Emacs or Vi? Why the answer is neither.

[Jesse Phillips]

On Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:49:52 +0100, Bruno Medeiros wrote:

> It seems to be article season, and I'm on a bit of a punditry mood, so
> here's a blog post I wrote recently:
> 
> http://pureconcepture.blogspot.com/2011/05/emacs-or-vi-why-answer-is-
neither.html
> 
> It's not about D, but it's a software development issue that has popped
> up several times here in the NG... :)

I'm sorry but your conclusion is something I cannot agree with on many 
points. The big thing you miss is that most code is text. I can agree 
that Vim (I will not speak for Emacs) is not a good IDE and is bad at 
understanding the semantics of a language. But to dismiss a text editor 
for writing code because it is textual...

Personally I don't like working in Java without Eclipse and in C# without 
VS or MonoDevelop. But many times I will open the file in Vim or just 
copy and past a section of code in Vim just so I can have a text editor 
to edit my text. I miss Vim in my terminal.

I don't claim to know the ins and outs of an IDE, but you haven't 
convinced me. Vim's understanding of the code is zero, the closest thing 
it has is the ability to navigate tags which are generated by ctags. It 
only works for navigation and those languages supported by the program 
(just like an IDE). But some things, like a Type Hierarchy and Outline 
should be created by the documentation generator.

Some other items are very nice, but are not common during a days coding. 
I rename variables all the time, but usually these are local in scope and 
and can be done with a quick search and replace on a selection or file. 

Extracting a method is common and the ability to identify needed 
parameters is certainly very nice. Parameter modification is going to be 
more of a find all calls to this function then a "I'll do it for you." 
and the Content Assist (more than just auto-complete). And to this I 
generally just miss Vim more than these features, but are still the 
reasons I keep and IDE one it is available.

The strangest credit you gave an IDE, "navigate to member/element above/
below - Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down), word navigate (Ctrl-Left/Right)" This is Vim 
territory here. And you left off search, that one is simple in any 
editor, but with Vim you can be selecting text and search to where you 
want to end the selection. There are tons of ways to navigate in vim. 
Using * to find the next instance of a word, w to jump a word, % to 
navigate to the matching paren/bracket/etc.

I'd like to leave you with a thought experiment. The next time you need 
to change a word (not rename a variable), or change all the content 
inside quotes and think to yourself, this would be easier in Vim. You 
don't have to believe it, but I bet you if you remember to tell yourself 
this you'll see how common it is. I've done this very thing except mine 
was "If I could just remember that command to do this."