Editors

[JordyD]

emacs-y

Ahh, that's why I never liked it.

[cathrl]

UltraEdit if I'm using a compiler which isn't integrated into Visual Studio, or if I need to do something especially complicated (i.e. multi-file changes involving regular expressions).

Visual Studio otherwise. Fancy features don't compensate for not having to switch backwards and forwards between debugger and editor. Most of my time is spent thinking, not typing.

[littlebuddy]

i like emacs because of its clean design.

[hazyarc]

I started off using VIM as my editor but have recently moved over to Emacs. It is a much better editor. Emacs is extremely customizable and has the ability to do almost anything. If you are used to the VI key bindings then viper-mode with vimpulse works great. VIM is great for editing text but Emacs integrates a lot better for development.

[spupy]

Vimperator was my gateway drug to vim.

[enk]

Emacs is extremely customizable

They are both extremely customizable.

and has the ability to do almost anything.

To my knowledge they're both Turing complete anyway.

VIM is great for editing text but Emacs integrates a lot better for development.

vim is no ide, but still I get the impression that you don't know its full potential..

When I wrote a compiler from scratch in C++ with two other guys this spring semester, they we're using Eclipse and I tried it but quickly switched back to vim. I felt so limited in Eclipse.

Fancy features don't compensate for not having to switch backwards and forwards between debugger and editor.

I only use a debugger with breakpoints for the most problematic.. well.. problems. Most things I solve from within the programming language. Guess this is the old school way of doing things, but it works.

And even though it's against the design philosophy, there is clewn for integrated debugging in vim.

Most of my time is spent thinking, not typing.

To me, the fancy feature of being able to jump around rapidly in the code is typing that aids my thinking.

[Isaac356]

In a graphical environment, I usually just use kate or gedit (kde or gnome, respectively).

In the console, I use vim, because I can get away with only knowing a few commands ('i', 'a', ':wq', arrow keys, and maybe every once in a while I need 'dd') I would really like to learn emacs (and have tried, but it's hard to teach an old dog new trickses).

I recently learned of Komodo Edit and will probably get to using that more often.

[TheChewanater]

I pretty much always use Gedit. It has syntax highlighting for tons of languages, plugins, tabs, and "external tools" that allow me to assign a keyboard shortcut to execute a command (ie to compile something).

For terminal stuff, I use nano, though. I don't really have a preference for nano over any other text-only editors, though.

[hazyarc]

Emacs is extremely customizable

They are both extremely customizable.

VIM maybe more customizable than other editors but Emacs is more customizable than VIM.

and has the ability to do almost anything.

To my knowledge they're both Turing complete anyway.

VIMscript is Turing complete but Lisp is a "real" programming language.
Which is why an email client, terminal emulator, jabber client, Media player, and many other applications have been developed for Emacs.
So maybe they both have the "ability" but many people can do all of their work without leaving Emacs, while with VIM they can't.

VIM is great for editing text but Emacs integrates a lot better for development.

vim is no ide, but still I get the impression that you don't know its full potential..

When I wrote a compiler from scratch in C++ with two other guys this spring semester, they we're using Eclipse and I tried it but quickly switched back to vim. I felt so limited in Eclipse.

I know that VIM does have a lot of potential and is very powerful. I would rather use VIM than Eclipse.
There is nothing wrong with VIM, but Emacs is simply better. I don't understand why somebody would want to use inferior software.

[lulzfish]

I've been using Geany a lot, but I miss the awesome split-screen you could do in Kate, and I'm not using any of the automated compile / run scripts in Geany, since they don't work with my horrible coding style.

So I'm probably going to use Kate. I like the tabs on Geany, though. It makes more sense, and it reminds me of using a web browser. Kate has the documents in a vertical list, on the left, and it feels wrong.

[nyeguy]

For most scripting, and shorter compiled programs, I use VIM (specifically the GUI app MacVIM, which basically just gives VIM its own window and standard file open/save). Emacs works too, but I've always felt more comfortable with how VIM is set up. For web development stuff, I use my dad's license on BBEdit, because of the code completion stuff it comes with, and its ability to save directly through an FTP client. For Java, I prefer NetBeans, but I haven't used an IDE I've liked. For Cocoa apps, I obviously use Xcode.

[Area Man]

... Lisp ...

Another strike against emacs. To paraphrase Greenspun's 10th rule: programmers hate lisp so much that they'd rather invent a completely new language and use half-assed facilities in order to avoid it.
:P

Which is why an email client, terminal emulator, jabber client, Media player, and many other applications have been developed for Emacs.
So maybe they both have the "ability" but many people can do all of their work without leaving Emacs, while with VIM they can't.

How very un-Unix-y. I prefer KDE, LXDE or GNOME with proper individual apps.
Using EMACS is like living in a campervan instead of a real house, except the majority use X desktops, so it's like living in a campervan parked in a house.

[stephentyrone]

To paraphrase Greenspun's 10th rule: programmers hate lisp so much that they'd rather invent a completely new language and use half-assed facilities in order to avoid it.

Congratulations, you have won The Internet. Now you get to replay it in hard mode.

[enk]

VIM maybe more customizable than other editors but Emacs is more customizable than VIM.

How so?

VIMscript is Turing complete but Lisp is a "real" programming language.
Which is why an email client, terminal emulator, jabber client, Media player, and many other applications have been developed for Emacs.
So maybe they both have the "ability" but many people can do all of their work without leaving Emacs, while with VIM they can't.

True, and -- as Area Man pointed out -- not very UNIX-y and not the purpose. (Though vim is also having some problems in this area. Because they want to make it extremely cross-platform, it has to include its own grep, spellchecker etc.)

I don't understand why somebody would want to use inferior software.

I think "inferior" needs a frame of reference, a purpose. And I agree that Emacs is better than vim for some things. But for a powerful text editor, I agree with EvanED when he said:

I don't actually harbor any idea that there is something that emacs does clearly better than vi [...], and vi does seem faster in the hands of someone who's skilled. But it also seems that emacs is faster in the hands of someone who isn't particularly skilled at it

[Earlz]

For terminal stuff, I use nano, though. I don't really have a preference for nano over any other text-only editors, though.

I use to like nano because of it's simplicity but after fixing it's line wrapping "feature" about 20 times I decided I would stick to good old vi which is also pretty simplistic...

Does anyone use nvi (BSD licensed) rather than vim (GNU licensed)?

I find nvi to be a much more simplistic and easy to use editor than vim(even in vi mode)

I tried emacs once... then I decided I'd do some programming rather than learning an immensely huge and bloated (not straightforward) editor...

[lulzfish]

I installed emacs once.
I was expecting a console editor, sort of like nano, but with lisp embedded.

Maybe it was Arch Linux's fault, but I ended up downloading something like 100 MB of an X11 editor with the fonts way too huge again (Damn you, GTK font sizes!!) and a whole bunch of useless shit bundled.

I should see if they have a Lua-based editor. Or make one.

[netcrusher88]

I installed emacs once.
I was expecting a console editor, sort of like nano, but with lisp embedded.

Maybe it was Arch Linux's fault, but I ended up downloading something like 100 MB of an X11 editor with the fonts way too huge again (Damn you, GTK font sizes!!) and a whole bunch of useless shit bundled.

I should see if they have a Lua-based editor. Or make one.

Nah, the 100MB has nothing to do with it being X11. The X11 mode of emacs is no more bloated than that of gvim, or at least not much. That's 100MB of emacs-lisp code, primarily. And a (partially) native interpreter, which is so small as to barely be worth mentioning. Time was it came with a kitchen sink too.

[spupy]

Visual Studio otherwise. Fancy features don't compensate for not having to switch backwards and forwards between debugger and editor. Most of my time is spent thinking, not typing.

I seriously hate the code browser thing in Visual Studio (the thing were you see the vars and methods of the current file). I use this a lot in eclipse, geany and vim. But a drop-down menu... ugh. Well, that's me, I guess.

I've been using Geany a lot, but I miss the awesome split-screen you could do in Kate, and I'm not using any of the automated compile / run scripts in Geany, since they don't work with my horrible coding style.

So I'm probably going to use Kate. I like the tabs on Geany, though. It makes more sense, and it reminds me of using a web browser. Kate has the documents in a vertical list, on the left, and it feels wrong.

I like geany as well, but I'm going to switch to Kate, as I will be using KDE soon on a new PC. Kate (at least the qt4 version) has a tabs plugin. The tabs look like buttons, but otherwise work like tabs.
Also, Geany has a split-screen plugin.

[Vault]

VIMscript is Turing complete but Lisp is a "real" programming language.

Vim doesn't require you to write plugins and whatnot in Vimscript. There's an api that you can access through a couple of different languages. Off the top of my head it supports Python, Ruby, and, if you really need a Lisp, Scheme. They aren't as well integrated as Vimscript, but in general you just need a little wrapper in it around whatever you've written.

[lulzfish]

Kate (at least the qt4 version) has a tabs plugin, Geany has a split-screen plugin.

wtf

I can't seem to find any plugins for Kate on the Internet.
I want one that automatically records how much time I've spent editing a document, so I can say "this took me X hours to implement".
And I want that tab one, but I still have no idea where kate plugins are on the Internet.

Oh wait, it was in "plugins" under "configure kate".
Well, are there more of them on the Internet?

[netcrusher88]

VIMscript is Turing complete but Lisp is a "real" programming language.

Vim doesn't require you to write plugins and whatnot in Vimscript. There's an api that you can access through a couple of different languages. Off the top of my head it supports Python, Ruby, and, if you really need a Lisp, Scheme. They aren't as well integrated as Vimscript, but in general you just need a little wrapper in it around whatever you've written.

And perl. Don't forget the bat fuck insane granddaddy of modern scripting languages.

[Meteorswarm]

VIMscript is Turing complete but Lisp is a "real" programming language.

Vim doesn't require you to write plugins and whatnot in Vimscript. There's an api that you can access through a couple of different languages. Off the top of my head it supports Python, Ruby, and, if you really need a Lisp, Scheme. They aren't as well integrated as Vimscript, but in general you just need a little wrapper in it around whatever you've written.

And perl. Don't forget the bat fuck insane granddaddy of modern scripting languages.

I like Perl, you insensitive clod! I use :perldo s/foo/bar/ more often than I use :s/foo/bar/.

[hotaru]

Does anyone use nvi (BSD licensed) rather than vim (GNU licensed)?

i used to, until i found this. it handles utf-8 text files properly (the version of nvi included in freebsd doesn't), and doesn't have the berkely db 3 dependency that newer versions of nvi have.
also, elvis is nice if you like stuff like syntax highlighting and don't want the bloat, slowness, and anti-freeness of vim.

[netcrusher88]

anti-freeness of vim.

The vim license is GPL-compatible to the point that it explicitly allows for modified versions to be distributed under the terms of the GPL.

So uh...what?

[phlip]

Oh, for the love of...

This is not becoming yet another "is GPL really free" thread. Not even with you here, hotaru. Take it to the relevant thread if you really want to talk about that.

[itaibn]

vim has all the features I could possibly need. emacs has all the features I could possibly need (I am curious if anybody can give a counterexample to those claims). I know vim.

I think you can guess the rest.

[headprogrammingczar]

vim doesn't have butterflies.

[Meteorswarm]

vim doesn't have butterflies.

Not according to this thread.

sudo apt-get install vim-butterfly

[jendral_hxr]

To me, nano is the best light-weight strings slayer

[headprogrammingczar]

vim doesn't have butterflies.

Not according to this thread.

sudo apt-get install vim-butterfly

If that isn't true, I am going to be very upset. Seriously, there could be tears.

[Meteorswarm]

Not according to this thread.

sudo apt-get install vim-butterfly

If that isn't true, I am going to be very upset. Seriously, there could be tears.

Well, the thread never said which repository it's in...

[gnutrino]

Try this: on any modern system, run 'file `which ex`'. And then if it's a symlink to /etc/alternatives/ex (or something - this is how Ubuntu does it), run file on that until you find which executable it actually is.

or use readlink -f

Anyway my daily unix advice out of the way, vim is clearly superior to everything else because I say so and I wouldn't lie to you now, would I?

[GrawSith]

Textmate all the way baby. Projects, themes, editable plugins, it's beautiful.

[Dason]

I use emacs for the time being. It has everything I could ever want and after spending quite a bit of time with it I think it's really sped up my ability to get my code onto the screen.

On the other hand whenever I want to quickly modify a file there's no doubt that I'm going to turn to vim. It's just soooo much faster to load and make tweaks with. I'm sure if I spent enough time actually learning a few more commands and moving around in files I could be at least as fast (and most likely faster) but I don't really have the motivation to learn more about it right now. I know a couple simple commands and that's good enough for now.

I know a lot of emacs commands though and when I'm on MY computer and I have everything set up just the way I like it I can move pretty fast.

All of that being said... if I'm connecting to one of the university servers from my home network it takes SO DAMN LONG for emacs to load. I usually just end up using vim in those cases.

[kazvorpal]

Emacs, Vi, TheOneTruePad?

What I'd like to know is how vi won.

I'm a consultant, and I haven't sat down at a corporate client's terminal and found emacs available, for maybe the last decade.

For example, Boeing, Charter, AT&T, and the Washington Post, in the past few years...none of them had emacs on their boxen. Everyone was forced to use vi/vim, whether they wanted to or not.

Since emacs -- with its programmability, multiple buffers and windows, more heuristic interface, ability to edit immediately, instead of having to switch in and out of edit mode -- is clearly superior, why the hell has it vanished from the corporate world?

[netcrusher88]

vi won before emacs was created, honestly.

When it comes down to it, though, the reason for the greater ubiquity of vi (the reason it's shipped by default more often than emacs is - and so is nano): a stripped-down vi-alike handily fits on even the smallest embedded system and provides most of the commands a vi user expects. A stripped-down install of emacs is an embedded system.

[Jplus]

Folks, this is not a Battle of the Editors. This is not even like a pillow fight. All I see "I like vim/emacs/ed/nano/textmate/whatever", with some modest arguments. What happened with flaming?

Let me add a new perspective. Using a terminal editor is silly. You are more efficient if you take advantage of the mouse. I first realized this when I was confronted with Acme from Plan 9 from Bell Labs. The folks at Bell Labs also took the effort to explain why mousing is faster than typing commands.

Nowadays I use TextWrangler, which provides all of the functionality that Vim used to offer me, but better and faster. I can move a line by selecting and dragging it, instead of <move there by jk>0dd<move to the other line by jk>p. Or I can do exactly the same except for keeping the option key pressed to copy the line, instead of <move there by jk>0yy<move to the other line by jk>p. Also, the full use of grep patterns is much easier, more powerful and more flexible than the pattern search facility of Vim, especially since I can configure the behaviour simply by clicking on a few checkboxes.

Terminal editors suck.

[Derek]

Folks, this is not a Battle of the Editors. This is not even like a pillow fight. All I see "I like vim/emacs/ed/nano/textmate/whatever", with some modest arguments. What happened with flaming?

Let me add a new perspective. Using a terminal editor is silly. You are more efficient if you take advantage of the mouse. I first realized this when I was confronted with Acme from Plan 9 from Bell Labs. The folks at Bell Labs also took the effort to explain why mousing is faster than typing commands.

Nowadays I use TextWrangler, which provides all of the functionality that Vim used to offer me, but better and faster. I can move a line by selecting and dragging it, instead of <move there by jk>0dd<move to the other line by jk>p. Or I can do exactly the same except for keeping the option key pressed to copy the line, instead of <move there by jk>0yy<move to the other line by jk>p. Also, the full use of grep patterns is much easier, more powerful and more flexible than the pattern search facility of Vim, especially since I can configure the behaviour simply by clicking on a few checkboxes.

Terminal editors suck.

Amen to that! *Uses Notepad++*

[enk]

ability to edit immediately, instead of having to switch in and out of edit mode

If typing text means "editing" to you, why not just use nano?

"edit mode" is the normal mode in vi/m.

The folks at Bell Labs also took the effort to explain why mousing is faster than typing commands.

I stopped reading at "^xjxjxjxjxjxjxjxjxjxjxjxjxj". If they use vi like they use notepad, of course there will be better alternatives. For example, vi used properly. And "^x" deletes the first NON-WHITESPACE char. And I used to think Plan9 was cool.

Well ok, I didn't stop reading there.

"When the mouse is properly accelerated, many of us find that it's faster and easier to highlight the lines in question and then type and execute Edit s/^<tab>//g in acme or just type s/^<tab>//g in sam's command window."

You can do that in vim as well. Or you could just highlight the lines using the mouse and press ONE SINGLE KEY, <, to dedent. That's when I stopped reading.

<move there by jk>0dd<move to the other line by jk>p ... <move there by jk>0yy<move to the other line by jk>p

What's with the zeroes? Not that it hurts but if you don't take the time to learn basic vim, yes, there will be better alternatives.

Also, the full use of grep patterns is much easier, more powerful and more flexible than the pattern search facility of Vim

What exactly does grep offer that vim regex doesn't?

[Steax]

I never really got the terminal editor users. I prefer having a fully separate text editor. Being extendible and stuff is great, yeah, but I usually just want to get stuff done. Most mouse-based editors can do everything a terminal-based cone, too. And I prefer to let my keyboard be used only for code that goes down where I need it, or the occasional hotkey. It sets apart my mental mode between navigating/transversing documents and actually writing code.

I honestly tend to feel amused at points like "with [terminal editor], doing X just takes one keystroke!" Keystrokes aren't a very good unit. Hitting 2 keys and hitting 1 isn't so different at all, as it all goes into muscle memory. I can dedent with shift+tab or cmd+[. If I have to jump lines in a search-and-edit kind of way, since I use Sublime Text, I search for it, and hit cmd+L, which grabs the whole line. I don't see how it gets any faster or slower than that.