Vim versus Emacs
Which is better? I don’t know, because I’m a Vim user, so it’s a moot point for me. But I have not noticed any Emacs-style keyboard shortcuts on websites. To the contrary, it seems like everything is Vim-style — certainly most Google apps are Vim-ish, and even Firefox is Vim-ish (press the / key to start searching for text on the page). Based on this highly scientific criterion, I declare Vim the winner.
I have to concur. VIM FTW
Craig P Jolicoeur
2 Mar 10 at 2:59 pm
LOL! You are asking for trouble with this posting.
Of course VIM is the best editor ;)
At least you know either VI or VIM will be installed on every machine you log onto anywhere (except windows).
Cheers,
Ivan
Ivan Novick
2 Mar 10 at 3:01 pm
You should be careful about conflating “better” and “popular”.
Guillaume Theoret
2 Mar 10 at 3:01 pm
I use pico…. but it’s only cause that’s what I’ve grown up with.
MLBR
2 Mar 10 at 3:18 pm
Bram works for Google.
Scott
2 Mar 10 at 3:34 pm
Also, don’t forget that the most awesome video game ever made (nethack) defaults to using vim-style movement controls.
:D
I agree with your thesis. Vim is win!
Eric Ryan Harrison
2 Mar 10 at 5:00 pm
Its not fair! Nobody knows what the “meta” key is mapped to! ;)
-d
Daniel Howard
2 Mar 10 at 5:37 pm
hehe this will start a bit of a war. I just know vi/vim so that’s what I use. Once I worked at a place where everyone used xemacs & thats how code was merged. I coded in vi, closed the file & merged (cvs) with xemacs. They also made me work on a PC. These days I’m MAC, vim, SVN…. but that xemacs code merge, diff plug-in was cool.
erin
4 Mar 10 at 4:45 pm
This can be started a new war, however you should try to make sure what is more suitable for you. Hint: start with Emacs first- this is form my experience, because I try Vim first so, I really can’t try emacs any more, because the key binding in vim is very convinient
james
18 Mar 10 at 5:36 am
vi(m) is where I spend my days. Used emacs for years as a developer. Switched (painfully at first) to vi as I took on more remote admin tasks. Now it’s all vi. Lean, available anywhere. No more combo-key arthritis.
joe
26 Mar 10 at 1:12 am
most linux and osx apps take emacs shortcuts. who cares if a web browser does – how often are you coding/editing txt in a browser anyway?
mbp_cmplr
10 Jun 10 at 12:50 pm
Baron,
btw did you know bash by default uses emacs style shortcuts? I know it’s not a website but I didn’t realize those were emacs shortcuts until I tried emacs ;)
Aurimas Mikalauskas
27 Jun 10 at 9:56 pm
And did you know that Bash is one of the few shells that doesn’t use vi shortcuts by default? Anyway, ’set -o vi’ turns on vi key binding in Bash, which is a convenient workaround for this bug ;^}
Scott
28 Jun 10 at 10:20 am
I thought it was readline that was really responsible for the key bindings?
I have to confess that I don’t use -o vi. I had a colleague who set all our servers to that by default at a former job, and it just threw me off balance, I can’t explain why.
Xaprb
28 Jun 10 at 11:19 am
True. Readline is resopnsible. But I find searching command history much more convenient with / than… how is it again in Emacs?
Scott
28 Jun 10 at 7:22 pm