Using Emacs Episode 67 - An Emacs vs Vim rant

[davidjohansson]

I think this might actually be the most reasonable editor war video on the internet!

[myfavouritecolorisgreen]

used vim for a year, using emacs for a month now and i love both and use both depending on my mood xD
your using emacs series has helped me to know cool features about emacs, thank you!

[khalilzakariazemmoura]

What i like about your videos is you always speaks about the way you do things not the way things should be done

[lordofenron]

I liked your comparison and you seem quite fair for both of the editors. I really hope you continue making these videos since they are really helping me learning to use Emacs. Great work :)

[_Pyroon_]

I appreciate the non dogmatic approach. Also, emacs hotkeys are fantastic with Dvorak.

[fabiocoldani]

I've been trying to jump ships from Vim to Emacs in the last few weeks, this video is honestly the best comparison of the two I have been able to find. The whole channel is great, so glad I found it!

[ineuron]

Other day I was searching for a historical video on text editors history. I guess I was so lucky to find this excellent video today!

[emvdl]

Fully agree, thanks, great video, there should be no such silly “editor war”. The two of them are absolutely fine/great. Personally I use both everyday, though emacs+evil much more last couple of years. The best thing of emacs is that you can easily customize/extend really everything including any “stone age” keybindings in case you do not prefer those. VI is everywhere, which is an advantage. Tramp, dired, orgmode, magit and diff in emacs are great. People should use whatever they prefer and fit their needs best. Both editors and their creators earned respect... 🙌👍

[foobargorch]

great history lesson!


i started with bbedit, then when macs became unixes i learned vim and was hooked, for 15 years i hated but put up with vimscript because i really loved modal editing. fwiw, i always used the arrow keys, i still don't know to navigate with hjkl intuitively ;-)


i tried using vile years ago and it drove me nuts because the emulation wasn't close enough and i couldn't disentangle my muscle memory to figure out which vi commands didn't work, but now i'm a very happy evil mode user and (very slowly) learning emacs and your videos are a great resource


IMO this was not a rant at all, just good advice about being pragmatic, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, people can get so tribal about this stuff, both to their own detriment and in a way that hurts newcomers or people with different needs, it's very sad

[vapourmile]

Thanks for the window into teco, gives historical context. It seems to have a lot in common with ed. In fact, not too bad for editing small files when you know how to use it.

[bnbvbbnbvb]

awesome information and I love emacs + evil-mode.

[Socio_Linux]

Great video, the most illuminating rant between emacs & vim, I love when you said that emacs introduce all vim with evil. I use vim, tried Doom, but is a lacking of the s command that I use a lot for only delete one character and stay in insert mode, this can be doing with c-l that deletes one character to the left, but the typing of two keys instead of one breaks my flow, then I go back to vim, of course know I seeking for plugins that give me some kind of emacs functionality, like vim-easy-motion, and making vim more emacs.

[effectivecode]

Great video! I like the default Emacs bindings a lot.

[BatteryProductions]

the greatest vim vs emacs video... i use both, in Arch btw...

[oqia]

This episode should be called a history of emacs and vim instead, very informative thanks !

[lineber]

As things have progressed the whole "vim vs emacs" is only about keybindings. I believe you are right, it's a diffrent way of thinking about things.


I think Vim is more influencial. There is no right or wrong, just that I use my vim bindings everywhere. I have a vi-mode in my command line prompt. I can use vim bindings when on facebook, reddit, and twitter. Plus there are so many software tools that automatically work with the navigation keybindings of vim. For instance, right now I have a pdf loaded in zathura and can use the vim keys to move around.


My question is that if DOOM emacs is now my favorite vim editor, then isn't this a win for both vim and emacs? The line is blured, I'm going to become an emacs user but not know the emacs keybindings.

[Oswee]

I really think we all really missing this history of the legacy. This could be whole new movement in YouTube to talk about history how we came where we are now. These days fanboys just learn how to 'create-react-app' and thats it. Most of them are missing those deeper concepts. Personally i found my self that knowing the CS history helps me to learn much more efficient/better. And there is no many people left who are able to tell the story for YouTube. So IMO we all should do something about that. I mean to bring the history of the legacy for next generations.

[BuildFunThings]

Hi Mike,

(crosspost from your blog)


The book states that (among many other things) to learn one editor and learn it really well as it is the tool of your trade. My mentor was using Emacs and at the end of 1999 I wrote my first lines in my Emacs configuration. He also told me to be curious about how other people work and learn from them.


So we had a Vim user as well (this was before IDEs were so popular) and he showed me how to edit really well in Vim and I learned from him as well. In the end I use Emacs as my editing "platform"; I edit everything from code, to curriculum design to email in Emacs. But sometimes I use Vim when a quick text edit is needed and I am in a terminal.

Sadly the discussion between the 2 programs is almost religious (or sports), only 1 can be "the real one" and the communities sadly reflect this, not so much by its core users, but by the group of people that sway from one to another with zealous drive.


What I learned:

- Learn from eachother
- Choose one, learn it well
- Enjoy what you are doing

Thanks for the video!

Cheers

[aehjr]

One correction to video is that that vi did indeed have buffers. Creating a new buffer did not necessarily create an actual file (though the temp editing file was created), so if you quit the buffer before saving as a file, you have no files. One could not split the window in vi, but you could have multiple buffers/files and switch between them much like Emacs.

[yusefaslam]

Any updates on you trying out EviL mode?