

[Follow-up Results] Your favourite text editor/IDE? - zengr
http://utkarshsengar.com/2011/03/analysis-your-favourite-text-editoride/

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statictype
Is Vim having some kind of resurgence of late?

I've been a vi/vim user for 10+ years now but it seems like its popularity has
really started shooting up in the last couple of years.

~~~
jarin
At least in the Ruby community (where most developers are on Macs), it seems
to be due to TextMate's lack of progress.

A few years ago, it seemed like most Ruby developers were using TextMate, but
as TextMate 2 got pushed farther and farther back (and started to look like
vaporware and/or bloatware), they started to look around for something with
the power of TextMate but with more extensibility.

Some IDEs and a few TextMate extensions started to pop up, but I think it was
a timely post by Jamis Buck that inspired a lot of Ruby developers to make the
switch to Vim, then PeepCode came out with some stuff, then it snowballed from
there: <http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2008/10/10/coming-home-to-vim>

~~~
johncoltrane
It doesn't happen only in the Ruby community. A lot of people are switching.

The hacker in me wanted something more raw and more powerful and I switched
for Vim which is amazing IMHO compared to TextMate. Others are moving to Coda
or Espresso. TM2 has to be VERY good to make all of us come back.

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joakin
Why isnt the data sorted from most voted to less? Its a big mess to read
graphs like that...

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atgm
How is this different from just running a poll on HN? No analysis?

I would have at least liked to have been able to see how many people voted for
the various other options.

~~~
officemonkey
Lots of opportunity for analysis too.

I would have liked to see the most common combos (eg: which percentage said
"Vim + Ruby" or "Java + Eclipse" or even "Emacs + Eclipse").

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Jabbles
Not really an analysis, but interesting nonetheless. Note that this only tells
us about the uses of (some) HN members, and remember that the use of a
particular IDE may make the user more vocal about the fact they use it.

~~~
zengr
Any suggestions to make it more interesting? Also, renaming it to RESULTS then
:)

~~~
JoachimSchipper
One obvious thing to look at is the link between programming languages and
editors/IDEs. Some things seem obvious (Java programmers will probably like
Eclipse, .Net programmers are probably more likely to use Notepad++ than vim)
but there may be some surprises (one of the comments suggests that Rubyists
will like vim, which I hadn't thought of).

It's possible you haven't collected this data; that would be a shame.

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ahmelsayed
I like notepad++ on Windows and vim on linux. for IDE I really like VS, and
when did HTML become a programming language??

~~~
l0nwlf
As told by the blog author in the comments:

" HTML + CSS3 is Turing complete (github.com) –
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300836> "

~~~
Xurinos
Further into the comments, it is acknowledged that HTML + CSS is, in fact, not
Turing Complete and that the original premise was incorrect.

I want to also add that HTML lacks a fundamental feature of programming
languages: means of abstraction. Fortunately, modern software allows us to not
have to program directly in HTML and CSS and can abstract the ugly away,
programming in languages that are more maintainable than raw HTML. But we have
had that for decades; I do not understand the need to legitimize HTML
"programming". It might be a misunderstanding of what is actually producing
the HTML data.

~~~
sid0
_Further into the comments, it is acknowledged that HTML + CSS is, in fact,
not Turing Complete and that the original premise was incorrect._

There is some discussion over what Turing complete means (including a guy
confusing complexity with computability and saying that the notion of Turing
completeness is nonsense), but no universal acknowledgement of that sort.

------
eftpotrm
One day I will understand the popularity of Vi; until then (and I have used
it), I find it so frustrating to use that the first command that always
springs to mind is :q!.

I confess I was surprised not to see EditPad register at all; I don't any more
have a regular use for it in my work but when I did I found it absolutely
superb, and it used to be that I wasn't alone in that opinion. Has it fallen
behind _that_ far in the last few years?

~~~
statictype
Vim has a high learning curve. But once you learn it, it's difficult to use
another editor - especially since there are hardly any modal editors out there
besides vim.

I went a step further and remap Capslock to Escape on all my systems, thus
making me completely inefficient on any other keyboard that's not mine.

------
jonursenbach
Love Komodo IDE. Don't love its price though.

<http://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide>

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RossM
Interesting (broken) results on the live view[1], PHP has a single vote in the
main one but lots of entries in "other".

[1]:
[https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewanalytics?formkey=dHhwMm...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewanalytics?formkey=dHhwMm9jS1l6RTh4Q3RBZU1GRWE1R0E6MQ)

~~~
zengr
The Google excel sheet I have shared is a formatted one, which also includes
PHP in the charting. The original excel sheet is one which you see in the
"live view". Will fix it when I get some time.

------
edambauskas
"Hacked News"? HTML as a programming language?

You must be new here :-) Anyway... you'll grow up. Like most of us did.

The data from the report was interesting. One more unanswered question: how
many of the people don't use an IDE or use only an IDE?

~~~
zengr
Haha, my bad, typo (fixed!). Yes, I am new here. Will do some "analysis" in
few days. Will keep you guys posted!

Regarding HTML, well the survey is about what editors/ide do you use, not
about skill set.

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mgrouchy
It appears I'm heavily in the Target Demographic for Hacker News readers who
respond to posts about their favorite text editors/IDE's.

Developer who uses Vim, Codes mostly in Python and Javascript.

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radq
I can't view any of the images -- they seem to have been replaced with this
one: <http://imageshack.us/img/blocked_login.jpg>

~~~
zengr
That should be fixed now. I have moved the files to my server.

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hessenwolf
Can you please order the tables and add bar charts?

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krat0sprakhar
Vim on Windows looks horrendous. Too bad I can't use it on Windows. Too bad
I'm on Windows :|

~~~
edambauskas
Try a different setup. Which variant of VIM where you using on Windows ?

I need to use Windows at work but I am using VIM for my daily development
needs.

I use Msysgit+Console 2 to get a tabbed shell and use VIM from inside it. I
probably used Cygwin to install ctags. I also have gVim but don't use it (one
of the reasons -- I don't like the font and haven't found out yet how to
change it).

I had to play a little bit until I got my setup working. It is not perfect
(mouse scroll does not work inside my shell VIM). But it satisfies me.

~~~
sea6ear
To change the font in gVim, set guifont in your .vimrc file

ex. (from mine): set guifont=Courier_New:h8:b:cANSI

However, if you are happy with your current setup, I'm not sure there's a
reason to change things just for the gui.

------
sharat87
why was the form closed? I would have wanted to wait for more data. Am I
missing something?

~~~
zengr
I have reopened the form. Closed it while I was formatting the data.

------
haploid
I can't even fathom how Eclipse somehow outstrips IDEA, particularly by such a
large margin. IDEA destroys Eclipse in terms of usability, looks, features,
speed, etc.

Is the premium developers put on "but it's open source!" really that
compelling, or is there some key feature of Eclipse that I'm completely
missing?

~~~
yannickmahe
Eclipse is a platform, and a lot of plugins are there to make it usable for
your language(s). Where IDEA is only Java, Eclipse lets me do PHP too. As I do
both regularly, it's a compelling "feature".

~~~
haploid
This is a common misconception. IDEA was once "only Java", but it is rapidly
becoming a generalized platform, as well. Writing Ruby with IDEA is an
absolute delight, for instance,

~~~
yannickmahe
Interesting. I'll give it a try.

------
herman
Notepad++

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geoffw8
Textmate :)

~~~
geoffw8
Your all losers for down voting us. us = the people who wrote their editor

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nvictor
there we go.

vim.

~~~
jsvaughan
it didn't ask what is your favourite text editor :)

