Xaprb

Stay curious!

Vim versus Emacs

with 15 comments

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.

Written by Xaprb

March 2nd, 2010 at 2:18 pm

Posted in Commentary

Tagged with , ,

15 Responses to 'Vim versus Emacs'

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  1. I have to concur. VIM FTW

  2. 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

  3. You should be careful about conflating “better” and “popular”.

  4. I use pico…. but it’s only cause that’s what I’ve grown up with.

    MLBR

    2 Mar 10 at 3:18 pm

  5. Bram works for Google.

    Scott

    2 Mar 10 at 3:34 pm

  6. 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!

  7. Its not fair! Nobody knows what the “meta” key is mapped to! ;)

    -d

    Daniel Howard

    2 Mar 10 at 5:37 pm

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. 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 ;)

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. 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

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