[celeritascelery]

When I see things like this, it reminds me that what makes vim special is not the software but it’s keybindings. That is why there are so many clones like spacemacs or VScodeVim. You can take the vim keys and you basically have the whole package but using your own software.

[rgrau]

I never thought of it that way, but that's a very good point indeed.

As an emacs user, I think what makes emacs special is not the keybindings, but the software itself, or, better phrased, the architecture and approach to extensibility that the software uses. Opinions on that?

[komali2]

Emacs user as well. I think the emacs keybindings are trash, even when capslock is set to CTRL. Spacemacs (or evil mode) is a dream. Vim keybindings saved my life, and now I do more and more in Emacs (email, IRC, even trying to get slack work in it).

[shanest]

That too. Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't take that long to get Vim setup with plug-ins for everything I need (LaTeX, code folding / highlighting / auto-complete, especially for Python, color...). I just sync my .vimrc across machines, and am done.

[jaster]

Totally agree, that's the reason why I use spacemacs with vim-bindings (having previously used vim, then vanilla emacs, then emacs with evil-mode).

I prefer "vim-shortcuts" and "emacs-software". Best of both worlds in my view !

[least]

I like emacs because it has so many neat applications built into it and in many ways works so much better than vim. Magit is really impressive, projectile is great, and helm is something I wish I could use in vim. I like that each major mode bundles in a lot of unique functionality that is specific to that mode. I like that the GUI emacs allows for inline images, pdf viewing, and variable pitched fonts so if I'm editing an org or markdown file, different kinds of text can be properly represented with weight, style, and size. This makes it so much more enjoyable for writing prose than vim.

Still, when it comes down to doing specific coding work, my experience in vim is generally better. LSP plugins like Coc.nvim are much simpler than emacs and work better than lsp-mode, in my experience. Emacs 26 still has poor base support for JSX (improved in 27) and there are several popular modes for dealing with the web and javascript development, which all have their own annoyances. In vim I've not had these issues.

Setting up environments for developing in vim for various languages have generally been easier and work mostly without having to do anything other than perhaps installing a plugin for syntax highlighting. In Emacs I find myself wrestling with several different modes, several of which don't cooperate with each other. I have to add hooks for every language for every mode I want to integrate into it. Also, sometimes they heavily conflict with evil-mode, which is also remarkably annoying.

I hope that at some point Emacs with evil-mode will truly become the best of both worlds, but right now vim still feels faster, easier to use, and more consistent (obviously) with vim editing paradigms.

[partdavid]

I agree completely. I switched to ERC back in the day because it was the best way to get vi keybindings in my IRC sessions.

[orbital-decay]

Probably not just keybindings but vi's mnemonic combinations, in particular. It's an entire language that makes vi(m) insanely expressive.

[rgrau]

Vim is like APL for text editing.

[shanest]

Completely. I use extensions for many other apps (e.g. Vimium in the browser) and feel crippled on other machines where I don't have the keybindings.

[iLemming]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21696156