I dislike Evil, and would never recommend it to anyone looking for a modal editing solution for Emacs. I would rather break my pinky with the modifiers than use Evil.
Evil is SLOOWWW: its startup time is 10x longer than other modal editing packages.
It has high cost of integration with other packages; editing-related packages rarely play well with Evil unless specifically designed for it.
We can do better than vi. Nowadays, there are some more modern alternatives to vi, like Kakoune that fix some of the fundamental problems with vi. One such problem is the fact that you cannot know what you are acting on until after the command completes: Kakoune solves this by having a unique noun verb syntax rather than vi's verb noun syntax. This means that you get constant feedback about what you’re acting on before you act on it, since objects are always highlighted.
Instead, for anyone looking for a serious and actually good modal editing, I would suggest them to try out meow. It fixes all of the problems I mentioned above, and makes more improvements to the vi experience that I didn't mention.
It's a sound choice. I don't like to use it, personally, because I want to use something that uses same motions and syntax as editors on servers that I don't own (ex. customers). And, I'm not a fan of Lisp. It's a great and (self-)extensible text editor/lisp interpreter, though.
Ohh that makes more sense. Yeah perhaps, although come to think of it I still need to install vim from the package manager even if vi works fresh out of the box so maybe not?
Vim is the preferred experience, so it's for end users. Unless you have a system with no real addons and classic *nix environment, you're almost always going to be using Vim. Alpine linux is a good example of a stripped down environment that still uses Vi.
SVG, unironically yes. There's a few times where I found a library or WYSIWYG editor making some strange choices for its SVG output, and I had to fix it manually.
Everyone at work is using Cursor these days, except for me using neovim and my emacs loving coworker. When we present during pair programming our coworkers go nuts over watching our workflows and trying to figure out if they can do similar things in Cursor lol.
Recently, I recommended to a friend that basic vim/vi is worth learning because it's a baseline that you can always trust will be there across different Linux systems.
They asked me what I used most on my home system, and the answer was emacs, but I was very clear that I was not recommending it. It's a particular kind of person who finds themselves at home in emacs, and for everyone besides those people, selling them on emacs would feel like persuading them to do hard drugs.
I don't know, I used vim for like 6 years and then discovered, thanks to the power of evil and doom, how much better the vi experience is inside the context of emacs. With all the utilities and packages, it's worth the small additional burden of troubleshooting that it imposes.
I think there's a good reason for that. If you're not as concerned about resource consumption (Emacs used to be called "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping", back when 8MB was a lot), then there's no reason to avoid even more complex and resource intensive IDEs. People who wanted a complex editor, but in a relatively small footprint, stuck with some variant of vi.
Thus, vi found a stable evolutionary niche. It's a tardigrade.
It isn't as dumb as it sounds, honestly! I used to use DBeaver and it is a fantastic project, but I really wanted Vim keybinds to construct my queries as they can sometimes be quite large. There used to be a plugin that added the functionality but it stopped working on my machine. This Vim plugin is essentially a wrapper for the CLI SQL client (psql in my case), so using it actually kind of makes sense, I think.
The biggest issue I faced was exporting the results, but I just created a function in my ~/.vimrc that copies all the text of the results to a new tab and formats it however I want. CSV, HTML, JSON, XML, Markdown, whatever I need is all there and predefined. All I have to do is call :ExportToMarkdown and off I go.
Obsidian the note taking program, I use it for storing my code, and also a KB at work. It's made for note taking, but I use it like it's my git, and wiki for an IT team.
I know this is supposed to be a joke. But, VI is awful, and i can't believe anybody would use that over a modern editor. But, I know some people who like it.
how do you tolerate the 0 and $ to jump to the ends? it's so painfully inconvenient and made me switch to helix where it's g->h and g->l. do you not use the default keymap?
Most nvim users I know have their setup very much customized. That takes time, effort and is a pita. But afterwards you have a tool that just works like you want it to work, and is super fast (at least compared to VSCode).
They're both code/text editors, or what would you call VSCode instead? An IDE? you can make an IDE out of nvim if you want.
Yes, there is a vim mode in VSCode, but in some cases it can be very slow (like editing a few thousand columns at once), and is not as tightly integrated.
Coding is a team sport bcz it takes a lot of people to maintain large complex systems, has nothing to do with capitalism. Hell, I make video games in my spare time, and can barely manage a half asked attempt at a game for fun when working alon (unless I want to spend a lot of time on it). Alternatively, I can make a decently playable game with a few more people helping me. Coding is just a lot of work if you want to make anything substantial, just how it is.
Modern “vi” is typically a symlink to vim, and as long as compatibility is disabled it’s very useful; especially when working over ssh or quick and dirty config editing that doesn’t warrant a full blown ide to be started up.
Nano is for people that are too lazy to learn vi if they much time (ergo not needing it)or have too less time to learn it (even tho, they would get so much time back in return, if they would learn vi)
This applies only to people that regularly work with GUIless headless machines
Okay I kinda get it if you regularly write scripts or configs on headless machines, though even then I'd think using just vscode remote development plugin would be my tool of choice.
Usually I use nano if I just need to do a quick change to a file, or even on my personal device if it requires sudo (such as apt sources or fstab) and I do it just once so don't bother thinking how to use sed for it
in highschool my physics teacher used vim to write stuff, like most times when checking if everyone was in class he'd just open vim and type people's name in there
Oscar wild is pure sex and resting in power, so...maybe both
I know it from the Janelle monet song which apparently quotes a book from 2002 but I find it hard to believe that's the first time the phrase was said.
What makes 6 so popular?
Because vii viii ix
LXIX my balls! Haha got'em.
Believe it or not, this is the second time I got to make that joke within an hour.
* laughs in Latin *
Emacs
(ducks)
I use vi from an Emacs Shell, which was spawned from an Emacs GUI.
bro tryin' to summon a demon... /s
Emacs is what the unified linux desktop should be
Evil
I dislike Evil, and would never recommend it to anyone looking for a modal editing solution for Emacs. I would rather break my pinky with the modifiers than use Evil.
noun verbsyntax rather than vi'sverb nounsyntax. This means that you get constant feedback about what you’re acting on before you act on it, since objects are always highlighted.Instead, for anyone looking for a serious and actually good modal editing, I would suggest them to try out meow. It fixes all of the problems I mentioned above, and makes more improvements to the
viexperience that I didn't mention.Emacs
EMACS. It’s the superior text editor.
I'd say it's a superior text editor.
It's a text editor?
I suppose I tend to think of it more as a Lisp interpreter that's capable of self-extension.
link the vi command to emacs, and you'll be able to say you use vi
I haven't wanted to say that in the 32 years I've had the choice.
oh ok then link the emacs command to vi and you'll be able to keep saying you use emacs while using a better text editor 👍
(please dont kill me this is a joke i dont even use vi please have mercy please spare me please please please)
This is the way.
It's a sound choice. I don't like to use it, personally, because I want to use something that uses same motions and syntax as editors on servers that I don't own (ex. customers). And, I'm not a fan of Lisp. It's a great and (self-)extensible text editor/lisp interpreter, though.
No
Editing excel spreadsheet? VI
here you go
Excel files (.xlsx) is just an archive of some XML files and whatnot, so sure you could edit them in vim.
Though I'd rather edit them in CSV format
Vi hasn’t been updated since 2005. Aren’t everyone just using vim or neovim?
Huh,
vifor me has always been actual vi, not vim. Didn't know some systems symlink vi to vim.A long time ago, someone posted advocating symlinking
vitoemacs. Evil, but entertaining.vim has a limited "vi-mode" that it uses if you call it as vi. so it could still be vim.
Ohh that makes more sense. Yeah perhaps, although come to think of it I still need to install vim from the package manager even if vi works fresh out of the box so maybe not?
i think there's also a
vim-minithat gets installed by default in some debian-based distros.I had to make an
alias vim=vim.tinyin raspberry pi since standard vim is not installed by defaultVim is the preferred experience, so it's for end users. Unless you have a system with no real addons and classic *nix environment, you're almost always going to be using Vim. Alpine linux is a good example of a stripped down environment that still uses Vi.
Not to imply that Vi is perfect, but Vi is perfect. What do you need an update for? /s
Ed is the standard editor
We don't want a viditor, we want an editor. Why? Because ed is the standard!
On the system I administrate,
viis symlinked toedMike Tyson?
Java? vi!
COBOL? vi!
SVG? Believe it or not, vi!
/s
BMP? vi and control-v!
WAV? There's probably a plugin for that!
SVG, unironically yes. There's a few times where I found a library or WYSIWYG editor making some strange choices for its SVG output, and I had to fix it manually.
Everyone at work is using Cursor these days, except for me using neovim and my emacs loving coworker. When we present during pair programming our coworkers go nuts over watching our workflows and trying to figure out if they can do similar things in Cursor lol.
What is Cursor, another AI-infested slop?
It's a version of VSCode with deep AI integration. I'll say, it's pretty good from a workflow perspective. But I just use Avante to similar effect.
tbh they probably can, it's just more
ctrlinvolvedProbably!
I'd like to see them do visual-block/rectangle selection.
multi-line cursor gets close enough
Neovim and emacs are both incredibly heavy. I would rather just use something like VScodium.
Nano and Vim are small and quick.
I would like you to open the same file in neovim, Emacs, and vscodium and see the ram usage.
Matter of fact I've done this for you (230 line json):
heavily customised emacs: 34 MB
heavily customised neovim: 32 MB
Newly installed vscodium: 300 MB+
both emacs and neovim have syntax highlighting, completion, mouse support, terminal support, window management, and so on
Debugger?
Yea they can attach to debuggers via dap
great
The comments on this post went exactly like they have over the past 20 years, with one exception.
Emacs is all but forgoten.
Vim wins.
Recently, I recommended to a friend that basic vim/vi is worth learning because it's a baseline that you can always trust will be there across different Linux systems.
They asked me what I used most on my home system, and the answer was emacs, but I was very clear that I was not recommending it. It's a particular kind of person who finds themselves at home in emacs, and for everyone besides those people, selling them on emacs would feel like persuading them to do hard drugs.
Didn't even macs have vi?
Basically every Unix-derived OS comes with vi. Emacs came out in 1976, macs didn't exist until 1984.
Yes and it's better than TextEdit that is bundled with MacOs
Be real fukin careful now. You’ll tear my enacs from my cold dead hands
(But yeah, I use evil-mode. Also I edit files on remote servers with vim. I’m a traitor…)
I don't know, I used vim for like 6 years and then discovered, thanks to the power of evil and doom, how much better the vi experience is inside the context of emacs. With all the utilities and packages, it's worth the small additional burden of troubleshooting that it imposes.
you have offended all 6 of us, prepare for retribution
I think there's a good reason for that. If you're not as concerned about resource consumption (Emacs used to be called "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping", back when 8MB was a lot), then there's no reason to avoid even more complex and resource intensive IDEs. People who wanted a complex editor, but in a relatively small footprint, stuck with some variant of vi.
Thus, vi found a stable evolutionary niche. It's a tardigrade.
When people are free to choose the best editor for them, we ALL win.
Unless it happens to be Ms word, in which case we all lose
There we are. Now all is right with the world.
What would an editor discuss be without those that support Emacs?
I noticed we even got some doom evil advocates! Lemmy truly has come off age!
(Note: as tone is hard on text: I'm genuinely pleased, and agree that the joy of Linux/Unix is it's variety. Thank you everyone)
The last one should be
Yes, this is my preferred SQL client!
Ah, nice one! Didn't realize it could even be done.
It isn't as dumb as it sounds, honestly! I used to use DBeaver and it is a fantastic project, but I really wanted Vim keybinds to construct my queries as they can sometimes be quite large. There used to be a plugin that added the functionality but it stopped working on my machine. This Vim plugin is essentially a wrapper for the CLI SQL client (psql in my case), so using it actually kind of makes sense, I think.
The biggest issue I faced was exporting the results, but I just created a function in my ~/.vimrc that copies all the text of the results to a new tab and formats it however I want. CSV, HTML, JSON, XML, Markdown, whatever I need is all there and predefined. All I have to do is call
:ExportToMarkdownand off I go.Bro you forgot the 'm' at the end of vi
And the i, c, r, and o. In fact keep the vi.
Sorry maybe I'm dumb. But does this mean VIM and Obsidian are Vi?
Vi is actually a predecessor to Vim but many people, myself included, will alias Nvim or Vim to Vi. And I've seen people use Vi as a catch all too.
I usually refer to im as "vi" just to
make people think I'm old school and coolsave time typing that last character.But Obsidian??
Oh yes. My "excell isn't a database" program. Obsidian.
I want to understand this comment!
Obsidian the note taking program, I use it for storing my code, and also a KB at work. It's made for note taking, but I use it like it's my git, and wiki for an IT team.
I know this is supposed to be a joke. But, VI is awful, and i can't believe anybody would use that over a modern editor. But, I know some people who like it.
Literally the only thing I code in at work. Have done so for decades.
Can't stop, won't stop.
how do you tolerate the 0 and $ to jump to the ends? it's so painfully inconvenient and made me switch to helix where it's g->h and g->l. do you not use the default keymap?
Shift-A and Shift-I to append at the end or insert at the start.
Once you know the system, it's much easier to do everything without having to take your hands off the keyboard to use a mouse.
you can change that if it bothers you
yeah ik, I'm just curious about how people deal with it
Most nvim users I know have their setup very much customized. That takes time, effort and is a pita. But afterwards you have a tool that just works like you want it to work, and is super fast (at least compared to VSCode).
I don't understand why you compare it to vs code, it's not a text editor and besides, it has vim too?
They're both code/text editors, or what would you call VSCode instead? An IDE? you can make an IDE out of nvim if you want.
Yes, there is a vim mode in VSCode, but in some cases it can be very slow (like editing a few thousand columns at once), and is not as tightly integrated.
Muscle memory mostly. I miss vim keybinding when I have to type in anything else, including Lemmy.
There's a CLI Lemmy app, no idea if it uses vim keys but it would surprise me if it wasn't an option.
You could also do
IorAfollowed byescfor the same effect.Most often though I use
/or?to just go specifically where I want.For me, it's that it is shorter to type 0. Also I cannot somehow recall 2 letter commands
Yeah, it's a dinosaurs tool for people who refuse to adapt to new stuff.
Imagine thinking modern IDE are more efficient than vi 😯
Curser is more intuitive, I agree, but you will never win a code race against similar skilled coder on vi..
Coding isn't a race, it's a team sport. And if you think its not, you're in the wrong profession.
Umm, there are regularly coding race events here where I live..
Coding can be hobby as well, you know.
Not all of this world is pure capitalism, some have some free time doing stuff they want how they want.
Coding is not my profession (right now)
If you value it as a hobby, don't make it that again :)
😄 why would someone not make his hobby his profession?
I have never coded as major part of profession, yet, but I am on the way there.
Coding is a team sport bcz it takes a lot of people to maintain large complex systems, has nothing to do with capitalism. Hell, I make video games in my spare time, and can barely manage a half asked attempt at a game for fun when working alon (unless I want to spend a lot of time on it). Alternatively, I can make a decently playable game with a few more people helping me. Coding is just a lot of work if you want to make anything substantial, just how it is.
Modern “vi” is typically a symlink to vim, and as long as compatibility is disabled it’s very useful; especially when working over ssh or quick and dirty config editing that doesn’t warrant a full blown ide to be started up.
Nano is for that purpose
It is a pain for larger files. It small and light but doesn't have the same featureset.
Nano is for people that are too lazy to learn vi if they much time (ergo not needing it)or have too less time to learn it (even tho, they would get so much time back in return, if they would learn vi)
This applies only to people that regularly work with GUIless headless machines
Okay I kinda get it if you regularly write scripts or configs on headless machines, though even then I'd think using just vscode remote development plugin would be my tool of choice.
Usually I use nano if I just need to do a quick change to a file, or even on my personal device if it requires sudo (such as apt sources or fstab) and I do it just once so don't bother thinking how to use sed for it
Micro is the best. I work with servers all the time and it's so nice to just be able to use my mouse and normal shortcuts.
I prefer vim, but vi is nice too. (I miss Vimperator for Firefox)
It’s just so fast when you get it down. It works well with a cli-only work flow. Why use mouse when type very fast?
There’s immense pleasure and honor in writing C the way our ancestors did.
Vim actually has pretty good mouse support too if you turn it on!
for Firefox there's now Vimium-c and Tridactyl. personally using Vimium and its been great
If you liked vimperator, you might like https://qutebrowser.org/
it's not everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. It's not awful though. Arcane, yes. very powerful? also yes.
Most people just use vim
in highschool my physics teacher used vim to write stuff, like most times when checking if everyone was in class he'd just open vim and type people's name in there
Op, what do you find more offputting: emacs or neovim?
Is no one gonna talk about neovim or are we all just like set the alias and forgot that we are inside neovim and not vim or vi
Well, "vi is love" is something I always see as "masochism is related to sex".
How would you categorize masochism as not sex? :o
Everything is sex, except sex, which is power
Oscar wild is pure sex and resting in power, so...maybe both
I know it from the Janelle monet song which apparently quotes a book from 2002 but I find it hard to believe that's the first time the phrase was said.
Well, using vi without being forced at gunpoint.
And before you accuse me of being an Emacs fanatic - nope, they exist on the same level of masochism.
If you don't have one to begin with, sure, I guess. For everyone else, there's Nano.
Skill issue
Vi has a shit design issue
Coding in Ansible?
You write Ansible playbooks to automate infrastructure management. But calling it a coding language might be a stretch it is just yaml
I like micro
This is the best answer
Nano is just better and I'll happily die on this hill
No
Nano is easier to get into, but far more limited.
And easier to get out of…
Is it? If it wasn't printed on the bottom, would you really be able to guess Ctrl+X, Y, Enter any easier than colon, q, Enter?
The key difference here is "it's printed at the bottom".
I don't immediately need a user guide to tell me how to save and exit the program
skill issue
xoff ignored mumble mumble
I use nano for editing config files in the terminal. For everything else I use VSCodium. Roast me.
You already did that yourself
I use Mint, BTW.
It is very fast
We will die together brother...
NANO FOR LIFE
OK, I can see the whites of your eyes.