emacs vs vim

[sour kelp]

My particular problem with Emacs is that it's not just a text editor, it's Basically Everything

which does mean it's everything a text editor can be, but it's also too much more

[humble moon]

so your problem would basically be bloat?

[sour kelp]

Vim is a text editor, and it's everything a text editor can be. want to do something else? use a tool that is everything a tool for doing that other thing could be

i mean if it had to be a single word, yeah

Franz3 ↩️

[Reply to:](#1136385886733484086 message) so your problem would basically be bloat?

but it's more,,,, centralization of tools

i don't want a multitool, i want a toolbox

[humble moon]

what are some features you thing should not exist, and is it not possible to get a custome debloated version?

[sour kelp]

if my multitool breaks i am left without tools, but if my toolbox breaks i just get a cardboard box, put my things in it, and hold it from the bottom so it doesn't break until i get another toolbox

eh, not sure. my only problem really is just that it tries to be everything

Franz3 ↩️

[Reply to:](#1136385886733484086 message) what are some features you thing should not exist, and is it not possible to get a custome debloated…

besides that, i mean, it's turing complete

it can be vim if i want, and vim can be emacs if i want

so not much to care about in that regard

[humble moon]

you can modify vim to emulate emacs?

interesting

so the choice is more about the out of the box experience?

[sour kelp]

i dont see why not

Franz3 ↩️

[Reply to:](#1136385886733484086 message) you can modify vim to emulate emacs?

to me, yeah

Franz3 ↩️

[Reply to:](#1136385886733484086 message) so the choice is more about the out of the box experience?

[humble moon]

interesting, thant changes my perspective quite a lot, thanks

that means it doesnt make sense to debloat emacs to what you want, if vim is closer to it, I see

[sour kelp]

yeah

[humble moon]

could you name some features that you think are too much, or maybe a place where they are listed?

[sour kelp]

but also the experience of using emacs is vastly different to that of vim. (admittedly i only briefly used emacs, but they felt very different to the "touch" so to speak)

[humble moon]

because of the difference in the programming language?

[sour kelp]

no, i mean like, when it comes to operating them

[humble moon]

oh, ok

[sour kelp]

like, how a screwdriver shaped ratchet feels very different to a regular ratchet

but they're both ratchets

[humble moon]

I see

any way to discribe the feeling and why you dont like emacs as much as vim or is that just something you have to experience?

[sour kelp]

i think so?

i'll get home and try emacs again just to see if the sensation is still there

[humble moon]

haha, you do you

[sour kelp]

i should be clear, i dont think of vim just as a tool for coding. it's essentially a replacement of Notepad, for me. a very shiny one with lasers.

it's just that most of those lasers are mostly good for coding

[humble moon]

its a text editor, yah

but mainly used for coding I guess

[sour kelp]

i see. i'm just not sure if people see it this way

cuz i only ever see it used for coding

[humble moon]

I saw it for note taking as well

[sour kelp]

i see

[humble moon]

for example

[sour kelp]

the closest i saw to that are organizational plugins with things like todo lists

[humble moon]

yes, something like that

but tbh I think obsidian md is better for that

I just heared that the emacs system is cool because it covers so much, including notetaking. so its like a finished workflow you get

and vim seems more like a very good customizable code editor.

at least what I have heared/ read so far

[sour kelp]

yeah

[echo cedar]

finished workflows are best if they match what you want to do

[sour kelp]

my personal philosophy with tools, primarily with digital tools, is that they shouldn't do something you didn't ask them to be able to do

[echo cedar]

it if not then like . . . it is easier to start using something that does one part of what we need, and add to that

[humble moon]

yup, thats why I asked what you think about it. I often see that a finished workflow is very restrictive and only good for a small group of people

[sour kelp]

i tend to spend a lot of time just. moving through settings menus. just to find what would make my tools more ideal. none of what i have is as it came "out of the box"

[humble moon]

but in this case its the linux community after all...

[echo cedar]

our opinion: emacs seems cool but we're never going to actually learn to use it for more than text editing . . . so we aren't entirely sure why we should pick up an editor that is (at least while we learn) going to be a worse experience than the one we've already learned?

and for basic text editing it doesn't seem to have any advantages, as all of its promised advantage comes from "it grows to do more as you need it to"

[humble moon]

thats the mindset around here I guess

[sour kelp]

seems to be!

[humble moon]

what do you understand as basic? ^^

[sour kelp]

i understand the desire for things that are comfortable as they come, tho

[humble moon]

what more would emacs offer that you like besides text editing?

[echo cedar]

not formatted, so not a word processor

[humble moon]

thats not my point. I know thats not really possible. The thing is, that it already is a working system that you can pick up and go from there. It might have features you didnt know you needed, but because its already packaged and build into the workflow you discover it, idk

[humble moon]

I see, but does code editing with autocomplete etc. count as basic or not (I'd assume not)

[echo cedar]

our basic tools:
- web browser
- terminal
- text editor
- irc client
- blender

we know emacs can replace the irc client and browser but like ... we cannot effectively do our job without still testing in safari, firefox, and chrome so we're not going to start using a primary browser other than those. we're also rather happy with our IRC clients so far

[echo cedar]

we consider that part of the bare minimum for anything purporting to be a code editor, so yes it is basic

[humble moon]

I see

[humble moon]

would that be a terminal browser?

[echo cedar]

no, read the full message we are a frontend web developer. it is necessarily something used by regular folks for testing

and if we want a terminal browser for fun, we use lynx

[humble moon]

I dont understand where emacs would replace a browser then (in case you dont need to test for other browsers due to your job)

[echo cedar]

(although lynx is actually somewhat useful for approximating how simpler screen readers will see a page, so it's not entirely for fun)

[echo cedar]

we were meaning "we have heard it can do this, but we would not use it for these reasons"

[humble moon]

interesting

how do you navigate the web in a terminal? doesnt seem to be a good experience lol. all the services I regularly use would be already local/ have their own cli tool (like irc you mentioned)

but a browser

[echo cedar]

on the irc client like . . . as far as CLI IRC clients go, catgirl wins our heart on the name alone

[echo cedar]

we do not normally do that. you are the one who brought up terminal browsers first

[humble moon]

I mentioned it because you brought up that it can be replaced by emacs and it seemed the only reason you dont do that is because of your testing

but that answers my question lol

[echo cedar]

ah, we thought elinks was related to emacs and assumed it was not text only, but it seems we were wrong on that relation

[humble moon]

I see. Thanks for the help though. I think I will go with nvim as well

also thx to The & System, very appreciated

[sour kelp]

happy to share my thoughts i have too many of them they're software bloat at this point but i have nowhere to put them (/j)

[echo cedar]

oh mood

[humble moon]

what about obsidian?

second brain and stuff

to dump everything

[sour kelp]

i use it

it's mostly useful as a library of every interesting thought i've ever had than as someone to listen

... they should make a plugin for that

[humble moon]

so you want to talk and not write?

[sour kelp]

looking at the chatgpt plugins

[fervent goblet]

(I haven't read the convo, but I'm saying the good quote):
"Emacs is a brilliant operating system that's only lacking a good text editor"

[sour kelp]

i mean, ideally both!

Franz3 ↩️

[Reply to:](#1136385886733484086 message) so you want to talk and not write?

[echo cedar]

we use it mostly as an archive to remember things from later, but yeah obsidian doesn't really fulfil the need to share ideas with others

[humble moon]

quite a statement lol

[humble moon]

arent friends for that

[echo cedar]

ostensibly

[sour kelp]

yeah

[echo cedar]

if your friends will listen to all your thoughts

but not everyone will listen to everything

[humble moon]

depends on the extend I guess xD

[sour kelp]

i just have too many ideas and i don't think there exists a single person who will retain genuine interest for everything my head spits at me

[echo cedar]

but yes friends and partners can be very good for it

[sour kelp]

or, a single set of people with that property

[humble moon]

ofc, but you dont have one friend (at least thats it for me). some enjoy this, some that

[echo cedar]

tempted to say "try us" but none of us are quite that overconfident

[fervent goblet]

Distributed database

[humble moon]

and writing doesn't help? hmm

[sour kelp]

the thing is

[humble moon]

xD

[sour kelp]

the Cool Part about sharing ideas with others is that they often have unique and interesting ways to view it

[echo cedar]

true, that is one of our favorite parts

[sour kelp]

and, due to the nature of conversation, they'll often share them

and your own ideas evolve in real time just because you told someone about them

[humble moon]

I definitely agree

[fervent goblet]

Communication is so beautiful

[humble moon]

what about chats like this. with chats you reach so many people

some are always interested

[sour kelp]

yes

but do it too much and it might be considered spam, or shameless self promotion

you have no clue how many of my thoughts are just about my game or my webcomic

[humble moon]

depends on how you put it I guess

oh, I see

[sour kelp]

or whatever other project im working on

or tempted to work on

[humble moon]

makes sense

maybe put something at the end of your stuff to contact you or something to fill out, like feedback or whatever

or make a community server

[echo cedar]

(we are curious what genre your webcomic is)

[sour kelp]

oh boy we're starting with the hard questions

um,

i'd say sci fi?

but it's, like, surreal

[echo cedar]

should we perhaps start a thread elsewhere so as to not occupy this one too much?

[sour kelp]

yeah maybe

we've gone too far off topic

[humble moon]

thats the fun part

[sour kelp]

indeed

should i make it or does anyone else want to?

and if so, what do i name it?

[humble moon]

you do you

im just lurking around

[echo cedar]

if you could make it we would appreciate, need to help with our children for a bit but we will join shortly

[humble moon]

yoo, you have children

[echo cedar]

two yes

[humble moon]

how old are you if I may ask ^^

[echo cedar]

approaching thirty

[humble moon]

oh wow

crazy, ik

[echo cedar]

you'll get there

[humble moon]

noooo

no

[sour kelp]

i'll make it in creative writing

[humble moon]

sure

[ember matrix]

I like both of them and the editor wars are a great way to stay warm at night :p

In all seriousness though I really like vim and it's key bindings and found evil mode in emacs works well too. So i find myself jumping between them every few years. I am on neovim at the moment though.

The modal editing mode i find helped with my wrists and i got less pain in them (i am old)

[humble moon]

It seems counterintuitive to me, to switch, if you like them equally

[ember matrix]

Usually part of my trap of trying to create the perfect developer workflow

[humble moon]

That would mean both nvim and emacs have something that you miss on the other one/ or you like better. Do you know what that is

[ember matrix]

Yeah mostly comes down to emacs is like endlessly customisable

but i go back to nvim because its limited but scoped more at doing editing work

also seems to happen around when i start playing with lisp again :p

At work i use a lot of jetbrains tools instead

but with vim keybindings

mainly because C# is a pain in the arse with all the weird custom gui stuff it has

[humble moon]

But that would mean with enough time given, emacs is the better option.

[humble moon]

That makes sense I guess

[humble moon]

Interesting. I never looked at c#, so idk

[ember matrix]

yeah it also depends on how i am feeling about minimalism i guess

[ember matrix]

Yeah i used to be deep in the microsoft eco system when i was younger. I just do it for work now

[humble moon]

That feeling changes? Hmm, interesting xD

But so far it seems that emacs is better in the long run (on the note of minimalism, is it not possible to de-bloat it?)

[ember matrix]

yeah happens all the time lol i go through phases

I would say its not actually all that bloated

if you compare it to say any modern editor like VSCode its quit small

If you want some good videos on emacs I can recommend https://www.youtube.com/@SystemCrafters

[humble moon]

But it seems to be enough for you to switch every year or so ^^

[humble moon]

Thanks, that will be very helpful

[ember matrix]

Yeah I also have ADHD so its not totally unexpected. I am trying to setup my tools and only touch them every 6 months or so now.

So i don't have half broken configs all the time

[humble moon]

I see

That seems like a chore to me lol

[ember matrix]

that is not a bad thing

means you will have it setup and not mess with it to much and have a working setup :p

I am trying to come up with the idea of my production tools and dev tools. So i can tinker with my sandpit and still be able to get work done :p

[humble moon]

I meant the constant switching

[ember matrix]

oh yeah it is huge effort

don't recommend doing it lol

[humble moon]

But you can't stop either lmao

I see

[ember matrix]

yeah i always find new ways of doing stuff or want to have the perfect setup

[humble moon]

I see. Thank you very much

Is there any blog or video about your workflow? Id be interested in that considering how optimized it should be

[ember matrix]

Not at the moment, I should do something though.

I am in a bit of a mess at the moment though, pretty much everything is broken so I am thinking of going back to a vanilla install of arch and everything and build it back up again.

So might be worth documenting my journey of doing that and then going back to a nice nixos install including editors and the like

[humble moon]

That would be awesome imo

Why start with arch and then go over to nixOS? Is it easier to change it rapidly on arch?

[humble moon]

Do you not have any backup, that would piss me off so much I would instantly switch back and go from there again

[ember matrix]

nah it is more because i am thinking start off with the basics and keep it simple and build things up progressivly rather than trying to come up with one big perfect setup all at once

yeah i have all of my stuff backed up

and my current nix setup is pretty easy to rebuild from my dotfiles repo

other reason is i want to play around with getting nix stuff working on a distro like arch (like games and opengl etc)

[humble moon]

That makes sense, but you could do that on nixOS too Id assume

[ember matrix]

yeah i thought about it

but being on arch for a bit will motivate me to get back to nix so i will do it properly this time :p

[humble moon]

Oh, ok. So you want to use the nix package manager on arch?

[ember matrix]

yeah you can use nix on any distro

[humble moon]

I know, but idk what the advantage is

[ember matrix]

for me its solves dependancy hell by usings its own dependancies and it also allows you to modify anything in its packages pretty easily.

not for everyone, for a lot of people flatpak is an easier option

It is also really nice when you use nix flakes in development. Because you will get the same versions of everything everytime you spin the environment up

so you can pin versions a lot easier

[humble moon]

But if I use nix, might as well use nixOS

[ember matrix]

yes and no depends on why you are using it

[humble moon]

Whats the advantage of using it on a different distro?

[ember matrix]

you can use it as a development environment or you can have a nix shell with stuff in it and it wont touch the base operating system packages

nixos is awesome but its got a very steep learning curve

and if your not bought into the whole thing it can be hard to run non nix stuff

[humble moon]

So an in-between-solution would be to use nix on a different distro? I see

[ember matrix]

yeah but only use it if its does something you find useful. Don't just use it because i am obsessed with it :p

[humble moon]

I want to go to nixOS, mind sharing your dotfiles if they are public

[humble moon]

Hahaha, I found it interesting before, it seems very good. But im a noob and dont know that much...

[ember matrix]

https://github.com/wiltaylor/dotfiles

That is my dotfiles

[humble moon]

Dope, thanks. That will definitely come in handy later when I understand more lol

[ember matrix]

no worries

[humble moon]

If you make a writeup about your new arch process/ journey, where can I find that?

[ember matrix]

Will post back here

I am being a bit vauge because all of my stuff is kinda broken and up in the air still. Going to set it all up again

[humble moon]

That would be awesome.

[humble moon]

Understandable

Good luck with that

[ember matrix]

thanks :)

and good luck to you too, sounds like your setting up all kinds of stuff

[humble moon]

Thanks. Its my attempt to get started with linux on my main setup (I have some experience but never daily drived it)

[ember matrix]

Ah nice :). takes some getting used to but then its really nice after that

[humble moon]

Will see, yes. I am currently learning nixOS xD. If I understand that, I will ditch windows finally

[ember matrix]

main thing that held me back was games, then steam proton came along and i was all set :)

I have some old videos on nix here too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKoQ1gKJY5A&list=PL-saUBvIJzOkjAw_vOac75v-x6EzNzZq- but will probably redo them at some point

[humble moon]

Yes, I thought about that too, but nowadays because of valve and the steam deck its very good afaik.

[humble moon]

Cool, that might help. Thanks

[ember matrix]

yeah it runs really well

[humble moon]

Only thing it doesn't run are games with low level anti cheat, and fuckk these games

[ember matrix]

yeah i mostly stopped playing those because its to much effort to get into windows lol

[humble moon]

There are enough indie games out there that are better hehe. I dont support low level anti cheat. Makes me dislike the game

[ember matrix]

yeah and I don't really like live service games because they are all grindy. Because of all the monitisation they put in they break the game ballance.

[humble moon]

Yup, not meant for humans and fun, just made to make money

With so many good alternatives and games like Minecraft/ terriaria/ csgo/ rocket league etc. etc. that you can play forever, there is no shortage of content