboard shortcuts and you're free to learn a new text editor.

bbcbasic 12y ago
Since learning VIM I have got (with no addition effort) better at learning keyboard shortcuts for all kinds of different apps I use. Vim (or Emacs etc.) literally makes you smarter. I now use Ctrl-V or "+p depending in gViom depending on what mood I am in. Nice to have a choice.

cdata 12y ago

When I first broke into web development, my editors of choice were Coda, Dreamweaver and Visual Studio (I wonder if I am dating myself here). I made a mid-career move to (non-gui) Vim, mostly out of general interest. The ramp up to Vim coming from GUI-heavy editors was a long one, but I stuck with it and it was worth it for me. So, it's definitely possible to switch, you just have to be able to deal with that ramp up.

Retra 12y ago
I've been trying out vim for a while, hoping to get more productive, but the fact that "hjkl" is not "jkl;" -home keys- and that I have to reach all the way across the keyboard to hit [esc] every three seconds is not helping... I pretty much use sublime text for everything these days.
- TheCoreh 12y ago
  You can map Caps Lock to esc. A lot of people who use Vim do that.
- grmarcil 12y ago
  You can also remap Esc to jj by adding the following to your vimrc inoremap jj <Esc> The hjkl thing feels weird for a long time but it becomes natural after a while. I used Sublime for a long time with the Vintage plugin (vim like movements and some other vim features) before moving to Vim and that made the transition much easier for me. I still like Sublime, but Vim's full integration with the terminal environment is hard to beat.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > but the fact that "hjkl" is not "jkl;" -home keys- On American keyboards, anyway. That isn't how the keys are laid out on modern Dutch keyboards, though I don't know what they were like when Vim was created.
  - dunham 12y ago
    Vim inherited the keyboard mapping from vi. vi was designed on a QWERTY (American) keyboard, but the particular terminal that the author used had arrows printed on the hjkl keycaps. More information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi

chipotle_coyote 12y ago

Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? This can only be answered through anecdote, so mine is: it's really tough. I'm competent in both Vim and Emacs, with a mild preference for Vim. But I used Homesite in the very early days of the web and got used to that somewhat CUA/GUI style of editing; when I moved to BeOS (really, I did for a while) I used Pe, the programmers' editor there, and then to the Mac and BBEdit, then TextMate, then Sublime. Despite the fact that I moved across five editors and three platforms, the basics -- opening and saving files, simple navigation by character, line and board, using the clipboard, search/replace, and even basic navigation -- were for practical purposes identical across these editors. I think it's easy for experienced Vim/Emacs jockeys to downplay how important that is. It's the advanced features that make us love our editors, but sitting down in front of a new editor and realizing you're going to need to read a tutorial just to figure out how open a file and oh God what was the key that started the tutorial again is a hurdle which, in a world with a plethora of good editors that all use standard keys we've already known for the basics, often doesn't seem like it's worth jumping through. I've actually put in the effort to try and customize both Emacs and Vim with all sorts of packages that add the features I miss from Sublime and predecessors. I think my Vim setup is probably pretty awesome, tweaked and re-tweaked through multiple iterations. But I've noticed that when I want to work on a big project, almost without thinking about it I'm still going to open either Sublime or BBEdit and be into it for a few hours before I think, "Man, this would have been yet another opportunity to get better with Vim. Oh well."

evmar 12y ago

This just came up recently and my previous comment was upvoted, so please forgive me for repasting a link to an old post of mine where I described switching from vim (~10 years experience) to emacs (now at ~5 years): http://evan-tech.livejournal.com/261214.html http://evan-tech.livejournal.com/261214.html

bbcbasic 12y ago

RE: Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors? I am currently learning Vim and using it with the NERDTree plugin as a fairly nice environment to write Ruby on Rails code in my spare time. It is also nice as I have a low power PC running ubuntu in a virtualbox. So Eclipse is a no-no anyway. At work I use Visual Studio but have a Vim open all the time for where the Vim advantages outweigh the visual studio advantages. Often this is in editing config and xml files. C# Code files are nicer to edit in Visual studio with autocomplete, debugging etc. Main things I love about Vim - being able to split and tab quickly from the keyboard. And all those keyboard shortcuts to do practically anything. And it is fast. I really hate Eclipse now! Visual Studio is OK but Vim is so fast and lightweight.

weavie 12y ago
You may find vsVim (https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca-8fe1-0e90e3f79329/ https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3...) useful. I can't use Visual Studio without it.
- bbcbasic 12y ago
  I tried that, but with no easy way to turn it off (without uninstalling it) it feels a bit 'in the deep end'. Once I am happy with using Vim productively I may try it. Another concern with this is pairing, as there is no easy way to turn it off. Although staying in insert mode and keeping the default bindings for VS may be OK.
  - taternuts 12y ago
    it does allow you to easily default back to visual studio handling all of the commands. In fact, it's quite nice for a tweener vim user because you can have visual studio handle all the more complex keybindings that you don't recognize and just use it for the subset of commands you're comfortable with, and move from there
  - orand 12y ago
    Ctrl+Shift+F12 disables and re-enables VsVim. When disabled it's as if it wasn't installed.

kerr23 12y ago

I moved between being a life-long vi/vim'er to Sublime and more recently Atom. I only use Atom for coding and vim for just about everything else. The most difficult part for me is that i'll open a file in vim and then consciously go "no" <close it> and fire it up in one of the other editors. Why? because I like to keep my vim more clean. I've seen some of the really complex vim configs out there and they just didn't "do it" for me. So if i want complex things like syntax highlighting I go with Atom.

illicium 12y ago
"syntax on" is complex?

Semiapies 12y ago

EditPlus to jEdit to Emacs, myself.

tzs 12y ago

I didn't so much change editors as start using multiple editors. On OS X, I regularly use vim, TextMate, and BBEdit. I find that TextMate looks the best. I simply enjoy typing code into TextMate more than I do in vim or BBEdit. Thus, when I'm doing a stretch of writing new code, or straightforward modification of existing code, I'll probably do it in TextMate (although some days it just feels like it is a vim day or a BBEdit day). If I need to make a lot of related changes, I'll switch to vim, and use regular expressions or I'll record a macro to repeatedly apply. If I'm doing something like making some modification at all places that use a particular database table, I'll probably go to BBEdit. I can do a search for that table and click "find all", and it gives a separate window showing all the matches, with an editing section in the bottom part that shows whichever search result I click. This lets me easily see all the places where the table is referenced, and easily edit them, and go back and forth as needed. It works similarly with the results of a multi-file search, which makes it nice when I'm trying to understand crusty old legacy code. If I start a work session in TextMate, and switch to vim to do something with macros, I'll probably stay there and continue editing. When I exit the editor to test the code, then I'll probably head back to TextMate. Same if I go to BBEdit for something--I'll stay there until I need something that is better in vim. I realize I'm not making full use of the capabilities of one or more of these editors. BBEdit can certainly do most of the things vim can do, and all of the things I use vim for, for instance, but I'm fine with simply popping into vim for those things.

visarga 12y ago
I use Text Wrangler for quick access by SFTP to my code (open server / edit / save). I don't like the SFTP window much, but it does the job. TW is also very good for processing text: sorting, removing duplicates, applying regex-es, filtering and vertical columns. I tried using Sublime and I did get along well with it for a few projects, but when I am jumping around on various servers, I prefer Text Wrangler's shorter setup. Why doesn't Sublime manage SSH better?
girvo 12y ago
Ah I'm the same. I used Komodo IDE for big projects, Vim for stuff when I'm in a terminal or for Hack work (until I finish my Hack plugin for Sublime, anyway) and TextAdept for super quick text editing on big files.

evanspa 12y ago

I was mainly Java dev for 10+ years or so; I was a whiz at Eclipse. Then, one day, I forced myself to learn a Clojure. It just so happened the ecosystem mainly leveraged Emacs. And so, I forced myself to learn Emacs. It took a while - the key bindings, reading up on how to do various things, discovering great packages, learning enough Emacs Lisp to be dangerous. It was very rewarding, and I use Emacs everyday now. Today, I can't imagine not using it.

veidr 12y ago

Just like with web browsers, I use multiple editors all day long on OS X. Currently open, I have: Sublime 3, Textmate 2, BBEdit 11, Xcode 6, Rubymine 6, and (only because I visited this post and just downloaded it) CotEditor 2. There is certainly a tradeoff in the sense that I don't tend to memorize all the features of every editor, so I may not be as effective in any of them as a power user who sticks to one of them. OTOH, the Mac has excellent basic text conventions for word/line/paragraph selection, indent/dedent, etc. Also, I tend to use the different editors for different purposes. Batch find/replace? BBEdit. Objective-C? Definitely Xcode, it't the only native editor with even semi-reasonable autocomplete. Scripts and single-file text documents? These days Textmate 2 (used to be Sublime). So you still end up knowing the shortcuts and advanced features that apply to your editing scenario, even though they may not be in the same editor. But you don't get the raw, low-level text editing power that comes with mastering something like vim (which I do use a lot, too, but with such polygamous editing habits, am unlikely to master). The upside of using multiple editors is that you can pick the one that suits you best for the job at hand; another fringe benefit is that you also get to enjoy countless hours trying out every single new editor that comes out. ;-)

Tloewald 12y ago
BBEdit's multi-file search and replace (and it's compare) alone are worth it. I keep coming back to BBEdit for search and replace, even if I prefer other editors for other things. I use a lot of different editors too, rotating among favorites. The one thing I do not consistently use are modal keyboard-centric editors like vim and emacs. I get that some people like them, but they've never done much for me. (And yes, I do know how to use them. I'm old enough that I upgraded to vim early on.)
- wingerlang 12y ago
  What's different from Sublimes multi file search and replace?
- JadeNB 12y ago
  > The one thing I do not consistently use are modal keyboard-centric editors like vim and emacs. As a vim-er and not an Emacs-er, asking genuinely and not out of snark, surely Emacs is eminently non-modal (at least, not modal in the same way that vim is)?

tomphoolery 12y ago

> Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? I don't see the point in changing your editor if you don't feel it's necessary. Surely one should gain something from a change of editor...

hasenj 12y ago
He already mentioned it kinda: flexibility

eddiezane 12y ago

My original reason for learning vim was so that I could be effective when shelled into a box. I quickly became much more productive with it than any other text editor I tried to use after. Atom caught my attention, but I would up installing the vim bindings and eventually switching back.

davidwparker 12y ago

I switched from Emacs to both LightTable and Atom full-time. While I'm much more efficient in Emacs, integration are the killer features in the other two, in a way that I didn't have my .emacs setup. With LightTable, I do mostly WebGL and I often have a browser tab up with my live WebGL stuff all the time. This is super efficient and extremely nice. With Atom, I do mostly web development. Quickly jumping between files (faster than I did in Emacs) and knowing which files have been changed (they're highlighted in the tree-view) is very helpful for all work-related things.

tuhdo 12y ago
How is it faster than Projectile? Demos in here: http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-projectile.html http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-projectile.html. With Projectile, I can jump to any file quickly, even with source tree as large as Linux kernel with more than 36k files. If a file is in a project, regardless of where I see it, even in a plain .txt file, I can jump to it: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-files-dwim-1.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... If you want that live web stuff, you can try skewer-mode: https://github.com/skeeto/skewer-mode https://github.com/skeeto/skewer-mode

agentultra 12y ago

I succeeded. And haven't gone back. It took me about two weeks to transition. I had 10 years of vi(m) behind me when I gave emacs a go. I wrote about it back in 2008[0][1]. I still have the fundamental vi(m) motions in my bones... but I prefer emacs today. [0] http://agentultra.com/2008/11/12/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-holy-war/ http://agentultra.com/2008/11/12/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-... [1] http://agentultra.com/2008/11/19/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-holy-war-part-2/ http://agentultra.com/2008/11/19/seeking-enlightenment-in-a-...

tuhdo 12y ago

You can be quickly productive with my mini manual: http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html. If you write C++, did you check my C/C++ guide: http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html. A few demos: - code navigation: jump to anywhere instantly. DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif. - code completion: context-sensitve completion. DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-boost-demo.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-boost-demo.gif. - code compilation: you can click on the error and it gets you to where you want; work with any build system, while other IDE only supports a specific build system, i.e. for Makefile project, you only get plain text error message. DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-mode.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-mode.gif. - code debugging: provides a frontend for GDB; DEMO: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif. - Powerful automatic indentation: https://github.com/Bruce-Connor/aggressive-indent-mode https://github.com/Bruce-Connor/aggressive-indent-mode. It does not only indent the current line, but the whole Semantic context around your cursor. Demos inside the homepage. - Live grep: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/live_grep.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/live_grep.gif. - Access to a list of project with a few key strokes: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-switch-project.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Quickly access any file in your project, as large as Linux kernel, instantly, regardless of where you are in the project, and within a few keystrokes: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-files-1.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Jump to any file depends on context, even if the file path is in a plain ASCII text file; even if there's only a filename without any path information, as long as it's in your project, Emacs can jump to it fine: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-files-dwim-1.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Copy files from anywhere to anywhere: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-file-copy.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Delete files anywhere; files are always at your finger tip to do whatever with them: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-file-delete.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... - Switch between other files with same names but different extensions: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile-find-other-file.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectil... Work not only for C/C++ but other languages, and is customizable. You don't have to configure anything, like adding include paths. Everything is automatically done for you. - Jump to tag definition, from its own parser or external parser like GNU Global: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/helm-gtags-jump-dwim.gif - Do you like outline tree?: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/sr-speedbar.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/sr-speedbar.gif - Interactive outline tree: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-semantic-or-imenu.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-semantic-or-imenu.g... - References retrieved from its Emacs internal parser: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-symref.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/semantic-symref.gif - Beautiful compile output: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-compile.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-compile.gif - Frontend support for GDB: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/gdb-many-windows.gif - Open man page for symbol at cursor: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-man-woman.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-man-woman.gif - Emacs open 39MB C file: http://tuhdo.github.io/static/performance.gif http://tuhdo.github.io/static/performance.gif - Emac opens multi-gigabtye file: http://www.emacswiki.org/VLF http://www.emacswiki.org/VLF

Derbasti 12y ago

> Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? I'm especially curious how I could start using emacs, and actually get up to speed with it instead of using it as Notepad/TextEdit (as I would do if I started today)? I used to use Textmate at the University. Then XCode at my first job. Then I learned Vim, since every hacker in the internet seemed to love it, the usual story... (big plus: many IDEs have very good Vim key bindings) Then I simply wanted to know what Emacs would be like. I took a bit of a productivity hit for about a week or two, but not more. Over the next year or so I read the Emacs manual and dove deeply down the rabbit hole. It has been four years now. Somewhere along the way I picked up enough elisp to be dangerous. TL;DR: Want to learn a new editor? Just do it. There's no magic to it. Do the tutorial, RTFM, take the short-term productivity hit.

jevgeni 12y ago

My progression was Vim -> Emacs -> Sublime. Funnily enough, on systems with no Sublime I still tend to use Vim. It took me about a month of consciously making myself work in Emacs to get a hang of it. But I don't use any major features, like macros. Emacs is awesome for Python indenting, for example, but when I switched to a less elaborate indenting convention, I kind of just drifted away from Emacs.

tuhdo 12y ago
You should see my other answer to see what Emacs is capable of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8639804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8639804 Definitely not less than Sublime.
- jevgeni 12y ago
  Just noticed your comment there. And seriously impressive material there. And I've settled with Sublime not because I think it's absolutely superior to Emacs. But mostly because, I've noticed, that I don't use the advanced features that often, and when I do, I always have to look them up in a cheat sheet or my O'Reilly book on Emacs. And Sublime is a bit jiffier on a Mac, then XEmacs or AquaEmacs.

reledi 12y ago

I'm in the process of switching from vim to atom as my primary editor. Loving atom so far. The command palette makes it easy to be productive when you don't know the shortcuts yet, and it's also a very hackable editor. I'll still use vim for quick tasks since it doesn't make me switch out of terminal context.

zaphar 12y ago

I'm in the intermediate to advanced level of Vim user and I switched to emacs. It's easier than you might think thanks to evil-mode. My emacs acts just like vim thanks to that mode. Literally every keybinding and combination I used works. I switched because configuring vim with vimscript is a pain and at the time of my switchover using other languages to configure was even worse. I like elisp as the config language. That's probably not exactly the question you were asking though since It's less like I switched editors and more like I upgraded ViM's configuration language.