cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/9648279
I would like to premise this with the following:
- The best approach is probably just testing out each and every editor that interests me until I’ve found what works best for me.
- However, I wonder to what degree a test as such would be representative when the likes of Emacs and (Neo)Vim are considered; both of which are known for being a life time learning process.
- I don’t literally expect Emacs or (Neo)Vim to be drop-in replacements for any IDE. Some of the most basic IDE-functions are absent by default and some (perhaps more advanced) functionality might simply not be attainable at all.
- I am not interested in anything that remotely resembles a flame war. The community at Lemmy has so far been very kind to me; let’s keep it that way 😜.
Motivation
I’ve had experiences with Atom, VS Code and some of Jetbrains’ IDEs like Pycharm and Rider. While I’ve been generally content with all of them, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth whenever I’m forced to switch IDEs because their lifetimes and/or lack of extensibility doesn’t allow me to responsibly continue using them. As such, I’m interested in a long time investment that will grow as I will. Both Emacs and (Neo)Vim have passed the test of time and I honestly don’t think they’ll cease to exist in the upcoming decades, that’s why I would love to start using either one of them.
Furthermore, Vi(m) keybindings seem to be somewhat ubiquitous and almost any IDE offers some support. As such, improving my Vi(m)-game should only net-positive my productivity (at least eventually). Also, fluency will benefit me whenever I’m remote accessing any random server as they will always have Vi(m) installed. Thankfully, this doesn’t force me to use Vi(m) (or Neovim) just yet, because Emacs offers with Evil perhaps the single best Vi(m) implementation; outside of native Vi(m)*.
My setup:
- I’m on a custom image of uBlue using their startingpoint as template. For those unaware; an oversimplification would be that it is Fedora Silverblue with some extras.
- As such, I would like to have my developer environments local and have used Distrobox to that extent using steps similar to the ones outlined over here. But I’m not married to that specific way of utilizing local containers. So please feel free to recommend me something that’s at least as good.
- If I go for Emacs, then I will definitely rely on Evil.
- If possible, I would like to use it for C#, Python and Rust. Furthermore, I engage in editing Bash scripts, Dockerfiles, Linux config files, texts written in Latex and/or Markdown and other files written in Nix or JSON. As both are very extensible, I don’t expect any issues, but I might be wrong.
Questions:
- First of all, does it make sense for me to only consider these two?
- Can the split between Vim and Neovim be interpreted as the first schism and as such be a forebode for what’s yet to come?
- Google Trends suggests that Neo(Vim) is ever-popular. On the other hand; not only is Emacs relatively less popular, but its popularity seems to be slightly declining. Should this worry me regarding their long-time future? Especially considering that a thriving community is literally the lifeline for both of them.
- For those that have used both extensively, which one do you prefer (if any) and why?
- While I understand that the power of both of them lies primarily in how one can literally make them behave however suits their workflow best. Therefore, the use of premade configs and/or starter kits/distributions should (ideally) only be used either temporary or as a starting point. However, at this point, they provide a decent showcase of what each ‘platform’ has to offer. So:
I recently (couple months ago) switched back to vim after not using it for anything but quick little edits for 20ish years, but i grew up on vim in the 90s.
Like the other poster i picked lunarvim for my neovim starting point. Thought I’d try others too, but lunarvim’s defaults were nice enough that I just kept honing the config after that and never got around to trying anything else because i was already really happy with my setup.
Lunarvim is a really good base. It does have some gotchas, such as having its own way of defining keybinds, and having a completely separate config folder in ~/.config/lvim, and a few other config things that are specific to lvim, but it’s all well documented on lunarvim’s site.
Thank you for touching upon some of LunarVim’s ‘oddities’!
For what it’s worth, even with those oddities, i think you should at least try lunarvim.
The separate config thing is nice because i can try neovim+other-megaplugins without affecting my precious lvim config. the same is true on the other side, lvim won’t bonk your core neovim config.
And with the keybinds, it’s to make sure the sub-plugins work well together. using lvim’s custom key config helps keep all your plugins from interfering with each other.
Legit, especially if you’re going to modern vim from a modern gui ide, lunarvim will get you really close to a comfortable environment, and you can move on from there to perfect it for your own needs.
Thanks a lot for your input! It has been much appreciated!
That’s indeed very useful!
Makes a lot of sense!
So far, based on the comments, it seems as if LunarVim does have the biggest community (or at least the most vocal one 😜*). Which is honestly pretty cool to see!