One year later: funny how things change.

I'm a Vim user transitioning to Emacs because of this channel, Doom Emacs is a lot faster than my current Vim config, and I only use a very few plugins like Coc for code completion and a theme, but I fall in love when I installed Doom and figured out how it works and realize that it has a lot of posibilities and still be lightning fast. I'm a College student and writting my homeworks in Emacs with org mode is a pleasure and for web development I love how easy is to copy things or correct them within different buffers, now I don't want to spend time trying to replicate this on my vim. I have to thank you Derek, because of your videos I discovered my ideal tool. This channel is awesome!

I was used to using nano until I decided to switch to vim, but every time I was going to edit a file, I ended up typing nano instead of vim, so I created a alias nano=vim. Now I don't need that anymore.

Next video: How I'm falling in love with FreeBSD

Best love story, I really cried at the end 😭

1:19 DT singing!! :)

Your Doom videos were a part of me putting in the effort to make the switch from vim, and I'm never looking back. Admittedly, I'm a lisper, so it's like discovering water as a fish. Thanks for your experiment, was valuable to me!

What, Derek?!? You ended the affair without making a comparison between Doom Emacs and Spacemacs???

Time to spend a month in ed. Because ed, is the standard editor. 😘

"emacs documentation becomes a chore to follow" - That's a good point. I wouldn't say it's hard to follow but I have always found it annoying that the emacs documentation (as well as other emacsers) refers to emacs functions by their default keybinding. For example, it will say use 'C-h f' for help as opposed to call `describe-function`. The function name is more descriptive than simply `C-h f` and is independent of keybindings. I wish the manual used those instead of always referencing the default bindings. This being said, this is a good candidate for customization maybe through a minor mode that displays keybinding in a help buffer to the function it is bound to by default.

The whole point of Emacs is to create your own customized integrated development environment for an optimised personal workflow to do actual work. The more I use Emacs the easier everything I used to do with separate programmes becomes. I also find the default key bindings fairly comfortable. The important part is rebinding Ctrl to a more comfortable key. In my case I just added an extra one to substitute Alt Gr, which is on the opposite side of the Meta key across the space bar. Makes for a very logical hand movement. Ultimately, Emacs is pointless for anyone who wants *just* a text editor, because that's not the point. You were correct to call it an IDE, because it's that, and much more.

Emacs is a lisp interpreter, that happens to do text editing

Kind of a beautiful video. Thank you, Derek.

I installed DOOM Emacs when you released your initial video about it. I came to the same realization you just had, but it only took me about 36 hours. Vim rules!

Oh man! I was hoping you'd have fallen in love with it like I did heheh, but that's okay. Keep it up Derek!

It must have been good but I lost it somehow

I knew it. Emacs is not for tourists. I still use regular emacs key bindings.

I used Visual studio exclusively for like 20 years and when I switched to linux (I WANTED to switch to FreeBSD but it did not install on my new mainboard...), I put on a brave face and decided not to install the next closest thing (VS Code) but do it the "classic" way... So I started to use vim and even managed to edit multiple files at once (but after 2 days I had forgotten the cryptic key codes again). I managed to install syntax highlighting, but I never was happy: 1. Copy and paste to and from other applications (like stackoverflow) was complicated (not the normal copy, you need some other copy or whatnot) 2. You cannot adjust font sizes on the fly (If you are in your 50s and spent 35 years in front of a screen, your eyes likely become an issue and you need that, kind of) 3. That silly command mode thing which forces you to hit one of the least accessible keys on the keyboard (ESC) more often than you would like to... Eventually (after like 3-4 months), I got into Common Lisp and so I switched to Emacs (emacs + slime + sbcl) and to my surprise, it was the better experience. I do not care about editor startup times (many vi users give that for a reason why they like vi), if I have my files open for weeks on end. Just like in vi, the keycodes you need frequently, you eventually remember. And those you don't use often, you forget. The only "feature", annoying the crap out of me in Emacs is Flymode (or however that opinionated piece of garbage is called), which tries to force me to name my c++ headers .hpp because it is too stupid to handle them as C++. But I am sure, I could tweak that.... So now, I only use VIM sporadically, if I am in the console anyway and I have to briefly edit 1 single file (add a few lines or remove a few lines or comment or uncomment some config file settings). And for that use case, even VIM is probably overpowered and bloated :) Oh, btw. Rust programming is also very convenient in Emacs, I recently found out. Do I miss Visual Studio? Yes, for c++ debugging, I still consider it the best IDE around. Debugging in Emacs (maybe I did not find the right packages yet) is archaic in comparison. So, in truly desperate moments, I resort do DDD, which is a miserable piece of junk in its own right :)

"switching from vim to emacs isn't going to increase productivity" Now I know dt doesn't use LaTeX, but switching from vim to emacs from a latex perspective is absolutely gonna increase productivity. Seriously with AUCTeX you don't need to type one single backslash ever again. To do the same thing in vim would take you fucking years and in the end because of the way buffers work in vim it's gonna be more bloated and harder to use than auctex.

In the contrary, I use vimacs to make vim have emacs keybindings because mode switching drives me insane and the keybindings are ingrained into my dna from using bash, nano, and emacs

Glad to hear, 2020 is starting to feel a little bit better now!

Get back, get back Get back to where you once belonged Get back Jojo

I tried to learn vanilla emacs. And for some reason I don't really like it. Until I tried DOOM emacs... OMG I fell in love!!!

99% For video 1% Me (for DT singing)

I found a surprise in the documentation of doom, a reference on how to work with doom Emacs to Distro Tube! Good for you!!!!!

Yes, you came back to VIM :D

Good points all along. As a die-hard emacser, I gave this vid a like!

We after being your video I tried out soon emacs, and here I am not using vim anymore I have truly fallen in love with doom emacs, thank you for that video

More singing in your videos please 😜

You got a taste for the one true editor and for that i salute you. Like a Jedi, an emacs user must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. You have to say to yourself, I will do everything in emacs -- I will even run actual vim itself inside emacs. You might think it's over, but emacs and vim are a dyad in the force. you'll be back ;)

Emacs does one thing well and one thing only, its an elisp interpreter. You are thinking of emacs as a text editor or an ide which is wrong

Wow, Derek, I never knew you had such a lovely singing voice. You need to give emacs at least three more years to overwrite your vim muscle memory neural circuits. Be patient. Or so I've heard. My PC only has 32GB of memory, so I can't run emacs.

12:15 DT just leveled up. Wise words and well said! 😊😊

Thank you, Derek. Singing is bloat. I agree that (based upon the little experience that I had with eMacs) is the default bindings are not just awkward but dangerous. And likely impossible now with my arthritis.

I've been a vim user for many years and switched to Spacemacs just a little bit more than a year ago. Spacemacs is a bit slower to startup, but with emacsclient that's solves. Everything else is emacs winning hands down. Vim is a just an editor, right... and that is its main limitation. What I like of Vim is the modal editing mindset, and Spacemacs supports that 100%. On top of that you get things that to even just get working in vim you have to sweet blood... Things like: projects management, code completion, inline documentation, access to external tools (e.g. ripgrep)... Not to mention magit, shell, orgmode and mu4e. Regarding keybindings I find Spacemacs very consistent and intuitive. I did not have the same feeling when I did try doom emacs. On top of that, when you don't know a command or a shortcut in emacs you find it in no time thanks to the super useful documentation and introspection... In vim... You just spend hours googling for it around. Bottom line: I don't think I'll ever "gravitate" back to Vim quite soon. At least not as my main editor. While I'm still happy to use it whenever I log it to a new machine or an embedded device just for some fast and furious file retouching ;)

If there was an emacs port of doom, you'd have to use the control key before you could wasd around

Org mode is THE thing in emacs, it's awesome

So..it seems you ended your Emacs love without making a dedicated video on Spacemacs, emms, eww and Kakoune???

1:21 you really hitting those notes dt xD

I understand what you say about inconsistency. This is I think also what keeps the general public away from Linux. I am a very happy Emacs and Linux user now, but is has taken me quite some time ( years ) getting used to each of them. Once you get used to them though it is very hard to switch away.

I really like vim and I use it all the time for small text editing on my machine and especially over ssh. But. As for developer emacs has few killer features that make it irreplaceable. Something on the top of my head - Magit, time (machine). I use it all the time during my development it has really handy key bindings. Org mode where I store all my notes regarding projects. Projectile for project management. If I wasn't a developer I probably wouldn't use emacs as it's really bloated and slower but from developing perspective it's so nicer to have an IDE for writing code.

You are one of my favorite Chanel youtuber press the LIKE bottom before watching the video... Keep up your great job.

Oh, dear God! He's singing!

Very well done Derek. Well put together discussion. Fair, accurate, from experience (yes, 6 months is enough). Thank you for even another well thought out presentation.

I by contrary switched to emacs from vim and I don't use evil mode. Vim's navigation and input are in two different layers. It is all good if you are in only english. In daily job I need to input many non-english(Chinese, Japanese,...) in my code. Our IME already has another input layer, so in vim it will sum up to three layers or more. But emacs's navigation and input are in the same layer, so I can keep input simple. If you are multi-language like me, you have to try emacs(with out evil mode).

if your making emacs work like vim you'll gravitate back to vim

I'm primarily a VIm user, but I also like lisp, therefore I'm very interested in Emacs. It's a joy to port my Vim workflow to Emacs when it makes sense (my configs are built from scratch, vanilla GNU). One unortunate thing is that Emacs neglects the command line client.

holy sh!t we need more Derek singing

1:58 yes. also yes. to add to this point (and I can't stress it enough) - yes!

For development and productivity, I like Vim better. But I just love Org-Mode. I have a persistent scratchpad on Emacs with Org-Mode enabled that auto-backups which I use on a daily basis (for TODO lists and all kinds of notes). I like Emacs because it is like having your own little world that you can shape however you want. I just like having it around even if I never do anything with it.

I very rarely find myself agreeing with DT, but this entire video was very well thought out. I think you hit the nail on the head with this one!!

I finally tried Doom Emacs after a couple weeks of struggling with my Nvim config trying to get it to do all the fancy QoL stuff VS Code does and still not really implementing it how I wanted to. It took me like an hour in Emacs, and I only had to add one package that wasn't already in the Doom .init file. So now I use Emacs. I still use Vim for editing random config files, and while ssh'd into remote machines. But when I want to do some serious text editing or dev work I use Emacs.

The video was more sad than titanic xd

Yet another round in the epic war between vi and emacs. It is a battle for the ages. I learned vi when I was in university in the early 1990s. I still remember the basic vi commands. LOL I remember that in the MS-DOS world I used and loved Q-edit.

I've been waiting for this video. The Unix philosophy really resonates with me too.

You’ve returned from that heretic software to the True Church. To be honest, I liked Emacs shell keybindings and some features, but very soon I understood that it is overwhelming for me to use it as a text editor. My favorite NeoVim is also hard. Its passed over 2 months and I still dont know lua-vim scripting part, although lua is the programming language of my job

Your argument about the app or program doing ONE thing and one thing good, rings very true to me. When I first started teaching web design back in oh 2006, I made a conscious choice. Yes, we had the Adobe package, and yes, as such we had Dreamweaver. Except I wasn't tasked with teaching the kids Dreamweaver. I was tasked with teaching them web design, and specifically HTML and CSS (and perhaps some JavaScript). So I opted to ditch Dw. The reason for it is simply because it adds another layer of complexity that really takes away from learning HTML and CSS. We're talking 16 year olds here. But I did tell the kids that Dw was available to them, and if they get really good at HTML and CSS specifically, then it wouldn't hurt to give Dw a go. But only then.

Ladies and gentle men lets take some time off to welcome DT back to the light. Never used Emacs, but I luv Vim because its everywhere and always the same. Great show.

vim, emacs, whatever you use => regarding hard to reach keybindings: a split ergonomic keyboard with programmable keys (I use the Dygma Raise) removes all the stretching stress from your hand. I remapped all the 5 modifier keys (AltrGr, Alt/Meta, Shift, CTRL, OS/Super) to the 8 thumb keys and the problem is solved.

Vim becomes and extension of you. You don't think about it. It just flows out.

In the end, vim is better at being vim than emacs is.

> Distrotube: *makes this video* > Me at the end of every sentence: I KNOW RIGHT?! Now get out of my head please.

emacs is a lot less useful to you if you are just editing a few config files here or there... it's quality over vim is readily apparent when you use it as your IDE as a software developer... spacemacs has great built in documentation btw if that's important to you...

Vim lover here. Mass respect for Emacs and it's incredible flexibility and power. I used it for a few months back in 2008 and enjoyed it... especially things like org-mode and EmacsLisp... but it just never clicked with me as much as Vim. I've since built out my Vim exobrain with all sorts of scripts and utilities and am happy as ever with it!

As you said before: it takes time to get into Emacs. Probably quite a bit more than six months. After I had used Emacs for a few years, I couldn't leave that environment. Yes, the default keybindings are detrimental to hands. I am of course Vim-ing at times, but the power of Emacs lures me back. Especially in remote shelling situations.

I feel the same way about GNOME 2/MATE. It's a simple old DE that I got started in Linux with.

“The terminal is my IDE!” That sums it up.

I would have never considered encountering Roxette and Stephen Stills in one video.. Fortunately it wasn't a music one.

I switched the Caplocks key with the control key and now Emacs keybiding now is a pleasure. I still use Vim for quick and dirty edits though. 😁

Gotta say, great cover.👌🏻

I am liking this arc of the story

Once a person gets used to VIM, there's no way back. The brain chemistry is permanently changed due to VIM.

Complete 180 deg turn after a year 😂

Would love to see you spend a month in EXWM

I have a ton of plugins in both emacs and vim so that they look and behave exactly the same and do all kinds of great stuff. I'm currently using emacs day to day but I can't really find anything it does that vim doesn't. Maybe scrolling in/out to change the font size? Vim/Neovim has practically become emacs with all its plugins, but it has better default keybindings. Also, elisp is a pain in the butt to learn. Vimscript or lua can be picked up literally in a few minutes if you are an experienced programmer. Elisp is much more painful to learn, write, and read. Doesn't matter if it's more powerful if I'm not willing to learn it.

Phew, never watched your channel, came from r/vim, stayed for your Roxette moment. Cheers!

i am a vim user, but tbh, but vim is far from ideal too imo. For example, I hate vim's split window management and how it intertwines with the buffer commands in a stupid way. imo it would be much better to have the editor not do any built-in window management, and run as a server so you could have any program like tmux or window managers do the viewport tiling by opening client windows. You can't do that with a single instance of vim, since vim doesn't work that way.

One curious detail about emacs keybinds. I used to use an OpenPandora as main computer for several years (I only really stopped because its charging port became dodgy). It's a pocket PC disguised as a game console. One thing it does is that it maps Ctrl and Shift to shoulder buttons. This had the curious consequence that I was *faster* at using emacs on the Pandora than on actual desktops. Its modifier-heavy keybinds felt as if they were designed for it.

Why not makes friends not foe? Try as many tools as possible. Who knows, we might be find the best, just for ourself. Thank you.

👍 You'll never forget a "teenage" crush 🤣🤣🤣 I think that the important question is "what's the right tool for the task at hand".

Things like ci{ save so much time, which means my flow isn't interrupted as much.

Vim does not do just text editing. Ed does just text editing.

The default keybindings are fine.

Now you can try SpaceVim. Its like spacemacs but inside vim :D

Vim fits to the Unix philosophy and Emacs fits to the Emacs philosophy :P I think if you need modern IDE features that use asynchronous processes Vim doesn't work (but I believe there might be some project that could bring this to "Vim" as well). But if you just need a text editor I agree with the overwhelming majority in chat, it's just preference.

I've been trying doom emacs also, and the unix philosophy is a key point for me too. I like having my text editor in my terminal just like my other programs..

I use both vim and emacs. emacs for me is for org mode and is my IDE. Where as vim I use for editing text files and when I need to quickly jump in and do something.

based roxette poster. RIP Marie Fredriksson. Keybindings are bloat, ed is the standard editor. Linus doesn't use vim.

good to have you back : )

DT starts singing... 30 minutes later: Phew, (clicks play)

Man realises that GNU Emacs isn't Vim. 😀 Me, I live in GNU Emacs, and I've reprogrammed it over many years to work as I want. That's the thing, GNU Emacs is "An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor - and more." It's interesting that in later videos he seems to be back in Emacs an awful lot, and starts to understand what it really is. PS. I don't use any Vim key-bindings personally and I am quite happy with that. If "Doom Emacs" isn't properly documented, don't blame GNU Emacs generally, GNU Emacs has great documentation, just encourage the people who configure "Doom Emacs" to write proper documentation.

Meanwhile a pleb like me can't use keyboard centric apps. •́ ‿ ,•̀ Gedit, Atom and VScode ftw.

a month ago I went there - I enjoyed getting the hang of it, main reason I went there was to be able to do everything in one place. I had to spend so much time and effort just to get there yet my favorite aspect of doom Emacs was the vim-likeness of it. Why fake vim somewhere else when you can use the real deal. All that seamless switching between commandline apps can be achieved seamlessly with workspaces in a tiling window manager anyway. for calendars, todos and apointments - calcurse for text editing - vim/nvim for email - mutt/neamutt for commands - your term emulator of choice for browsing - pick whichever, qutebrowser or minimal firefox gives the desired level of minimalism

I don't like software that tries to be a swiss army knife. So it's VIM for text editor, Atom or VSC for IDE, etc, etc. Remember the Unix mantra.

the war is now over

I will never betray my beloved Doom Emacs! That was great with the Roxette song :-D

I'm new to programming, started out with Vim, suggested forma tutorial book. I've really enjoyed Vim. I've never used Emac, but really can't see a reason to program Pyrhon in anything else.

I'm a doom contributor (for :lang ruby module), for programmers, doom is very superior. For fast editing, only vim should do the job. With doom, i can generate files (using rails generator), run rake tasks, search on project easily, search and replace on whole project, etc. its far more powerful. About the bloat of evil mode, its a issue? Doom opens in 0.3 seconds, whats the problem ? About productivity in Ruby on Rais Development: Rails has a MVC arquiteture. With doom, i can navigate between view, model and controller just pressing a shortcut. I search and run tasks with SPC m k, i can run rails generators with SPC m r g, i can open the Rails Console and Server with keybindings. The auto-completes are extremely powerful with emacs (using robe). The setup for doom is super simple and easy, everyone can start using it fast, without learn everything about the plugins, just learn how to use the vim keybindings.

I had to look up the referenced song because I never heard it as far as I know. I'm a classic rock guy. Sounds like every other 80s song that was produced in that era...

man, you look like an evil genius prisoner. Great content.