cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/9648279
I would like to premise this with the following:
- The best approach is probably just testing out each and every editor that interests me until I’ve found what works best for me.
- However, I wonder to what degree a test as such would be representative when the likes of Emacs and (Neo)Vim are considered; both of which are known for being a life time learning process.
- I don’t literally expect Emacs or (Neo)Vim to be drop-in replacements for any IDE. Some of the most basic IDE-functions are absent by default and some (perhaps more advanced) functionality might simply not be attainable at all.
- I am not interested in anything that remotely resembles a flame war. The community at Lemmy has so far been very kind to me; let’s keep it that way 😜.
Motivation
I’ve had experiences with Atom, VS Code and some of Jetbrains’ IDEs like Pycharm and Rider. While I’ve been generally content with all of them, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth whenever I’m forced to switch IDEs because their lifetimes and/or lack of extensibility doesn’t allow me to responsibly continue using them. As such, I’m interested in a long time investment that will grow as I will. Both Emacs and (Neo)Vim have passed the test of time and I honestly don’t think they’ll cease to exist in the upcoming decades, that’s why I would love to start using either one of them.
Furthermore, Vi(m) keybindings seem to be somewhat ubiquitous and almost any IDE offers some support. As such, improving my Vi(m)-game should only net-positive my productivity (at least eventually). Also, fluency will benefit me whenever I’m remote accessing any random server as they will always have Vi(m) installed. Thankfully, this doesn’t force me to use Vi(m) (or Neovim) just yet, because Emacs offers with Evil perhaps the single best Vi(m) implementation; outside of native Vi(m)*.
My setup:
- I’m on a custom image of uBlue using their startingpoint as template. For those unaware; an oversimplification would be that it is Fedora Silverblue with some extras.
- As such, I would like to have my developer environments local and have used Distrobox to that extent using steps similar to the ones outlined over here. But I’m not married to that specific way of utilizing local containers. So please feel free to recommend me something that’s at least as good.
- If I go for Emacs, then I will definitely rely on Evil.
- If possible, I would like to use it for C#, Python and Rust. Furthermore, I engage in editing Bash scripts, Dockerfiles, Linux config files, texts written in Latex and/or Markdown and other files written in Nix or JSON. As both are very extensible, I don’t expect any issues, but I might be wrong.
Questions:
- First of all, does it make sense for me to only consider these two?
- Can the split between Vim and Neovim be interpreted as the first schism and as such be a forebode for what’s yet to come?
- Google Trends suggests that Neo(Vim) is ever-popular. On the other hand; not only is Emacs relatively less popular, but its popularity seems to be slightly declining. Should this worry me regarding their long-time future? Especially considering that a thriving community is literally the lifeline for both of them.
- For those that have used both extensively, which one do you prefer (if any) and why?
- While I understand that the power of both of them lies primarily in how one can literally make them behave however suits their workflow best. Therefore, the use of premade configs and/or starter kits/distributions should (ideally) only be used either temporary or as a starting point. However, at this point, they provide a decent showcase of what each ‘platform’ has to offer. So:
For years I used vanilla vim before finally switching to spacemacs like 4 years ago. I’ve never used neovim, because it just didn’t seem stable and mature enough before I switched to spacemacs and at this point I’m happy with spacemacs and will probably stick with it for the foreseeable future.
My issue with vim, and the reason I switched, is that vimscript was an absolute nightmare. I was doing easy stuff, writing LaTeX, but getting vim to compile LaTeX and talk to my pdf reader (as you need if you’re going to be working with LaTeX in any kind of serious way) took way too much configuration and my setup would break fairly often as well. Spacemacs is significantly easier. I was shocked when I went from “I’ve never used spacemacs before” to “I’m comfortably writing LaTeX here” in about half an hour. My setup still breaks occasionally and sometimes it’s a bit difficult to figure out why and how to fix it, but it’s much easier than vim was, that’s for sure.
I also just like the emacs workflow. I like helm, I like being able to change how the editor works on the fly just by writing some elisp anywhere, I like how easy it is to access the documentation on functions, variables, keybindings, whatever else you might need. I like org-mode. I like that emacs has been around for decades and will be around for decades more.
I’d never heard of doomemacs. I’m pretty happy with spacemacs so I probably won’t switch, but I’ll at least read about it some more.
This line really piqued my interest, especially considering that I’ve had another conversation with someone else in which the general sentiment seemed to be that “Spacemacs expects you to know Emacs, while being a completely different beast of itself.”. May I ask how your Spacemacs is configured? Would you say it’s close to the default config? Or rather a significant departure? Furthermore, I believe I’ve read the existence of some kind of version control. Which, at least by the name of it, should somehow contribute to a more stable experience. Or am I perhaps confusing things?
Does this happen randomly? Or rather as a ‘response’?
This sounds very interesting and promising. Would you mind providing an example of sorts such that I can perhaps better grasp both the sheer amount of new possibilities it provides as well as its (possible) limitations (if at all)?
I wholeheartedly agree! But, I am at least somewhat concerned when it comes to its ‘gravitational pull from afar’. To me at least, it seems as if, currently, Neovim does a better job at attracting new people. Perhaps these are just mostly refugees from Vim. Nonetheless, it can’t be ignored (I think). Would you mind sharing your thoughts on this?
Ironic that your main complaint about vim would have been solved by switching to Neovim – the weaknesses of vimscript are one of the main reasons Neovim was created, I believe, and it supports Lua as an alternate config language.