[not a debate just a poll] Emacs or Vim

[jimi_hendrix]

please NO flamewars!

i just am curious about which editor has more supporters on the forum

EDIT: you can say why you use what you use, just dont go smashing each other

(we all know vim is better </jk>)

[fiddler616]

I personally would be interested to know why (in a non-flamey kind of way) people picked one over the other.

[x33a]

i think both are extremely powerful editors, emacs infact might be even more feature rich than vim. but, i use and love vim for its simple key bindings. emacs' learning curve is higher than vim, and the keys are a bit awkward to use.

[Wybiral]

emacs, mostly because of slime (http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/)

[Simian Man]

I use vim because it does everything I want and nothing I don't. Honestly if I took the time to learn Emacs, I imagine I could get it to where I like it better, but it is just not worth the time or energy.

Plus emacs looks more out of place on the desktop than gvim. What is that toolkit they use?

[namegame]

I learned vim first, so I've stuck with it. Also all my professors use it, so I try to get on their good side. :P

I would like to learn more about emacs as it would be good to know if I ever need to help someone who uses it.

[Sorivenul]

Vim user here.

[sujoy]

i dont know which one to vote for :confused:
i started with vi, then vim, and its a habbit to open a term and vi something (vi aliased to vim).

however, i use emacs for slime and slowly started to like it enough to use it for general coding. in short, i use both, regularly ;).

[PandaGoat]

I vote for emacs.

What I like:
* A nice substrate for extensibility
(emacs) Lisp is really nice. When I looked into vim, I found whatever it uses to not be as nice as lisp.

* Easy to use keyboard macros
A common mistake is that emacs' keyboard macros are random key combinations. However, this is not true. For example, macros dealing with the window, buffer, or frame start with C-x. A keyboard macro beginning with C has a complementary macro beginning with M; to exemplify, C-w is cut and M-w is copy.

My complaint with vim is that using the : is really annoying. The time and tolerance it takes to type :w to save a file is greater than typing C-x C-s since I almost always have my pinky on C. This might not actually be the case, as it is really up to preference, but this is how I see it.

* Integration with terminal
You can easily run interpreters, a terminal, anything to do with the terminal, and usually anything low level like this, within emacs.

* System of displaying files (including modes)
I really dislike vim's input and default modes. I do not think there is any logical reason of splitting this up. If I want to copy and paste something, I do not want to switch to default mode, copy the text, switch to input mode, and paste it in.

Of course I am committing the fallacy of suppressed evidence here but somewhat intentionally to show that vim has random quirks that require learning. It is not any easier than learning emacs. And as stated before, you should read more on emacs before concluding anything. Similarly, you should read more on vim before concluding anything. But more importantly, you should try both before concluding anything.

Suggestions
*Emacs
Read this to get a gist of emacs: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/
This to get a gist of what extensibility there is: http://www.emacswiki.org/
This to get a gist of some cool things people like that emacs does: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GreatEmacsFeatures

*Vim
This is all I cared to find for vim: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_toc.html and http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

[ajackson]

Probably vim for me, though I tend not to use it that much now.

I started with vi and emacs at university but one of my future employers only had vi installed so I got used to using that.

[spupy]

First there was Emacs, but I couldn't get myself to use it. The keybindings were confusing to me and I frequently got lost. Also, for some reason, the fonts in emacs look hideous. Perhaps vim doesn't have as much features, but I like its simplicity compared to emacs.
As a long time nethack player, the hjkl combo was god-sent. :)

[nvteighen]

Emacs, because of the facilities it brings for Scheme (when MIT/GNU Scheme installed).

Actually, I never used vim seriously... :p



Plus emacs looks more out of place on the desktop than gvim. What is that toolkit they use?

I guess you used the emacs22-x11 frontend. That uses Motif, if I'm not wrong. But there's also emacs22-gtk, which uses GTK+ as toolkit and looks perfectly. I attach a screenshot (and a nice photogenic Scheme code). You have to install it separately... (and you can have both emacs too...)

[jimi_hendrix]

i mainly use vim because its commands make sense if you think about them and its name souds cooler

i do use emacs when i do any form of lisp though (rarely)

[tom66]

I might be a sour grape, but I find gedit or nano fine for my purposes...

[fiddler616]

Going back to tutorials, I'm slowly wading through this (http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Vim).
@tom66 Yeah, I haven't reached the point of competency where I can use Vim always, I'll usually make myself use it, and then switch to gedit or Geany when I lose patience.

[jimi_hendrix]

very interesting, we vimmers out number the emacs users more than 3 to 1

[mrm48]

Using Vim just because that's what I'm used to.

Is emacs really that much better for lisp? I've been doing a lot of common lisp lately and I'm just curious what emacs offers.

[maximinus_uk]

Both are good when you finally get used to them, but the amount of work involved makes people defend their choice a little too fanatically - as if to justify their decision.

VI is worth knowing because it's just so damn standard - sit at a *NIX box and run VI, it'll appear.

EMACS is stupidly versatile and I learnt it because of having to program LISP, otherwise I'd never have put in the effort - it's almost anti-user friendly.

But these threads always seem to dissolve into massive flame wars.

Emacs is better though :P

[Juffo-Wup]

I took a look at Emacs on Windows and went through the tutorial a bit but I never completed it.

When I switched to Linux I got into Vim during my ventures into the command line, and kept using it regularly for my code-writing needs.

The times I have tried to go back to Emacs I found it a bit painful on the hands (and wrists!), but I can't be arsed to (learn how to) change my keyboard's layout to make it more comfortable. Also, I dislike how the fonts look out of the box.

But if someone would have the kindness of telling me how to turn that silly 'menu' key on my keyboard to and additional 'Meta' one, I would appreciate it and give Emacs another try.

[jimi_hendrix]

Using Vim just because that's what I'm used to.

Is emacs really that much better for lisp? I've been doing a lot of common lisp lately and I'm just curious what emacs offers.

its customary to use emacs for lisp

you can use vim, but most lispers use emacs

[sujoy]

Using Vim just because that's what I'm used to.

Is emacs really that much better for lisp? I've been doing a lot of common lisp lately and I'm just curious what emacs offers.

check out the slime screencast (http://www.archive.org/details/UsingtheSLIMELispInteractionModeforEmacs)

[Tim Sharitt]

I prefer emacs+slime+sbcl for working with lisp, everything just seems to work together so well.

[jpkotta]

I've only used enough Vi to be able to edit things in a pinch. Nano is almost as ubiquitous as Vi, so I'll usually use that if I'm on a random system.

I use Emacs, because there's always a mode for what I'm doing.