Friendship With Emacs Is Over, Vim Is My Best Friend

so I was a young guy until about six months ago and you guys have been hounding me for a couple of years you need to check you out Emacs you need to really take a look at good new Emacs so I switched to Emacs about six months ago lived in good GNU Emacs for about one month I gave it 30 days I learned the default Ganu Emacs key bindings or key chords and I realized very quickly that the standard good new Emacs key bindings were very damaging to your hands long term no one should use the standard Emacs key bindings they're very dangerous so I switched over to evil mode and I found a evil mode Emacs distribution called doom Emacs and I really fell in love with doom Emacs men using doom Emacs really the whole time I've been in Emacs other than those first 30 days where I tried to learn the default key bindings because I thought it was important for me to learn those students fault key bindings but in the last month or so I find myself more and more opening up them instead of Emacs and I'm not exactly sure why that is it's not like I no longer like Emacs I still think Emacs is great I think it's fantastic but it's kind of like that 80s pop song it must have been love but it's over now so I'm really trying to come to terms with exactly why I'm gravitating back to them after six months in Emacs because I found evil mode evil mode solves a lot of problems once I found evil mode and of course once I found do me max you know it really turned Emacs very much into a film-like experience but there were some problems with it for example when you start using evil mode or distribution like space max or do me max you're gonna have a problem with Emacs documentation for example Emacs documentation starts to become a real chore to follow because so much of the documentation assumes you're using the default the new Emacs key bindings which probably most Emacs users are not using the default GNU Emacs keybindings they're probably using evil mood and then these distributions like space max and doom Emacs you know have their own custom key bindings also built into their particular Emacs distributions and all feels a bit chaotic you know it's just it's a bit of a mess to be fair some of this could be solved with better documentation from these particular Emacs distribution space max do me max whatever it happens to be but it's completely different with me on where you go and get filmed documentation you know it's going to work because everybody's film is the same film Emacs when I open it up it just seems chaotic it really does it seems a bit of a mess when you have all of these extra packages that you have to add to Emacs just to make it more vim like which is what I was doing so I'm adding all of this extra bloat to what is already an extremely bloated system that is Emacs is it worth it one thing I can say with absolute certainty after spending a few months in Emacs it is an undeniable fact that Emacs is more flexible than veal it just yes Emacs is built upon this P Lisp instead of vim script so Emacs really has support for greater possibilities because of that Emacs can be so much more than vim ever could be the fact that Emacs has a lisp it has built-in features or extra plugins that you can add such as the isil orga mode EWU which is the browser inside Emacs ERC which is the IRC client inside Emacs EMS which is the multimedia player inside Emacs megget which is the git client and for me the really killer feature one of the things I absolutely love any max is mu for E which is the email client that is built into emails it is probably the best email client I've ever used not even kidding you guys that struggle with terminal based email clients like neo mud and Alpine those or a chore to get up and working and to configure properly they're kind of flaky pieces of software they really are mu 4e you can have that thing set up and working in minutes and it just works works flawlessly and having said all that you know I still find myself back in vim and I am at a bit of a loss to explain why but there are a few things that come to mind though I think part of it is familiarity you know even though I'm pretty comfortable with Emacs and evil mode do me max especially now I'm feel very comfortable in it I still feel more comfortable in film I just do speed film is faster than Emacs it just is them everything is just lightning fast responsive Emacs is a bigger more bloated and quite frankly a slower program than Veeam it just is it's not perceived speed I think it's just affect Veeam is a faster program them seems like a much more consistent program then he max especially when you get into things like space Max and doom Emacs because now you're having to learn two different sets of key bindings because you're really using a combination of the default gönül Emacs key bindings and then you're learning the new evil mode key bindings or in some cases you're learning specific key bindings to that distribution space max do me max whatever it happens to be them you really only learn one set of key bindings there it's much more consistent across the board the same thing with plugins plugins are much more consistent meaning that there are reoccurring themes in the way that these different plugins work we're in Emacs you know you've got a million plugins that you can go install you're not really sure how they're gonna work especially when you're dealing with things like evil mode so I'm using the yum key bindings and everything but I install a particular plug-in and it doesn't work with the VM key bindings you know it's using some of the standard good gnu emacs key bindings or maybe it's using its own key bindings that the creator of that plug-in made up now the one thing I will say that does not matter whether you use vim or Emacs in my opinion I don't think product Shiva tea is an issue at all whether you use Emacs or VM I think you can be just as productive in Emacs as in VM and vice versa switching from film to Emacs is not going to increase productivity switching from Emacs to film it's not going to increase productivity so if you're one of those people thinking of switching from one to the other I that's fine don't think it's going to make you more productive though I if it does it would probably be so small of a difference it's unnoticeable ultimately I think part of my problem with Emacs and why I find myself in them more and more these days is the UNIX philosophy I'm a big fan of it right the UNIX philosophy for those that don't know is do one thing do one thing will that's what a program should do and that's exactly what VM does them as a text editor that's all it is and it's a fantastic text editor the best out there I think of myself I view myself really as a command-line user you know I do a lot of things at the command-line so for me VM it's my text editor and it's great I'm really reluctant to take on a whole bunch of add additional complexity because all I want from my text editor is a text editor I don't need all this other stuff that Emacs is bringing in Emacs is a complete suite of applications it's really more of an IDE than a text editor but I already have an IDE as a command-line user my IDE is called the terminal think about that for a second the terminal is my IDE it gives me access to a browser and email client or IRC clients get clients all the stuff that's built into Emacs I already have with all these terminal based applications I was using anyway and of course the terminal gives me access to my favorite text editor them so do I really need em X and I kind of preferred that workflow that terminal based workflow the command line workflow where I have a lot of these smaller more modular tools in my terminal toolbox because it's comfortable for me I feel comfortable in that world the big feature bloated IDE is Emacs it's rather off-putting it goes against everything I know as a Linux user it really does and it's always kind of bother made the six months or so I've been using Emacs all the heaviness and the bloatedness with it I'm not gonna lie it it's kind of annoyed me a little bit that I was living in that world instead of that more modular use specific tools for specific tasks world that I lived in before Emacs and I that that's part of probably why I find myself in them more and more these days Emacs though it's undeniably better than vim in everything that's not directly related to actual text editing Emacs is fantastic when it comes to all that other stuff besides text editing it's just amazing but I don't really need any of that stuff that Emacs offers because really for me I'm just looking for a simple text editor not a lisp environment you know not four or five extra shells yeah the bash shell and my terminal is the only show I need I don't need extra text based browsers I have links and my terminal I don't need aaww you know I don't need ERC for the IRC client I have irsie in my terminal I don't need any of that extra stuff that comes with Emacs I just need a text editor and if I just need a text editor films already on the system on UNIX based operating systems you already have VI and in most cases vim is already installed on the system and I was already turning Emacs into vim and that's the thing I've come to the realization that what I really wanted most out of Emacs is for it to be vim I was trying to make in Emacs into VM that's why I did evil mode that's why I did do me max to me vim is perfect so I just wanted P max to be vim and now you know I'm not gonna uninstall Emacs don't get this video twisted not on installing Emacs or do me max from my system they're still gonna be here I may sleep still play around with them I'm not even against making occasional content about Emacs I don't know if I'll play with it that much to make more content about it maybe maybe not but you know I've been on it six months and I I may still find myself wanting to launch Emacs every now and then I don't know I will say that part of the reason for me gravitating toward film you know if I'm being honest with myself it's that I'm a very basic person I don't need all the bills and whistles I don't need all the whiz-bang features you know I typically might web browsers you know whatever web browsers are having to be using Firefox or brave or whatever it happens to be I use web browsers typically without any plugins III can use a web browser with that any plug-in installed and live happily in it for months if not years text editors extensible text editors like vim and Emacs the same thing if you looked at my VM RC there's nothing to it I barely play around with with my film RC not many plugins installed at all I don't sit around and configure my VMRC it's not one of these two thousand line VMRC you know I barely touch the thing why is because typically I'm one of those people you present me with something I take it as is and part of the thing is I have eventually realized this configuration it's not necessarily a positive thing when it comes to software now don't get that twisted I like being able to configure things I like being able to make something exactly the way I want it but configuration is only a positive if it's available to you but it's not necessary like if I have to spend hours if or maybe in some cases weeks or months configuring something to make it functional to give it like basic functionality which is kind of what you have to do in Emacs that's not a positive that's a negative if you feel the need to customize a piece of software or you feel like you have to customize it you have to install these plugins because if you don't is simply unusable that's a sign something is wrong with that piece of software why doesn't it do those things you want especially if it's just basic stuff why doesn't it do those reasonable things you expect it to do without all of that customization and installing all these bloated plugins now some people will say well I just didn't give it enough time you didn't spin a uptime in emacs to really give it a shot as six months guys right if after six months of use I'm still finding myself wanting to launch him instead of Emacs and and I gave Emacs a real shot like I spent all of my time exclusively in Emacs for a few months if I still want to launch them instead of Emacs I think it's safe to say the Vilma's the text editor from me and that's again quote for me for me not for everyone not for you for me ultimately you gotta choose the tools that work right for you I I don't regret trying Emacs I'm really glad I did this it's been worthwhile it's been a great experience and there are some things that Emacs does that honestly I might incorporate in my own workflow seriously I might install some templates to try to emulate some of what Emacs does so I certainly would recommend everyone if you're interested in trying either vim or Emacs try them both if you can maybe you'll like one more than the other maybe neither one of them will work for you that's fine too there's other text editors out there for me you know I've found the one that works for me I got to be honest I just really love him and the whole time I was in Emacs you know it was like one of those other songs you know can't be with the one you love film then love the one you're with and that's kind of what I was loving Emacs because it was the one I was with but yeah I wanted to get back to them now before I go I need to thank a few special people this show was produced by Michael Mitchell Chris DJ Donnie Dylan George hello Nate lambda armory Rob Sean and Willie these guys they are the producers of this show without these guys this episode wouldn't have been possible also need to think all these names are seeing on the screen right now these are all my supporters over on patreon without each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen the channel wouldn't be possible if you'd like to support my work please consider doing so you'll find me at distro tube over on patreon alright guys peace

Channel: DistroTube

Views: 58,203

Keywords: emacs, gnu emacs, doom emacs, spacemacs, vi, vim, gvim, neovim, vim vs emacs, emacs org mode, emacs evil mode, emacs doom, vim text editor, vim terminal, unix philosophy, bloated software, free software, open source, gnu linux, windows, macos, text editing, ide, best text editor, best ide, best programming ide, extensible text editor, learn vim, learn emacs

Id: NNo2HWM3iPA

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/NotEveryExpectation]

Okay fight me. I use neovim for all the coding part and Emacs for all the task keeping using org-mode.

[u/yep808]

No offence, but Derek is a non-programmer and non-poweruser. He barely touched the first 10% of what Emacs is capable of. I feel like this video didn't do emacs enough justice.

[u/mayor123asdf]

Haha that was interesting, pretty surprised back then when he tried emacs. But it's nice that he gave emacs fair chance

[u/LeOtaku]

Interesting that Emacs' insufficient speed is such a deciding factor here. I've never had a problem with startup speed (emacsclient) or actual operating speed.

[u/mrillusi0n]

The title brings a big smile to my face :)

[u/wktr_t]

That's really close to my story with emacs. But different from Derek, I did stick with the most default configuration possible in emacs (like I do with Vim, no plugins) and it really was great. The more you learn about emacs, the more you see there's to learn and how great of an operating system and IDE it is (in fact, till this day ERC is my favorite IRC client). Then after like 8 months on Emacs, I opened Vim just to check on my old self. After a little spin of 1 day I was back in Vim.

[u/littleclover_909]

I think he is right about the unix philosophy: do one thing well. Vim is the program which done its job prefectly. I know emacs has a lot of features but it does not fit into the unix philosophy, maybe that's why Derek return to vim.

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah gonna agree with the guys in the comments!

Coming from Emacs I can say that it is great but it is very slow and has a huge start up time (at least competed to Vim) cause they want it to be an OS.

Vim shines just because It is just a text editor. Like I mean, I have a music or video player in my system. And a web browser and pretty much every extra thing Emacs has! I don't need one inside the application that will make it slower and more heavy!

[u/hainguyenac]

He's so wrong to say that most of emacs user uses evil mode. Also, it's his problem when he want to make emacs to be like vim.