wwwgem

wwwgem, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Hi. I’ve briefly shared my experience with neo(vim) and emacs here. Going into all the details would require writing an encyclopedia because they’re both so vast topics. I think the main factor of choice would be to know if you prefer to build your own perfect tool with just what you need and expand as you go (i.e. neovim) or just have a do-it-all ready tool right out of the box (i.e. emacs). Both will require some coding and maintenance anyway. In that regards, I personaly found neovim to be easier and more reliable but mileage may vary based on your needs and preferences. After years using vim 20 years ago, I made a break. Then I used emacs for a year before eventually going back to neovim. I would certainly recommend it vs vim and I would suggest starting from scratch (no lazyvim or similar) so you clearly understand how things work. This will certainly be useful in the long run anyway and that’ll eventually save you time. Note that I’ve also tried welcome screens (startup) but really couldn’t justify its use so I removed it after few months.

wwwgem, 1 year ago

My statement about the lack of uniformity was in regards to several issues I had with some plugins in emacs. Even my friend who codes his own plugins for emacs was of no help because 1) there is too many approaches and dependencies to write plugins, 2) there was no solution. Also, there are too many plugins to serve the same purpose and I found it difficult (compared to neovim) to figure out the difference between them. At least twice I also experienced conflicts between plugins. Finally, the level of customization was also less granular than what offers neovim. Again, I can see why emacs is appealing to some. It’s just not for me. As I like to say, the number of options available in the Linux world is one of the most beautiful things that makes this OS the only one you can tweak perfectly to any user’s needs and preference.

I would add that neovim and emacs both have a steep learning curve but I personaly found the level of support and core and plugins documentation for neovim more accessible, readable, and better organized.

I completely share your vision about what an IDE should be doing. I’m old school and adhere to the “do one thing but do it right” philosophy. Also, I hate relying on one tool for several needs because if anything goes wrong it has multiple impacts. As a side note, I use neomutt as my email client and you can nicely couple neovim to it to write your emails ;)

wwwgem, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Dive in beyond the basic “hjkl:q” though.

This is a video I can’t recommend enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XtNXutVtoIt’s long (>1h) but it’s very well made.

It’s a long tutor go through with some bonus advanced tweak, and the explanations clearly helps remembering everything easily. If I knew it when I’ve started that would have saved me so much time and helped me from getting into bad habits I then had to fight against.

wwwgem, 1 year ago

I’ve often heard Emacs users pose the argument that Emacs as an Elisp interpreter does just one thing. It’s just that this single thing allows the myriad of functionality it offers. So in that sense comparing it to a terminal/console seems more apt than comparing it to a text editor. I wonder what you think of that argument.

I only used emacs for a year so I may be wrong but speaking only about how I used it and my current workflow I don’t see a difference. Looking at the usage (and not the code), my very first impression of emacs was that it’s acting as a terminal multiplexer which I was used to and so I liked this aspect. Anytime you need to do something that goes beyond the tasks of an IDE (calendar, email…) you switch window/panel (I’ve always been confused with the specific emacs terminology). That’s exactly what I’m doing with Tmux where I run neovim and call other apps with a single keybinding. Then I can freely switch from one to another, close one, recall it in the state I’ve closed it…
Again, this is related to the philosophies of emacs and neovim (i.e. do-it-all or do one thing). While neovim is “only” an IDE, emacs goes beyond, and for me this is not a negative criticism of either app. You build a tool with the coding language you need to implement some functionalities. In that sense, to compare apple to apple, emacs has to be compared to neovim coupled to a terminal multiplexer.

Hehe, that’s cool! Currently I’m really happy with Thunderbird so I don’t expect to move away anytime soon, but I’ll keep it in mind.

I used Thunderbird as well and did the switch mainly to allow me to achieve the workflow described above. I do most of my tasks in the terminal. Neomutt would certainly be one additional layer of complexity in your transition to an IDE, unless you chose to use emacs for your emails. Actually configuring emacs as an email client or going with neomutt is pretty similar. But at the end - and this is an example of the higher level of granularity I mentioned earlier - neomutt is more customizable.
Talking about the level of customization of the IDE functionality only, the plugins I use offer more configuration options in neovim as well.

Orgmode is also one (the?) big star player in emacs and neovim is trying to attract some users by developing a similar thing here or there but this is not something that would benefit to my workflow. This is maybe one of the reason why people choose emacs vs neovim and why I could quit emacs easily. Going back to the coding language, you can see that the use of lua opens new doors to the original vim. What I appreciate though is that you don’t have to implement any features if you don’t use them in neovim so I can keep my system limited to my needs. This is also seen as a bad thing by some when you start because emacs is capable of quite a lot with a fresh installation while neovim can barely open itself ;)

Overall we’re all sharing personal experience so no generalization should be extrapolated from single visions and I’m aware of my own bias and preference for singl- task, lightweight, fast tool.

wwwgem, 1 year ago

Do you have any experience with neovim? I’m certainly not a Python programmer but I’m doing simple things for fun and so far neovim served me very well. If I eventually go deeper in Python I would be interested to know the limitations of neovim beforehand.

wwwgem, 1 year ago

It’s always difficult to find a good starting point but remember that you’re not married to your apps so you can easily switch from one to another and maybe come back later. Over the years, I’ve seen most of Linux users going that route because 1) it’s fun and you learn a little bit from each experience, 2) Linux users are generally curious, 3) some apps may be more suitable to your workflow at a given time but your workflow may change over time, 4) Linux offers us so many options so it’s like unleashing kids in a toys store, you want to try everything :)