I would like to premise this with the following:
- The best approach is probably just testing out each and every editor that interests me until I've found what works best for me.
- However, I wonder to what degree a test as such would be representative when the likes of Emacs and (Neo)Vim are considered; both of which are known for being a life time learning process.
- I don't literally expect Emacs or (Neo)Vim to be drop-in replacements for any IDE. Some of the most basic IDE-functions are absent by default and some (perhaps more advanced) functionality might simply not be attainable at all.
- I am not interested in anything that remotely resembles a flame war. The community at Lemmy has so far been very kind to me; let's keep it that way 😜.
Motivation
I've had experiences with Atom, VS Code and some of Jetbrains' IDEs like Pycharm and Rider. While I've been generally content with all of them, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth whenever I'm forced to switch IDEs because their lifetimes and/or lack of extensibility doesn't allow me to responsibly continue using them. As such, I'm interested in a long time investment that will grow as I will. Both Emacs and (Neo)Vim have passed the test of time and I honestly don't think they'll cease to exist in the upcoming decades, that's why I would love to start using either one of them.
Furthermore, Vi(m) keybindings seem to be somewhat ubiquitous and almost any IDE offers some support. As such, improving my Vi(m)-game should only net-positive my productivity (at least eventually). Also, fluency will benefit me whenever I'm remote accessing any random server as they will always have Vi(m) installed. Thankfully, this doesn't force me to use Vi(m) (or Neovim) just yet, because Emacs offers with Evil perhaps the single best Vi(m) implementation; outside of native Vi(m)*.
My setup:
- I'm on a custom image of uBlue using their startingpoint as template. For those unaware; an oversimplification would be that it is Fedora Silverblue with some extras.
- As such, I would like to have my developer environments local and have used Distrobox to that extent using steps similar to the ones outlined over here. But I'm not married to that specific way of utilizing local containers. So please feel free to recommend me something that's at least as good.
- If I go for Emacs, then I will definitely rely on Evil.
- If possible, I would like to use it for C#, Python and Rust. Furthermore, I engage in editing Bash scripts, Dockerfiles, Linux config files, texts written in Latex and/or Markdown and other files written in Nix or JSON. As both are very extensible, I don't expect any issues, but I might be wrong.
Questions:
- First of all, does it make sense for me to only consider these two?
- Can the split between Vim and Neovim be interpreted as the first schism and as such be a forebode for what's yet to come?
- Google Trends suggests that Neo(Vim) is ever-popular. On the other hand; not only is Emacs relatively less popular, but its popularity seems to be slightly declining. Should this worry me regarding their long-time future? Especially considering that a thriving community is literally the lifeline for both of them.
- For those that have used both extensively, which one do you prefer (if any) and why?
- While I understand that the power of both of them lies primarily in how one can literally make them behave however suits their workflow best. Therefore, the use of premade configs and/or starter kits/distributions should (ideally) only be used either temporary or as a starting point. However, at this point, they provide a decent showcase of what each 'platform' has to offer. So:
You could also consider: https://helix-editor.com/
It does more than vim out if the box and it has similar but different key bindings. The key bindings are more intuitive and easier to learn in my opinion.
It is missing a few features still (e.g.plugins) but I have been using helix for a while and it is really fun.
Helix is great. And it's written in Rust so I feel pretty comfortable working in the codebase. The maintainers are friendly. I think it will eventually leave other modal terminal editors in the dust, considering rate of development.
It has shortcomings from being young, but they are rapidly disappearing. The philosophy of being mostly "batteries included" is so refreshing compared to the configuration hell of NeoVim.
And it’s written in Rust so I feel pretty comfortable working in the codebase.
Rust, indeed, is a big plus.
It has shortcomings from being young, but they are rapidly disappearing. The philosophy of being mostly “batteries included” is so refreshing compared to the configuration hell of NeoVim.
While its shortcomings might eventually be ironed out. Do you expect it to be as ubiquitous as Vi(m) has become? If not, do you expect Helix to improve its Vim implementation or rather become so popular that it can rival Vi(m) in being 'ever-present'?
Do you expect it to be as ubiquitous as Vi(m) has become?
I honestly believe that Helix will eclipse NeoVim because it's designed better, the source code is more maintainable, and the philosophy is a bit more balanced and welcoming to users that care more about productivity than customizability. Refactoring Vim's spaghetti C code is a massive task, and C as a language drags it down. Where the NeoVim ecosystem is currently fractured among many Lua "distributions," Helix just builds on itself in one source tree. I think starting with a solid core before supporting plugins will be good for the future of Helix.
do you expect Helix to improve its Vim implementation
I'm not sure what you mean. The Helix key combos are similar but not the same as Vim, they are closer to Kakoune. Once Helix has plugins, it might be possible to get something closer to true Vim emulation.
rival Vi(m) in being ‘ever-present’
Yea I think Helix is here to stay, and it will continue stealing market share from other terminal editors. It probably won't convert anyone that's already invested years in learning and configuring (Neo)Vim, but for newcomers looking for a powerful option with sane defaults, Helix is far easier to get started with.
Personally, I learned Vim at a workplace where most others used Vim. This was at a time when NeoVim was just gaining traction, so I wasn't familiar with it. Vanilla Vim didn't quite compete with VSCode for my workflows, so I worked with VSCode for a while before trying NeoVim. I found the NeoVim setup obtuse. Helix saved me all of that effort, and I was almost immediately productive.
I honestly believe that Helix will eclipse NeoVim because it’s designed better, the source code is more maintainable, and the philosophy is a bit more balanced and welcoming to users that care more about productivity than customizability. Refactoring Vim’s spaghetti C code is a massive task, and C as a language drags it down. Where the NeoVim ecosystem is currently fractured among many Lua “distributions,” Helix just builds on itself in one source tree. I think starting with a solid core before supporting plugins will be good for the future of Helix.
Perhaps I should have done a better job at formulating the question. Btw, this writing is cool. Thank you for that. I also believe it contains some excellent pointers regarding topics I should read into. However, my question was more related to the following: As you know; it doesn't matter whichever IDE I'm using, there's definitely a plugin (or perhaps even built-in functionality) that allows me to utilize my Vi(m)-acquired skills to improve my productivity on any given IDE. Do you think that Helix' keybindings (I believe they're at least to some degree inspired by Kakoune) will be similarly found either built-in or as a plugin on whichever random IDE you might come across?
Once Helix has plugins, it might be possible to get something closer to true Vim emulation.
This is the answer I was seeking. Makes sense.
Yea I think Helix is here to stay, and it will continue stealing market share from other terminal editors. It probably won’t convert anyone that’s already invested years in learning and configuring (Neo)Vim, but for newcomers looking for a powerful option with sane defaults, Helix is far easier to get started with.
Perhaps I should have done (yet again) a better job at explaining what I meant. As you know; it doesn't matter if I'm on some random Linux distro or on macOS, I'm sure that Vi(m) is installed by default and I can rely on it. Same applies to some random remote device I'm accessing; if anything, I can expect that my Vi(m)-acquired skills will be of good use. Do you think that Helix or some of the functionality it offers (from its keybindings to anything (really)) will somehow be beneficial to me in some remote accessed device or any other similar setting?
Of course, all of these questions stem from the fact that -if possible- I want usage of my IDE to be beneficial to how I engage with my text editor and vice versa. Otherwise, these questions don't make any sense at all. Perhaps, I should instead reconsider if this is important in the first place. Currently, I'm at least naive enough to believe that it's worth pursuing. But feel free to convince me otherwise 😉!
For completeness' sake, Helix has definitely peaked my interest. I will look into it and see how I might benefit from it (if at all). Thank you.
Thanks for mentioning Helix! I've definitely considered Helix. But as 'its Vim implementation' messes the structure of its 'sentences', it seemed somewhat detrimental with respects to improving my Vi(m)-game. Furthermore, I am not confident that it will continue to thrive 20 years down the line; while both Emacs and Vi(m) have already proven with their respective track records how robust their ecosystems are.
It is missing a few features still (e.g.plugins) but I have been using helix for a while and it is really fun.
Which is another concern 😅. For whatever it's worth, I believe Lapce to be more promising.
I think helix (or some derivative) has good long tern prospects. It has a fairly large communuty abd It is much more accessible than (neo)vim.
I've indeed been pleasantly surprised by Helix since I've started these posts. I'm also more optimistic than initially regarding its future prospects. I'll look into it and perhaps I'll have some use for it. Thank you!
It seems to offer a leaner approach. If you've used any of the ones mentioned in the OP, would you consider offering a more elaborate comparison between them?
I've used LunarVim and they make a lot of opinionated changes from the default behavior of NeoVim. These changes are undocumented and must be discovered and explored organically, while the default behavior is well documented.
It's also difficult to update and change for your own use until you become familiar enough with all of the customizations and packages they've included.
Kickstart.nvim ads only a few packages that are very popular and provides a base upon which you can customize as needed.
These changes are undocumented and must be discovered and explored organically, while the default behavior is well documented.
This, indeed, is concerning. Thank you for mentioning this!
Kickstart.nvim ads only a few packages that are very popular and provides a base upon which you can customize as needed.
Hmm..., allow me to ask the following: How much effort would it take to get Kickstart.nvim from scratch to where any of the opinionated distros are in terms of functionality?
Probably a lot. I think LunarVim was the result of several years of customizations from a few people but one dev did most of yhe work. But I've found that I don't want most of these changes and packages included in LunarVim.
Thanks a lot for sharing your insights and experiences on this! Kickstart.nvim has surely caught my interest and I would like to play with it to see how much I can make it resemble LunarVim and the others in functionality and if there's anything worthwhile that remains to be missing. If not, then perhaps I'll be relying on Kickstart.nvim instead. Once again; thank you!
Have you used Spacemacs as well? If so, would you mind offering some more insight regarding either one of them and specifically whatever made you like Doom Emacs?
I think Crazazy had a good take about Doom in regards to customization. I’ll add that there’s some preconfigured plugins for most popular languages in Doom (complete with LSP) that makes it a breeze to go from install to feeling like home. You just have to uncomment them in the config file and reload emacs.
And one advantage is that, these plugins aren’t pre-installed, so they don’t load when you start emacs! Which makes doom emacs quite lean and the startup times are way faster.
I’ll add that there’s some preconfigured plugins for most popular languages in Doom (complete with LSP) that makes it a breeze to go from install to feeling like home. You just have to uncomment them in the config file and reload emacs.
That's actually really cool! Thank you for that tip!
You’re welcome! I’m not much of a programmer but I’m very obsessive about my text editors. I’ve tried so many (Sublime, Atom, PyCharm, Jetbrains stuff, Eclipse ((ew)), Visual Studio code, and neovim) but none of them scratches the itch that Doom scratches. I feel like with Doom i’ve concluded my search for the “best” text editor and settled for a highly extensible but also highly intuitive text editor that works right out of the box and can work flawlessly for projects in a lot of the popular languages (I’ve personally used Rust, Haskell, Python and markdown and HTML editing with it). Something I can use forever without succumbing to the enshittification that inevitably lies for most proprietary solutions (end of open source dogma rant)
Also, pro tip is, when you’re in a project and want to search for a keyword in one of the files in your project, type then slash (/). Super useful and it’s really fast. Welcome to Doom 😊
I’ve tried so many (Sublime, Atom, PyCharm, Jetbrains stuff, Eclipse ((ew)), Visual Studio code, and neovim)
Hehe, that's for sure a long list 😜. I'm very curious to learn how your experiences with Neovim went in particular and what ultimately led you to prefer Doom Emacs over it.
I feel like with Doom i’ve concluded my search for the “best” text editor and settled for a highly extensible but also highly intuitive text editor that works right out of the box and can work flawlessly for projects in a lot of the popular languages (I’ve personally used Rust, Haskell, Python and markdown and HTML editing with it). Something I can use forever without succumbing to the enshittification that inevitably lies for most proprietary solutions (end of open source dogma rant)
Honestly, I think you've done a great job at vocalizing my ambitions related to Emacs. From, what I've seen so far, I can't envision any other editor that has as much potential to become my 'endgame'. Though, I'd have to admit that Neovim's advancements seem very promising. And I can definitely envision some use for it alongside Emacs.
Also, pro tip is, when you’re in a project and want to search for a keyword in one of the files in your project, type <space> then slash (/). Super useful and it’s really fast. Welcome to Doom 😊
Hehe, thanks for the tip! And thank you for welcoming me to Doom 😊!
I still use neovim (mostly vim) for server administration. Basically just a glorified notepad for me, although i am aware of its potential. I’m usually too lazy to set up a dotfile for it so i just use vanilla vim for my home lab when i SSH in :)
Makes a lot of sense.
Thank you so much for chiming in and sharing your knowledge and experiences! Much appreciated!
I like Spacevim a lot (inspired by SpacEmacs), you can use neovim as the underlying vim package as well. Then update init.toml with whatever layers/plugins you want
I like Spacevim a lot
Have you tried any of the ones mentioned in the OP? If so, would you be so kind to elaborate upon why you prefer SpaceVim over the others?
(inspired by SpacEmacs)
Interesting. Would you be so kind to elaborate on what this entails?
you can use neovim as the underlying vim package as well. Then update init.toml with whatever layers/plugins you want
That seems kinda hella streamlined and straightforward, which is honestly pretty cool. Is this different from how it works on any of the '(Neo)Vim distros' and/or by default?
I've tried a few IDEs, mainly Microsoft ones as of recently, but I still prefer my neospacevim setup. Microsoft has a very nice debugger and other useful features for navigating large software projects, but even on my 3080 12th Gen i7 rig with 32GB the plugins I use end up slowing things down. Plus, a similar debugger interface can normally be found in an init.toml layer
With neospacevim, I can specify which plugins get loaded for which file types, so my LaTeX plugins don't interfere with my Python plugins for example.
Also the macro language locks me into vim, I even installed vimium keybinds for my browser. Spacevim is nice because you can see all the available keybinds option trees by pressing Space.
I mentioned spacevim/SpacEmacs because your post focused on emacs/vim, if you do choose either to make an IDE in I would imagine SpacEmacs/spacevim might be a little closer to an IDE than a text editor.
Spacevim is nice because it will auto install packages declared in the init.toml, sometimes with vanilla vim or neovim you need a plugin manager installed separately
I'm interested in a long time investment that will grow as I will
As long as you pick up shortcuts from any editor you're used to and can implement them or something similar in any hackable editor, you're growing long term.
Emacs and (Neo)Vim have passed the test of time and I honestly don't think they'll cease to exist in the upcoming decades
Neovim will exist on account of being a lightweight refresh on Vim that, due to issues with the Vim owner, was able to gain enough momentum to take off.
Emacs I'm not so sure. If you've checked the news anytime for Doom Emacs, you can see the maintainer mentioning how it's become progressively difficult to maintain the project. I'd imagine it's a similar story for plugins and other derivatives. People have attempted remaking Emacs from scratch, but there was not enough momentum for it, so that went under.
There are a lot of beautiful plugins for both Emacs and Vim that personally, I wish could exist as programs separate from these editors. Have you had a look at the design philosophy behind Kakoune?
"Kakoune is expected to run on a Unix-like system alongside a lot of text-based tools, and should make it easy to interact with these tools. For example, sorting lines should be done using the Unix sort command, not with an internal implementation."
This would stop so many tears being shed for deprecated plugins if they just focused on being a separate program that can interact with whatever code editor you want, be it VSCode, Vim, Emacs, etc.
I also recommend reading this article here that goes more in-depth on this point and has a comparison of vim, helix and kakoune.
Emacs I’m not so sure. If you’ve checked the news anytime for Doom Emacs, you can see the maintainer mentioning how it’s become progressively difficult to maintain the project. I’d imagine it’s a similar story for plugins and other derivatives. People have attempted remaking Emacs from scratch, but there was not enough momentum for it, so that went under.
This is news to me. Thank you so much for mentioning this! I'll have to look into this.
Have you had a look at the design philosophy behind Kakoune?
I actually hadn't yet, but I did just now. And I'd have to say that I liked what I read. There's for sure a lot out there that's worthy of being explored and I've become confident that Kakoune deserves to be further explored as well. Thank you for informing me on that!
I also recommend reading this article here that goes more in-depth on this point and has a comparison of vim, helix and kakoune.
I haven't read the article yet. But I'm pretty sure it's going to be another excellent read. Please feel free to share more from where these are coming from 😊! Thank you!
