The only time I edit a text file outside my IDE is when I connect directly to a server, and in that case I use vi.
That seems ridiculous to chose Vi as my primary text editor, when 99.9% of my text editing is done in Intellij.
Well I abstained in this case, however where do you draw the limit ? If there was a poll about "What is your primary IDE" would Vim or Emacs not be listed because they are "just text editor" ?
Exactly! And when you use your IDE to edit text file they should be listed aswell using the same logic.
When I said 99.9% of my text editing is done in Intellij. I also meant text editing outside of the project I'm working on: various config files, log file parsing, remote config files, ... Except for some extreme case like very large file, I rarely find the need to switch to another editor those days.
Those days there is a large overlap between text editors and IDE. Both have made huge progress, so that outside java or c#, some text editor are perfectly serviceable IDE and conversely, IDE editor make decent editor.
And in the same way that a car includes many control interfaces but is not itself a control interface, a program that contains text editors is not itself a text editor.
That probably didn't gain as much traction because half those items weren't text editors and he was missing a ton of IDEs to even make it a worthwhile poll in that regard. Plus Dreamweaver has no place in either such poll.
Scintilla embedded in our own Lua IDE; the same "engine" is used by Notepad++. I also regularly use SciTE, which is a small standalone Scintilla-based editor.
I can see how technically, you can consider them the same. But anyone who's used to vim will have quite a bad time in vi because of all the things that don't work.
What? That's not true at all, though I don't know about the "more advanced" functions, since I quit vi and start using vim as soon as I can - because even things like insert mode completely differ.
"Most of vim is from vi" doesn't mean it is same.
For Vi != Vim to be wrong (or Vi == Vim to be true) everything that Vim provides MUST work with vi as well - only then they are same/equal.
The irony of calling somebody out on a false statement with a false statement of your own...
Vim is more or less a superset of vi. Even still, there are some subtle behaviors in real vi that do not work the same in Vim, even in Vim's "compatible" mode.
Of all the vi-like editors, Nvi is much closer to real vi than Vim is.
Yes, only nobody cares about and nobody uses vi anymore.
Even the "vi" mode in a lot of distros is vim with a compatibility flag. And people only use it in an unknown system to edit some admin files in a hurry.
I'm sure there's a bit of selection bias by only polling the HN crowd (and at midnight on the west coast of the US / 3AM on the east coast -- a good portion of HN'ers are in SV).
Logically, you'd be right that it wouldn't make much sense. However geographical trends like that do happen. eg SLES tends to have more traction in Europe than in the US (where RHEL is king of the enterprise space). Opera is more widely used in Europe and some eastern blocks than it is in the States. Apple hardware has a lower foothold in Europe than in America. And so on.
Often it's just a case that people will use what they see their peers use rather than what they're told they should use by the internet.
Sure they happen. But what is the basis for assuming so so matter-of-factly in this case? If you ask me I'd expect SV to have higher vim/emacs penetration since it's been tech central since before the invention of the terminal.
> Sure they happen. But what is the basis for assuming so so matter-of-factly in this case?
I can't help you there as I wasn't the one that made that comment.
> If you ask me I'd expect SV to have higher vim/emacs penetration since it's been tech central since before the invention of the terminal.
You could make similar arguments against SV: vim was written by a European (Bram Moolenaar) and GNU emacs was widely popularised by a European OS (Linux). Sadly local statistical trends are rarely that simple to explain (and if we're honest, the results of these polls are anything but trustworthy to begin with)
> I can't help you there as I wasn't the one that made that comment.
But you're totally derailing my thread as that is the entire point of my comment. The OP presented it like some sort of foregone conclusion that SV would obviously skew to Sublime. Why!? I am not trying to make a claim that A) geographical variances don't exist or B) SV over-represents vim / emacs (that was merely a wild guess, not meant to state a position, just meant to demonstrate that intuitively the OP's argument makes no sense).
To be honest, I think you're being a tad argumentative. All the former poster said was the was "I'm sure that there's a bit of selection bias going on." Which is actually a very fair comment as polling at set times when only a specific region is active will generate some selection bias. He didn't state that it's a forgone conclusion that vi/emacs is unpopular in SV. If anything, he was just stating the obvious about how not everyone is on the same timezone and thus around to vote.
And accusing me of "totally derailing [your] thread" when it's neither your thread and nor am I going off topic, is rather childish. I appreciate you wanted pyre to expand on his comments, but let's not descend into hair-pulling just because someone else happens to side with a comment that you presumably misinterpreted (and I'm making that presumption because you latter agreed with his comment when I reworded it).
While my most often used local editor is emacs by far (and zile remotely), I also tend to use Visual Studio as simple text editor on windows. Some kind of Visual Studio shell is installed on almost any windows machine I need to use (be it Visual Studio proper, AvrStudio or something like that) and in contrast to notepad it does not have problem with LF newlines.
I find it interesting how much TextMate has declined. A few years ago, I believe it would have been the #1 response on this list. TextMate 2 these days, in the hands of the community, is truly excellent. The UI and UX has improved tremendously, and it is now free and open source. I imagine it is just too late. Everybody has moved on.
That said, I'm a switcher, too. I got fed up with the vaporware situation and moved to vim full-time a few years ago. I couldn't move back now.
Given that Sublime Text does not look like a Mac app, and that TextMate was a Mac only app that looked very much like a Mac app, I find it to not be 'spiritual successor' in any shape or form. Sublime Text 2 is a cross-platform application. Having said that, Sublime Text has borrowed some good ideas from TextMate, but many editors do that these days.
I totally agree here. Sublime is just an rebound. People will move on.
I think they should converge to Old Editors like Vim/Emacs because Editors like these don't die, they never have. They keep coming back, like a Zombie (Not the best example I could come up with).
But being on Emacs gave me an advantage of persistence. In past I have changed companies, development machines, operating systems and programming languages but never editor. It was always there, available.
Yes. And Geany is my choice as well. Pretty, good as a editor, with some features of an IDE I never use (but others I do use), and customizable enough.
Well, vi is the editor I use 2nd most (after Emacs), but I use nvi nearly as often as I use vim, and I avoid the vim extensions (except the useful :help).
I imagine changing vi to vim would be a bit like changing Emacs to GNU Emacs.
That and some other things. There were also several forks of GNU Emacs and Xemacs to support Mac OS Carbon/Cocoa, of which Aquamacs is still in widespread use.
There's also Steve Youngs' SXEmacs (a XEmacs fork), which is probably the most well-developed of several efforts to extend Emacs to be a window manager.
vi defaults to vim on some of my machines, to nvi on others. I like to have access to both.
vim pros: syntax highlighting is often nice (though when I really care about highlighting, I usually use Emacs), vim's :help is very nice, vim is usually installed
nvi pros: the small TCB I prefer when I'm root (`find /usr/share/vim -name \*.vim | wc -l` just gave me 1103 results, including hundreds of scripts that might be run without me explicitly asking for them), no splash screen, avoids the autoindenting that is often irritating, bound to vi on FreeBSD
162 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 213 ms ] threadThe only time I edit a text file outside my IDE is when I connect directly to a server, and in that case I use vi.
That seems ridiculous to chose Vi as my primary text editor, when 99.9% of my text editing is done in Intellij.
Well I abstained in this case, however where do you draw the limit ? If there was a poll about "What is your primary IDE" would Vim or Emacs not be listed because they are "just text editor" ?
When I said 99.9% of my text editing is done in Intellij. I also meant text editing outside of the project I'm working on: various config files, log file parsing, remote config files, ... Except for some extreme case like very large file, I rarely find the need to switch to another editor those days.
Those days there is a large overlap between text editors and IDE. Both have made huge progress, so that outside java or c#, some text editor are perfectly serviceable IDE and conversely, IDE editor make decent editor.
Use what you feel good and productive. Be happy.
I do have Notepad++ installed, and if I had to say, I probably use Beyond Compare for my meager text editing needs.
If I switch to other software stacks, I'll probably use Sublime (although I'd like to keep on using an IDE).
Edit: I'm not the only one
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5736817
OK, new rule: Nobody makes a poll about text editors anymore.
Also, Vim is 20+ years old as well.
Edit: grammar
Vim is more or less a superset of vi. Even still, there are some subtle behaviors in real vi that do not work the same in Vim, even in Vim's "compatible" mode.
Of all the vi-like editors, Nvi is much closer to real vi than Vim is.
Try using heirloom vi or Solaris vi sometime. Even nvi adds a lot of convenience.
Even the "vi" mode in a lot of distros is vim with a compatibility flag. And people only use it in an unknown system to edit some admin files in a hurry.
Vi in 2013 == Vim.
(Also don't forget it's coffee time in Europe)
Logically, you'd be right that it wouldn't make much sense. However geographical trends like that do happen. eg SLES tends to have more traction in Europe than in the US (where RHEL is king of the enterprise space). Opera is more widely used in Europe and some eastern blocks than it is in the States. Apple hardware has a lower foothold in Europe than in America. And so on.
Often it's just a case that people will use what they see their peers use rather than what they're told they should use by the internet.
I can't help you there as I wasn't the one that made that comment.
> If you ask me I'd expect SV to have higher vim/emacs penetration since it's been tech central since before the invention of the terminal.
You could make similar arguments against SV: vim was written by a European (Bram Moolenaar) and GNU emacs was widely popularised by a European OS (Linux). Sadly local statistical trends are rarely that simple to explain (and if we're honest, the results of these polls are anything but trustworthy to begin with)
But you're totally derailing my thread as that is the entire point of my comment. The OP presented it like some sort of foregone conclusion that SV would obviously skew to Sublime. Why!? I am not trying to make a claim that A) geographical variances don't exist or B) SV over-represents vim / emacs (that was merely a wild guess, not meant to state a position, just meant to demonstrate that intuitively the OP's argument makes no sense).
I hope that's clear now.
And accusing me of "totally derailing [your] thread" when it's neither your thread and nor am I going off topic, is rather childish. I appreciate you wanted pyre to expand on his comments, but let's not descend into hair-pulling just because someone else happens to side with a comment that you presumably misinterpreted (and I'm making that presumption because you latter agreed with his comment when I reworded it).
Notepad replacement: Notepad++
Prolog, Haskell: Sublime Text (thanks to it, I can get rid of emacs completely)
Even when I was full-time in Linux, my go to IDE was KDevelop. And mcedit for simple text editing.
> Visual Studio
That said, I'm a switcher, too. I got fed up with the vaporware situation and moved to vim full-time a few years ago. I couldn't move back now.
But being on Emacs gave me an advantage of persistence. In past I have changed companies, development machines, operating systems and programming languages but never editor. It was always there, available.
I imagine changing vi to vim would be a bit like changing Emacs to GNU Emacs.
There's also Steve Youngs' SXEmacs (a XEmacs fork), which is probably the most well-developed of several efforts to extend Emacs to be a window manager.
vim pros: syntax highlighting is often nice (though when I really care about highlighting, I usually use Emacs), vim's :help is very nice, vim is usually installed
nvi pros: the small TCB I prefer when I'm root (`find /usr/share/vim -name \*.vim | wc -l` just gave me 1103 results, including hundreds of scripts that might be run without me explicitly asking for them), no splash screen, avoids the autoindenting that is often irritating, bound to vi on FreeBSD
I can't say nvi vs. vim efficiency has been an issue for me, but it has been for some people ... http://www.galexander.org/vim_sucks.html