
After over a decade of Vim, I’m hooked on Emacs - zeveb
http://changelog.complete.org/archives/9861-emacs-1-ditching-a-bunch-of-stuff-and-moving-to-emacs-and-org-mode
======
bocklund
I did the same thing and stuck with it for a year. In the last couple months I
decided that I needed to stop tweaking every last thing and wasting so much
time and compromise by using the tools that allow me to be the most
productive.

I dropped my highly customized emacs for Omni Focus (org-mode), Mail.app
(mu4e), SublimeText (general emacs, org-mode), Mendeley (org-ref, helm), MS
Word (LaTeX-mode). I never stopped using PowerPoint because it’s the standard
in science and the couple times I tried Beamer (directly and through org-
export) were a nightmare for having multiple figures per slide. I also
sometimes use Excel now, though Python is still more often the better tool. I
have not found a good personal knowledge base; right now I am using Evernote.

I have several collaborations and projects. Keeping my tasks organized needed
to be easier than org. Working with other people in formats that will make
them happy to work with me was also critical. Even with things like Overleaf
and ShareLaTeX, it is too hard to collaborate with others.

Giving up plain text formats and version control are challenges.

~~~
danieldk
I have also tried to live with Emacs for about a year. In most respects it is
absolutely great, inline LaTeX rendering, org-mode is like having Jupyter in
your text editor (and a lot more), Magit is hands-down the best Git porcelain.

However, I have found that both with Spacemacs and vanilla Emacs + packages I
basically end up with a Rube Goldberg machine where it is hard to see how
things work and fit together. Combined with the tendency of packages to break
very often, I frequently had the feeling that the ground was crumbling under
my feet.

I am mostly back to vim now for editing (+ Things for todos). For
presentations and text I use one of {LaTeX, pandoc Markdown, Deckset.app
Markdown}.

~~~
confounded
Packages breaking is a real problem. I’ve found that explicitly versioning
them (eg comitting their source) has made this much less of a problem.

~~~
ethelward
You may be interested by the straight.el package manager.

[https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el](https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el)

~~~
confounded
Thank you!

------
learc83
Vim has been a bit of a mixed blessing for me. I rarely actually use vim, but
I use the keybindings _everywhere_.

It's great because I can fairly comfortably move between most editors because
most editors have a vim mode.

The downside is that most editors don't have a complete vim mode, so it's
never 100%.

~~~
Sean1708
Ah see what really bugs me is that most vim modes _do_ try to be a complete
vim mode (and the fact that they never succeed just adds insult to injury),
they always try to be a vim emulator instead of providing vim-like keybindings
that make sense in the context of the editor.

I do appreciate that I'm very much in the minority here though.

~~~
ufo
Neovim has a plugin api that let's it be used as a "real vim" back end for
text editor plugins.

~~~
dotancohen
And I'm still searching for the good Python and PHP IDE that implements it.
I'm hoping that Jetbrains will, as I use IdeaVIM in a few if their products,
but right now I always have to switch between the IDE for general editing and
VIM 8 or NeoVim for terrific macros or some hardcore surgery. Having that
power right in PyCharm or any other decent IDE would be a dream.

------
alexpetralia
Surprised to see no mention of spacemacs[1] so far - you get the evil
keybindings with the helm user interface.

[1] [http://spacemacs.org/](http://spacemacs.org/)

~~~
jtth
I wanted to love it but it takes longer than Atom to start up on a new iMac.

~~~
endisukaj
You are supposed to use it with emacsclient. You run spacemacs as a daemon the
first time and just connect to it all the subsequent times.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
It sounds like he never wanted vim to begin with. He wanted an IDE, which vim
isn't. Vim is your editor and Unix is your IDE.

Effective vim does not start with a lot of plugins IMO. If you expect more
than an editor from vim, you have come to the wrong place.

~~~
lev99
I've been using vim for over 10 years. This is, imo, the happy path to being
very productive in vim.

1\. Learn basic movements and insert/normal mode

2\. Learn advanced movements. When you want to insert some text learn the
fastest way to move your cursor to that location in normal mode. Learn the
different way move from normal mode to insert mode.

3\. Learn find & replace commands.

4\. Learn macros for repetitive tasks.

5\. Learn when to use visual mode.

6\. Improve .vimrc file. Remap keys to reduce keystrokes based on your
personal workflow.

7\. Learn about buffers.

~~~
pacomerh
This seems about right, I would add that it helps a lot if you go to vimgolf
and try some of the exercises people do. It will make you do things
differently and expand your vim horizon.

------
arnoooooo
I used Vim for 15 years, then switched to Emacs+Evil. Vim is the best
interface, Emacs the best platform. Emacs+Evil combines both.

~~~
ben509
Haha, I used vim for a few years before switching to emacs. My brain just does
not work modally. Still miss the dot though.

~~~
gowld
ummm
[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mo...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Modes.html)

~~~
grzm
I believe this is a different sense of _mode_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Interface)

------
ben509
I've been using emacs for years, and I certainly did the whole "oh wow use
emacs for everything" bit. Over time, I've pulled back and don't use many
plugins outside of helm and flycheck.

I can not for the life of me understand the appeal of org-mode. It's probably
just me, because most other organizers don't work for me, but if you're going
to do a file-based organizer, it seems like you want a way to easily pull
stuff out of old files so your working set isn't spread out all over the
place.

~~~
brandonmenc
> I can not for the life of me understand the appeal of org-mode.

I used emacs for nearly two decades, and I agree.

I tried - so hard - to get into org-mode, but just couldn't do it. I'd use it
religiously for a week or two, and then the inertia was just too high. Or
maybe I really didn't need all the features. Who knows.

Saying you "don't get" org-mode is blasphemy in the church of emacs, so I just
assumed something was wrong with me and kept my mouth shut, and used it as a
very simple todo list.

I would, however, use org-mode if I were say, working on a PhD or doing long-
term public research where keeping everything in an open format was essential.

~~~
Myrmornis
I stopped using org-mode when I moved from academia to work as a programmer so
that fits with what you say.

~~~
codygman
I use org-mode for work actually. Kind of similar to this but less devops:

[http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-
devops.htm...](http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-devops.html)

------
Aloha
I guess I'm all alone over here with my love of nano - yes, its not as
powerful as emacs (or even vi) - but it works well enough for what I need a
text editor for.

~~~
sevensor
Since we're plugging for minority editors, I'm going to do what I always do on
editor threads and mention kakoune. Modal like vi, but with a different take
on the paradigm, modern, embodies the "UNIX is your IDE" philosophy.
Integrates in an unobtrusive way with tmux and X11 because window management
is out of scope for the editor. Lets you attach multiple clients to the same
session, supports multiple buffers. I'd used vi (and later vim) from 1997 to
2017, but kak won me over and I've been using it as my primary editor for over
a year now.

~~~
dannyobrien
After bouncing off emacs and org-mode, I’m enjoying re-acquainting myself with
the Leo editor, an extendable outliner written in Python with some nice
literate programming features (the editor itself is written in an outline),
and acceptable vim emulation.

[http://leoeditor.com/](http://leoeditor.com/) pip install leo

~~~
BeetleB
I think the Leo editor is the only editor that can come close to Emacs in
terms of power. However, the docs are just so, so bad. And the functionality
out of the box leaves much to be desired. I couldn't find the keystroke to
comment out lines of code. There were a few other changes in behavior that I
wanted that I'm sure are trivial to fix in Leo via scripting, but things
aren't documented.

I really, really want Leo to become more popular - but until there are better
tutorials and documentation, I don't think it will go anywhere. And I'm at the
stage in life where I can't afford to spend too much time figuring Leo out -
there are too many other high value things to learn.

------
richard_todd
My resistance to putting my life in Emacs these days is that half my time is
spent on mobile devices. I know org-mode exports a variety of formats, but how
easy is it to interact with my todo list or add notes from my phone? If
popular services all had APIs I could see hooking Emacs into them, but they
just don’t in general.

I read the posts so far from this article, and was hoping to see the mobile
angle addressed.

~~~
bigd
Beorg for iOS solved this problem for me.

------
zerr
Interestingly, vim got the second place (after Visual Studio) in a recent C++
developer survey: [https://isocpp.org/blog/2018/03/results-summary-cpp-
foundati...](https://isocpp.org/blog/2018/03/results-summary-cpp-foundation-
developer-survey-lite-2018-02)

I wonder what's the go-to setup for C++ development in vim.

~~~
systems
Many developer, especially on linux, only ask for syntax highlight

They use linux command line tools as the development environment

Personally, i find working without intellisense or intelligent auto-completion
very hard, but it seems many developers don't find this as important as i do

~~~
smellf
At work and play I use only vim to write C++, Python, Javascript, bash and web
frontend stuff. Only plugin is rainbow parentheses. Manpages and web for docs.
My system is very flexible and I wouldn't have it any other way.

~~~
zerr
So besides not having intellisense, you also don't have things such as go-to
def/decl, show type info, switch between header/cpp files, etc... Not to
mention debugger integration, right? Do you work on large scale projects with
this setup?

------
tombert
I used to use pure Emacs, but switched full-time to Vim keystrokes after I got
stuck for the billionth time trying to figure out the "undo direction". After
a certain point, I realized that I really just needed Vim, since I never
really used any of the features in Emacs except the text editor.

Now I mostly just use NeoVim, and with its async support and a lot of the
plugins for it becoming excellent, I really have no desire to go back to
Emacs...except that I keep hearing about org-mode.

One of these days I might go and try out one of the several plugins for Vim
that try to tack-on org-mode, but as it stands I've gotten my NeoVim
configuration so customized it would take quite awhile to actually replicate
in Emacs.

------
erikb
Yes, the good ol' org-mode. I also consider it the core killer feature of
emacs. However I found it doesn't match into all my processes. A text editor
you can drop into different kinds of work processes. But a whole engine that
uses formatted files as data storage is different. With emacs and org-mode the
whole thinking is inside emacs. that's fine if you want to use it for
everything. But if you just want to use org-mode and drop it into different
contexts it fails.

It's still great tho, no criticism intended.

------
davidw
I have been using Emacs for 20 years, and still discover cool new things every
now and then.

------
ksk
I like toys as much as the next nerd, but how do people see the perceived
value of such tools? Personally, I am relatively unconvinced about the
advantages of tools like emacs or vim over anything "regular" people use. IMHO
Tools should be evaluated by the results they produce, and so are we seeing
anything amazing from the users of these tools versus people who just use a
notepad or whatever other generic system?

~~~
piracykills
I too would like a clear answer to this, I've made numerous attempts to learn
vim and emacs and can find my way around in both, but I never broke my habit
of the old school CUA keybindings and arrow keys so always found myself
gravitating back, especially when more full fledged IDEs and such were an
option. ReSharper C++ is a major time-saver on a daily basis for me and I have
a hard time thinking that would be easily replaced.

~~~
pasabagi
I think Vim for me is solely in the 'fun' category. I mean, actual text
editing is a pretty small portion of the time I spend on programming -
thinking, reading, and debugging are much more significant for me.

That said, I think that a well-set up version of vim is probably the most fun
anybody can have while editing text. I actually enjoy doing finnicky and
tricky textual tasks. You feel like a wizard literally every day. That's worth
something for me.

I actually picked it up because I wanted a new natural-language text editor,
and I figured vim would probably still exist in 20 years, and I don't like
learning new things. It's been an unmitigated blessing in this role - and it's
also pretty nice for programming, if a little bit more annoying to set up.

------
blackrock
To be honest, Emacs never worked for me. It added too much complexity, for too
little gain.

M-w, to do a copy. Or some other hobgoblin that I need to remember, when all I
need is just a browse-able menu. I just need the shortcuts, for when I
repetitively do an action, multiple times in a row, where it's quicker to just
hit the keys, instead of using a menu.

Maybe it was cutting edge in the 1990s, but then computers got much faster,
with more memory. And the graphical IDEs like Visual Studio, and Eclipse, blew
it out of the water.

Today, when I'm coding in Python, then I just use an editor like Notepad++. I
get enough syntax highlighting hints from that to avoid obvious coding errors.

Most of the time, I'm on Windows. I secure shell into the Linux server, and
open the file from there. Then it saves back to the server. Then I run my code
on a shell. This setup works pretty well.

If I need to review the code while on the shell, then I just open it in Vi. Or
just open it in Windows.

~~~
jwdunne
Well that doesn't copy. That closes Emacs. No wonder you're having trouble!
Use M-w.

You can do what you need using Emacs. Instead of context menus, you search for
a less used command using M-x. It helps if you have ido-mode or helm. The
latter, in my opinion, makes it a beautiful experience.

I tried moving over to JetBrains IDEs. It was too painful. I can see its value
in a language where it can write most of the code for you. Otherwise, Emacs
all the way.

~~~
blackrock
Are you purposely being dense?

~~~
jwdunne
Oh I see what you did there. Nice try squirt. C-x C-c closes Emacs. I mean M-w
and C-x C-c are so damn close together it's unfortunate you might mix them up,
right?

That sort of crafty edit-a-roo is mighty frowned upon in most circles. And to
be so rude! Now that, sir, is crossing the line.

I guess if I'm really dense, I can't purposefully be dense, can I?

------
linkmotif
No mention of evil, which is always my first question when I consider trying
Emacs: how will I get past not having vi bindings?

------
blunte
I like both, but I still absolutely love two features of vi:

\- hjkl movement keys (which depends on multi modes)

\- . (dot) to repeat the last command

But honestly, there are so many fantastically useful features of vi that it's
hard to give up.

I learned Emacs because of Clojure, and I got reasonably proficient with it.
Thanks to Emacs, I now am much more efficient in editor boxes and terminals
because of ctrl-p and other movement keys, as well as jump to begin/end of
line, etc.

But vi is preinstalled in more places (even if it's a weak minimal
installation), so it will get used rather than me installing emacs on some
system I only need to be on for five minutes.

Vi also seems more performant. I haven't attempted to measure, but it sure
feels like it has lower latency than Emacs.

------
BeetleB
>But, critically, automatically embedded in that note is a link back to what I
was doing when I pressed C-c c.

That's neat. How do I do this? My setup is almost a decade old.

------
dmix
I recently tried giving Emacs another shot, as it was my first love, with
Spacemacs and it was terribly slow. I couldn't believe how long it took to
boot up and how choppy it was compared to SpaceVim.

Having started with emacs to use with LISP/Clojure I ended up with Vim because
it's just felt lighter and the key layout more logical. And much of the
plugins were comparable or superior, with the exception of LISP languages.

~~~
farresito
Your last sentence is interesting. As a vim user, I've always regarded emacs
as having a much better ecosystem. The only plugins that I've found superior
in vim are those related to text editing (for example, new operators).

------
mbreese
_When my new job added Slack to the mix, that was finally the last straw._

And later...

 _So I found myself switching from Thunderbird and mairix+mutt (for the mail
archives) to mu4e, and from xchat+slack to ERC._

If being able to use Slack from Emacs was the main point of this, he is going
to be very sad in a few weeks.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16536254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16536254)

~~~
draebek
FWIW apparently emacs-slack uses Slack's API rather than the IRC gateway, so
it will actually stay working (for now), or so I've read:
[https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack](https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-
slack)

------
JoshMnem
I still use Vim (neovim) but switched my notetaking to Org Mode + Evil. It's
great, especially capture templates and the export features.

------
platz
emacs is nice when you want an editor that has modest/ecent support for a
variety of languages. Sometimes you can get a better experience with a
flagship language ide, but if you use a lot of different langs or 'botique'
langs then emacs is a good common denominator

------
kreetx
In short, org-mode was the gateway drug for me, and since I don't have any
religious feelings towards any editor I found it easier to switch entirely,
rather than keep using vim for code.

Although emacs is my main editor I still use vim and try to keep the memory of
keybindings alive.

------
calebm
I really like the idea of Emacs/org-mode for everything, but my perception is
that image support and mobile support aren't very good (compared to, say,
Evernote). A pictures is worth a thousand words, so having pictures as part of
my notes is crucial.

~~~
tincholio
Image support in org buffers is pretty good, not sure what's the situation in
mobile (I use orgzly, which AFAIK doesn't support images). If you want
previews for URLs and such, I think you'll be better off with Evernote (though
you could probably automate the screencap + linking when doing captures, if
you're into that)

------
chaoticmass
I've wanted to learn emacs for a long time, but every time I try it I get
overwhelmed after 5 minutes, close it and swear to try again later. One of
these days...

* edit-- not that it looks all that hard, just the sheer amount of things to learn makes it daunting.

~~~
southpawflo
that's why I love spacemacs - with the default setup, you hit the spacebar and
a text based gui with all the possible options pops up. it allows me to
continue to actually work instead of floundering about for some simple action
while hammering the keyboard shortcuts into me through repetition

~~~
chaoticmass
I'm giving spacemacs a try now, thanks

------
desireco42
You would think that anyone used to Vim would have problem with Emacs as they
can't keep up with speed of us issuing commands :)?

------
kazinator
After 18 years of Common Lisp, and nine years of developing a Lisp
implementation ...

... I'm 24 years into using Vim and counting!

------
alexnewman
I'm bi as well. I prefer using both. I still code in c in vim. C++ always in
emacs.

~~~
throwaway84742
Let me guess: you are not aware of YouCompleteMe.

------
cup-of-tea
I began to force myself to learn vim but I never got over that initial hump
and there was nothign really to draw me in. I can't remember why I began to
look into emacs but org-mode drew me right in. I discovered magit at around
the same time and I begun what I can only describe as a love affair with emacs
that continues to this day. I just can't imagine a life where I use computers
without emacs.

~~~
hashkb
[https://vim-adventures.com/](https://vim-adventures.com/) it's fun if you're
wanting a little evil(-mode) in your life.

~~~
cup-of-tea
I did that! I still remember navigation keys and some other things to this
day. A little vim is essential for working on Linux when I can't install
emacs.

------
xkjkls
This thread has been a revelation to me because I honestly thought "users of
Emacs" were a myth like Big Foot

------
d13
Have you tried VS Code?

------
oldgun
I see emacs I upvote :)

~~~
oldgun
Actually got -4 points for this comment.

Apparently you shouldn't take any side in an HN flame war.

~~~
jwilk
From the HN guidelines:

 _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good,
and it makes boring reading._

~~~
jrs95
Although the parent comment didn't really seem to be a _literal_ comment about
voting. That's what the ":)" was intended to indicate. It was just a general,
friendly pro-Emacs comment. Downvoting everything that isn't super serious
makes for pretty boring reading too. The first comment on this post, something
along the lines of "My pinky hurts just reading this" was actually pretty
funny. It was removed because it was immediately heavily downvoted.

Seriously, aren't your day jobs stressful enough? Do you have to be _that_
uptight? I don't remember HN being like this a year or two ago.

------
beeskneecaps
Can’t delete my comment so i’ll edit it to something different. Please ignore.

~~~
zeveb
I remap Caps Lock to Control for exactly that reason. On my ideal keyboard,
though, the keys immediately to the left & right of the spacebar would be
Control, then Alt, then Super. On my _really_ ideal keyboard the next key out
would be Hyper, but sadly the USB spec doesn't provide for it.

~~~
jeromenerf
Maybe the ideal keyboard would also not have a huge space bar, but two thumbs
keys that would act as both space and a modifier if hold.

~~~
slobotron
TECK (seemingly out of production) has three keys in place of spacebar by
default configured as (backspace)(enter)(space)

Using thumbs to activate those works really well!

[https://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/truly-ergonomic-
mechani...](https://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/truly-ergonomic-mechanical-
ergonomic-keyboard)

