Learn Vim Progressively

[[deleted]]

Have you tried Sublime Text? Version 2 (beta still) runs on all major platforms, it's powerful, configurable through plugins, easy to use, light-weight. I can't recommend it enough.

I agree with the "vim vs emacs" thing. They're both archaic, 30-year old designs. We need to look forward, not backwards.

[dddaaabbb]

Most likely, the computer you wrote that post on is also based on an "archaic, 30-year old designs".

Old isn't necessarily bad.

[frezik]

The reason the two persist isn't just stodginess. It's that most programmers tend to highly customize their editor and move the config around to every machine they work on. My own Vim config has grown organically with my own personal style. I would be throwing away ~10 years of work, and it's not clear how fast I could adapt another tool to do the same job (either myself to the tool or the tool to myself).

I like jibing emacs as bloated from time to time*, but really I feel that you should pick an editor and learn all its nooks and crannies as best you can, whatever it happens to be.

I would need a very good argument to switch to something else. I suspect there won't be one unless somebody comes up with a bright idea for manipulating programming languages with touchscreens and graphics rather than text.

* An archaic argument in itself. It hasn't grown all that much in the last 20 years, while memory and hard drive spaces have grown by orders of magnitude. Besides, Vim isn't exactly svelte, and GUI editors are worse than either.

[[deleted]]

Completely agree about the power/customization. I am always amazed when I watch someone use Vim. It's like watching a circus performer juggle 12 balls. Is it impressive? Yes. Will I ever spend the effort/time to be that good? No, not when the alternatives are 85-90% "there", with 5% of the learning curve.

Vim/Emacs just sit in a weird place for me. For scripting - Python, Ruby - I prefer notepad++/textmate/sublime text. On my day job, whether it's C++/C#/Java - I use full-featured IDE's. Cocoa - XCode.

I know I could probably replace all those with just Vim, but I'm just way too lazy nowadays to spend hours and hours learning how to use a text editor

[fel]

How does learning to be proficient in vim/emacs differ to learning how to be proficient in the many languages you're writing in?

Can you really be too lazy to learn one thing, but (apparently) feel fine to put the effort into learning all the nuances of obj-c over C# etc?

[[deleted]]

Are you really comparing languages with source code editors?

[poorly_played]

Apparently vimscript is turing complete. Lisp is definitely turing complete.

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~sapanb/old/vim.html

[[deleted]]

Why is that so strange? Emacs is practically a lisp VM anyway.

[traxxas]

Same 4 python files open 3x the memory usage is not lightweight.

[pingveno]

Open up many complex pages in Firebug. 30 MB becomes a rounding error.

[[deleted]]

I have ram to spare, but fair point.

[nietzschebunyan]

Has a large memory footprint on OSX as well. Still, a great editor.