Vim or Emacs?

[IncongruousGoat]

The title says it all. So, which do you use, Vim or Emacs? Or do you use some other text editor?

For anyone that's lost, Vim and Emacs are two terminal-based, scriptable, extendable text editors used most often by programmers, Linux users, and the kinds of people who want to look cool in the eyes of programmers and Linux users. Vim is much more lightweight and portable than Emacs, but isn't quite as extensible and has a steeper learning curve and more arcane interface. Emacs has a (somewhat) more conventional interface and is more extensible, but is more intensive to run and doesn't work to its fullest potential outside of the GNU/Linux software environment.

I personally use Vim, since I often find myself working on minimal and unusual systems, and I can always rely on Vim, or at least vi, to be there when I need to do some text editing. Also, I find Emacs' key bindings to be even more objectionable than the standard set of escape sequences (ctrl-z, ctrl-c, ctrl-s, etc.) used in more mainstream text editors.

[Geonovast]

I actually haven't used anything other than Nano.  I rather like it.

I really wish more Linux tutorials online would emphasize that there are different options.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen the first step to a tutorial that had nothing to do with a text editor (other than using one) as "sudo apt-get install vim" or similar.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Geonovast

[IncongruousGoat]

10 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I really wish more Linux tutorials online would emphasize that there are different options.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen the first step to a tutorial that had nothing to do with a text editor (other than using one) as "sudo apt-get install vim" or similar.

Well, the reason that Vim is often chosen is that it (or, more specifically, vi), is guaranteed by POSIX standard to be available on every Unix and Unix-like system. It's the safest choice, if someone needs to use a text editor on such a system. And, of course, it's been ported to Windows and every old mainframe OS, including weird IBM dinosaurs that still use EBCDIC as a character encoding. The only other editor with similar guaranteed availability is ed, and ed is impossible to use by modern standards.

[Lisias]

I use mcedit most if the time (first thing I do on every box is to check if Midnight Commander is installed).

I run from Vi as it was the devil. But the devil runs faster than me, so... :-P

[0111narwhalz]

ed is the editor…

Most of the time I use xed, but if I'm doing things in command line I typically go for nano. On Windows I use Notepad++.

[steve_v]

In order of preference:
mcedit
nano / pico
emacs
clay tablet
rusty nail and own blood
evil

IMO the only reason for using vi is that nothing else is available. That makes it a sane default, but not a sane preference.

Edited September 4, 2018 by steve_v

[Green Baron]

sed :-)

No, seriously. Neither is really intuitive and they can't deny their heritage as being not really screen oriented. I came late to Linux and the animosities between vi(m) and emacs don't bother me. But somehow emacs is too huge and slow imo if one doesn't use it regularly. I know one can do a lot with it up to an IDE.

So, if i am in a terminal and > or | aren't enough it is nano for me as well, in which i regularly provoked the "grumblegrumble" message that was taken out just lately :-)

Edited September 4, 2018 by Green Baron

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, Green Baron said:

No, seriously. Neither is really intuitive and they can't deny their heritage as being not really screen oriented. I came late to Linux and the animosities between vi(m) and emacs don't bother me. But somehow emacs is too huge and slow imo if one doesn't use it regularly. I know one can do a lot with it up to an IDE.

If you ever programmed in DOS, give a peek on SETEDIT.  

[LordFerret]

When all else fails and you're in a rush, you can call up vi on just about every Linux / Unix / ix-whatever installation anywhere.

 

 

7 hours ago, steve_v said:

evil

IMO the only reason for using vi is that nothing else is available. That makes it a sane default, but not a sane preference.

We play old video games with joy and enthusiasm, so why not vi?

Agreed, sane default.

Edited September 4, 2018 by LordFerret

[Harry Rhodan]

I thought discussions about religion were forbidden.

[Nuke]

i usually use nano. on winders its strictly notepad++. 

[Cydonian Monk]

There is only vim. 

[Lisias]

On 9/5/2018 at 12:50 AM, Cydonian Monk said:

There is only vim. 

God had to use something to write EMACS.

[0111narwhalz]

[Green Baron]

Yeah, emacs has a command for everything. I mean everything. But i can't memorize everything. Please, may i use nano ? I mean, i'm just doing a small shell script and it would be ready in an hour or so .... or in 2-3 days if i were forced to use emacs.

 

Ha, that reminds me of another snotty word i heard from a free climber. When asked by a paraglider "How long does it take you to reach the summit ?" he answered "Hmmm... 20 minutes. Or the rest of my life." The two did a race then and arrived simultaneously at the summit cross.

 

p.s.: as you have probably noticed, i am not a real programmer :-)

Good night y'all.

 

Edited September 6, 2018 by Green Baron