[asuffield]

Gah, the tutorial keybindings! They are mad. I've been using emacs for a very long time, and I can't imagine using those to navigate. Emacs has perfectly reasonable default keybindings these days, they just aren't the ones mentioned in the tutorial.

Command: move down one line

What vi uses: j

What the emacs tutorial suggests: C-n

What I use in emacs: the down arrow

[yulaow]

Usually the strong defenders of emacs tell you that you must use c-n c-p c-b c-f to move because those are better and you will adapt in a short time.

Then the strongest defenders of emacs tell you that you must use whatever you want because the purpose of emacs is that the editor must adapt to you and not the opposite.

[clarry]

Actually I think the strongest defenders of emacs say you use C-s and the like for most navigation. Moving character-by-character is slow and inefficient, so the argument about whether C-n C-p etc. are better or worse than hjkl is irrelevant.

I have my own code editor which is more like vi than emacs, but I'm using interactive search in it.

[jessaustin]

I have my own code editor...

That's the best line I've heard to finish an emacs-vs-vi argument!

[aaronem]

Well, sure, if by "finish" you mean "unite emacs partisans and vi aficionados in mutual and vaguely contemptuous pity".

[markrages]

Yes! C-s navigation, once learned, is the thing I miss most from other editors.

[acomjean]

Agreed. Don't forget C-r too.

[jerf]

It's the vim defenders who will claim that the home key navigation is a must. Emacs advocates don't much care from what I've seen. Some of them will be roused to suggest that you learn to use searching better.

[MetaCosm]

Vim defenders will also tell you to use search. Also, why would even Emacs fans recommended corded combos over single keypresses? Give my pinky a break man!

[sjolsen]

Because it means you don't have to jump in and out of different modes. The biggest thing that kept me from using vim was _constantly_ typing in normal mode and trying to issue commands in insert mode.

Is constantly hitting the Escape key (even remapped to Caps Lock, or using ^[) really any better on your pinky?

[Rusky]

I use ^[, and I use my pinky a lot less than I would in emacs, because I do a lot more in command mode than I do in a single emacs chord. I view "insert some text" as its own command. Vim's commands are structured so you can combine orthogonal pieces, where emacs has a separate chord for everything.

[sjolsen]

Vim does the orthogonality thing better, I'll admit, but Emacs' separate chords tend to follow useful patterns, too.

For example, moving forward a character is C-f, moving forward a word is M-f, and moving a balanced expression forward is C-M-f. Same with b for backwards movement. C-a moves to the previous beginning-of-line, C-e to the next end-of-line. M-a and M-e do the same with statements in place of lines.

I can't even remember at this point how much of this is standard, but I've replicated the forward/backward movement for killing: C-d deletes a character forward, M-d kills a word, and C-M-d an expression. C-h deletes a character backward. Guess what M-h and C-M-h do.

Of course, both editors let you do basically whatever you want, so really the text input issue is just one of whether you prefer chording or modal input. And I'm not saying modal input isn't useful; Magit's input system is closer to vim's than to the rest of Emacs, as is Ediff's, and I like it that way, but I prefer chords for editing -- less state to hold in my head.

Sequential chords, though, like C-c C-v C-d, are right out, and using C-n and C-p and co. for up and down sucks, especially when I try to use M-p to select the last input in minibuffer history and hit M-o instead, prompting me to select Bold, Italic, or Other. I'll change them eventually; the hardest part is deciding what to replace them with.

/aimlessramble. I guess it all just boils down to "Use the tool you can best configure to work the way _you_ want it to." I think the linked article was trying to make the case that Emacs can be that tool for vim users.

[leishulang]

It actually is. At least it's a "home-row pinky". However, I remapped esc to be "jk" to avoid the pinky abusing.

Now, if I ssh between different unix box a lot without the time to pull my .vimrc from github, then I still have to resort to pinky-escape.

[sjolsen]

At least it's a "home-row pinky" with Emacs' Ctrl, too. :)

Personally, though, I don't find the worst strain comes from the placement of Ctrl. The worst comes from the awful staggered layout of keyboards that serves no purpose save for a long chain of HCI backwards compatibility with the typewriter. I hope someday keyboards like the TEK (which, incidentally, gives a perfect spot for Alt or Ctrl under the left thumb) become more commonplace, or eye movement-based systems supplant the use of one's hands for focus control.

[rybosome]

Hm, fair complaint. At some point I found that hitting ESC immediately after typing became habitual. I find myself accidentally doing it outside of vim quite frequently. I've heard others make similar statements to yours, though. If rebinding to a different key doesn't solve it, then modal editing may not be for you.

[Crito]

Real Vim Defenders™ tell you to use EasyMotion for the majority of your advanced movement needs.

In order of precedence: Standard vim movement -> EasyMotion -> Search.

[graywh]

There's like 70 different commands that can move the cursor in Vim. And that's before you add any plugins or mappings.

[thinkpad20]

I'm a fan of C-n and C-p; I often find myself using them even in Sublime Text or other editors (even in a text area on a web page). But for some reason I find C-f and C-b much more obtuse. Part of it is that in a QWERTY layout, "f" is to the left of "b", and yet "f" moves the cursor to the right. Also, assuming you press Ctrl with your left hand, "f" is more natural to use with your left hand, while "b" is a bit of an awkward reach, making it natural to use the right. This left-right switch is awkward, especially combined with the aforementioned direction reverse.

On the other hand, C-a and C-k (especially in combination with each other) and C-e are incredibly useful, and once I discovered them I immediately started using them everywhere.

[mbrock]

I use C-{n,p,f,b} all the time, though admittedly their placement is more convenient with Dvorak.

Though I also tend to use M-f and M-b a lot to navigate by words instead of characters.

I also often navigate by incremental search.

[conistonwater]

Speaking of incremental search: try ace-jump-mode, it's really good. Here is a video that shows it at work: http://emacsrocks.com/e10.html

[michaelcampbell]

How long did it take you to get used to that? Replacing the searched-for letter with (essentially) a marker seems a bit mind-altering.

[klibertp]

Also iy-goto-char

[acomjean]

The nice thing about the C-{n,p,f,b,a,e} is they work on the bash shell command line by default. So learning them is actually really useful, even outside of emacs.

[JadeNB]

That's only because emacs keybindings are the default in bash. A quick `set -o vi` will give a vimmer his or her `w` and so on.

[Touche]

I use the arrow keys in both Vim and Emacs. There are enough keys to remember (most of which I forget all of the time... like paging up and down, have to look that one up every time) that I don't need another set of keys to remember. Arrow keys work just fine.

[gnuvince]

Tell you the truth, I've used Emacs for a long time now (~10 years) and I don't know if I use the C-{n,p,f,b} or arrow keys. I'm more likely to move in larger chunks: search, move by word (M-f, M-b), line (C-a, C-e), etc. If I need to edit a word, I will kill it entirely and re-write it.

[Chmouel]

same exactly for me, i use sometime the arrows or the other keys or c-s etc.... i don't mind the jk vim keys as well when i am in vim, either way it's all about your brain being good enough to context swift in .... context

[bastih]

But that means your fingers have leave home row! :(

[asuffield]

Thankfully I am blessed with the ability to move my forearms.

I've heard a lot of people talk about keeping their fingers on the home row, and I more or less do that when I'm typing text like this, but for general navigation? I've sat next to a number of people who do it, and I get around my editor faster than they do. Based on this anecdotal evidence, I don't think moving my hand a short distance to reach another key is a significant speed cost.

[jimm]

Then how do you move multiple lines at a time (4, 16, 64, 256)? To move 16 lines down, I press C-u C-u C-n (of course, the control key stays down the whole time). You either have to press C-u C-u then move your forearm to the arrow key and press down, or press the arrow key 16 times.

(Each C-u is a power of 4. You can specify any number by typing it after the C-u, for example C-u 100 C-n to move down 100 lines.)

[asuffield]

I cannot recall the last time I wanted to move 16 lines - that would imply I stopped to count the lines. What I invariably want to do is "move down one paragraph" (C-down) or "move to that spot I can see on the screen" (1-6 lines, tap up/down; 6-30 lines, hold the down key for about a second until I'm within a line or two, then tap up/down a couple times; >30 lines and use pgup/pgdown to get closer). For anything further away than that, I'm going to use isearch to get closer.

Sometimes I want to make a complicated motion in the horizontal and vertical axes at the same time in a context which is not well-formatted source code and hence has no good paragraph/word landing points. For this I move my hand slightly further and grab the mouse. It always amuses me watching people try to do it "the right way" and then spend 30 seconds trying to work out what sequence of buttons will get them there, then spend another 30 seconds remembering what they wanted to do when they got there.

I'm not trying to minimise the number of logical keystrokes, I'm trying to minimise the time and distraction of navigation. A few simple operations combined with key repeat seems to work really well. Lots of people seem to neglect the power offered by key repeat.

I'd love to meet somebody who could navigate source code faster than me and learn how they do it. When I do, I'll probably change my approach. However, I've worked with a lot of different people who used a lot of different approaches (yes, including that one where you display the line offset from point and type the number of every jump) and in the past decade I have not found any of them to be faster than me - although I have found a few who were roughly the same speed.

[nilkn]

> I cannot recall the last time I wanted to move 16 lines - that would imply I stopped to count the lines

I'm sure something like this is possible in Emacs, but in vim I have it set up so that my current line shows the absolute line number and other lines show the relative line number.

If I'm eyeing a particular line that I want to jump to, I just read off its relative line number and hit j or k, according to whether it's down or up from where I'm at -- I'm there. Because I use relative line numbers, the number is never more than two digits.

For more precise navigation (jumping to a particular spot on a particular line), I use a plugin called EasyMotion, which basically lets me jump to any text object on the screen with a few key strokes.

[gknoy]

I like the idea of knowing relative line numbers, but I have been unwilling to relinqish seeing absolute ones due to how prevalent it is to see them -- diffs, linting errors, and stack traces often include line numbers, and I find it really helpful to be able to easily find that. Go-to-line is supremely useful, but I also find the visual reminder helpful as well.

[gknoy]

Shoot! I meant to upvote you! (I'm sorry.)

[nitrogen]

In vim, one would type 64↓.

[akg]

This seems to be one of those arguments where we programmers tend to optimize for the wrong problem. Sure, we may be able to input more text more comfortably with the merits of one text editor over another, but really, I think most of the time spent during programming is reading APIs, headers, other code and most importantly thinking. Typing is hardly the bottleneck.

[mbrock]

Except when it is... If you can edit fluently and quickly, _then_ coding is more of a nonissue, you're free to try things out, you can find and fix an error and Alt-Tab without blinking, you can harness this kind of physical flow of noninterrupted work, etc. I've worked alongside programmers for whom typing and editing were indeed quite the bottlenecks. Of course, any programming editor is probably good enough if you learn it.

[Touche]

What key do you press in Vim more often than any other? Esc! Not on the home row (although I'm sure you'll say you remap it to tab).

[lepton]

Esc is also C-[, and if you've mapped Control to the home row (eg, swapped with CapsLock) then it's not so bad either.

[vitalique]

If you remap Esc to jk you don't even have to lift your fingers.

[vacri]

Another common one is Capslock.

[vutekst]

Mapping capslock to be esc is what made vim possible for me.

[calvins]

Agreed. I don't know how anybody could use vi with escape unmapped. It's also very useful outside vi though, since esc is the default 'cancel' key in many cases. For example, most browser dialogs (and keyboard-navigable menus) can be closed with esc, and it works for many desktop dialogs too (at least on Linux).

[splawn]

Im too lazy to move two fingers for that, instead mine is mapped to jj. =P

[Touche]

What is jk?

[vitalique]

Just key 'j' followed by 'k'. I have this in my vimrc for quickly jumping out of insert mode: inoremap jk <ESC>

[Touche]

To each his own. I'm very fluid with my esc key hitting. I find it to be a very satisfying motion.

[sozforex]

imap jk <Esc> In insert mode. First press j, in the same second press k.

[dozzie]

Esc? Not quite. C-c mostly. It differs sometimes from Esc, but rarely enough for me not to care.

[tomsthumb]

I haven't pressed the escape button in the past few years using vim. Do something like `imap lkj <ESC>` and `vmap lkj <ESC>`. It's way nicer.

[adlpz]

Remap to tab? Insanity!

I remap it to Caps Lock of course.

[graywh]

Where the Tab key is now is where the Escape key was on the system Bill Joy developed Vi.

[Touche]

Ah, right, I forgot what the common remap was, thought I'd get that wrong, thanks for the correction.

[Crito]

The more common remap is probably capslock->ctrl, for both vim and emacs users, I but I definitely prefer capslock->escape. During normal operation, my left pinky rides the gap between a and escape(aka capslock). Pressing either requires the slightest of deflections to the left or right.

I keep escape as escape as well. Capslock is absolutely worthless to me.

[delackner]

Or use PCKeyboardhack and I forget the other plugin but on a Mac, I have a brief caps lock mapped as esc, but holding it is control. it works effortlessley.

[rdtsc]

> ... the down arrow

Why? Isn't that more inefficient because you have to move your hand off to the side. I can type 3 C-n before moving my to the right to do a single down arrow. Maybe I am just used to it by now, and forgot how hard it was when I started, but it makes complete sense to me.

[fantasticsid]

I usually rest my palm naturally on the control key when using emacs (yes I use my palm to press the control key), so ctrl-n becomes just n for e.g.

Yes it's hard to get started, but once you get the hang of it navigation in emacs just becomes so painless.

Also it's hard or even impossible at first to do it on laptops but trust me you will be able to do it.

[tomsthumb]

> I use my palm to press the control key

that's the old-school Starcraft way. try mapping caps-lock to control sometime, just to see, it's such wasted real-estate. nothing beats muscle memory and years of practice though.

[reedlaw]

Caps-lock as control is a nice but unsymmetrical mapping. If you want to avoid pain you might want to use the opposite hand to hold control while hitting a key combo. At least, this is what works best for me. I never have to twist my hand into unnatural positions.

[MarcScott]

I stick with the default emacs key bindings because many of them work outside of emacs. Muscle memory has me constantly using C-k to kill a line for instance, and this also works in Mac Mail and Safari.

[cgag]

I can't imagine entering into this career or hobby and not bothering to learn how to edit text.

[Chattered]

Using the down arrow requires me to take my fingers off the home row.