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by bryanlarsen 2 days ago
Quite impressed with a sales page basically telling me to stick with Emacs for now: https://rune.build/coming-from/emacs
4 comments

Lots of IDEs claim to offer Vim/Emacs emulation. Vim users seem often quite happy with the vim emulation they get (I'm only an occasional Vim user so don't have an opinion).

The issue with emulating Emacs is that the editor key bindings are not the feature. The feature of Emacs is basically an IDE totally tuned to how you want it, plus the fact that then you apply the same ecosystem to a great number of text-adjacent applications - Org, E-mail, code, markdown, etc.

Someone saying to me "hey, you can copy with M-w!" just really doesn't appeal.

Vim seems more about an out-of-the-box "language" for typing, so I can see how you can emulate this more sanely.

> Vim users seem often quite happy with the vim emulation they get

Its better than nothing, but usually only lets you use vim bindings for text editing itself. Compared to neovim, where the entire editor and the plugin ecosystem is fully based on the same keyboard-driven workflow, it's quite lacking. For example, I remember that when using VSCode with its Vim mode plugin, it took quite a bit of configuration to be able to switch to the file tree and navigate it with the keyboard, and it still didn't work that well due to inherent limitations of the software.

Another huge example is Neogit. If you're an Emacs user, you probably use Magit, which Neogit is heavily inspired by, so you'll understand. Having it integrated into your editor and working with the same shortcuts is very nice and can't be replaced by vim emulation mode.

> Vim users seem often quite happy with the vim emulation they get

Not at all. Never seen any vi-emulation, which wasn't totally broken.

IntelliJ actually does (did) have quite solid vim emulation, at least from my experience of using it before going full into neovim (now on Emacs, btw)
Except when you go to any pane/window without code it stops using vim bindings
Fair. It’s mostly to transfer muscle memory over anyway. I’m a vim user so having all input surfaces in the IDE be modal and obey HJKL is priceless.
> Org mode, Magit, TRAMP, or another deep Emacs-native package is your center of gravity

This is me.

> rewriting the editor live in Elisp is the whole point for you

Funnily enough, this is not me. I just grab Doom Emacs and do very minor adjustments. I just really like all the packages and the ecosystem.

I had to chuckle at this pro

> Built-in Emacs editor

The built in editor is a one of my least favorite parts of Emacs. I'm in it for the customizability.

You spelled Neovim wrong :-)