this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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    [–] holo@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

    Doom emacs really has the best of all worlds, oeg mode and vim keybinds

    [–] Alawami@lemmy.ml 61 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

    May I introduce you to the simple life of just using whatever text editor and terminal that comes presintalled on your favoraite distro? It's ridiculous how far this can get you, I've been enjoying gnome text ediotor with gnome terminal.

    [–] TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    ed is a truly wonderful editor indeed!

    [–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 31 points 2 weeks ago

    The greatest WYGIWYG editor, with an extremely consistent error interface.

    https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

    Works great on 300 baud; not many editors can boast that. Also, if your programs are all under 2000 lines long.

    [–] librekitty@lemmy.today 13 points 2 weeks ago

    some distros ship kate, and that's a super good pick for code editing

    [–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    Yeah no thanks. Linting, formatting, LSP integration, Treesitter,... are just kind of essential for programming work. And the advantage of nvim/emacs/... is that you can bend them to your will and preferences.

    If you just want to edit some config files, sure, use literally anything. But I need something proper for work, and if I already set all of that up, might as well use it for the config files, too.

    [–] sepi@piefed.social 5 points 2 weeks ago

    Fake news. Emacs is the only text editor non-heathens and heathens should be using.

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    [–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 43 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

    You really should use vim though.

    [–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    No (I already somewhat learned Emacs, I ain't gonna learn something new)

    [–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 43 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (7 children)

    That's how the meme goes though. Anytime someone suggests, says something positive about one of vim or emacs, the response should be that they should use the other. πŸ˜„

    It's an almost 40-year-old flame war.

    [–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
    [–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

    I even tried micro.

    me want nano. nano edit important file pulsar can't. dolphin angry if me use like administrator.

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    [–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 8 points 2 weeks ago
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    [–] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 32 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    I’ve been using emacs for work for years because the proprietary language I have to work in was set up with emacs as the default editor. I bitched and moaned when I first started because I was used to more modern solutions.

    When they finally got VS Code support working…I stayed with emacs. Stockholm Syndrome, I suspect. But I know what I’m doing in emacs. I’m comfortable.

    [–] Decq@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    A wild guess.. Magik/Smallworld? That was it for me.

    [–] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

    Nah, it’s called CM which I believe stands for Configura Magic. It’s a C-based language sort of similar to C#, but specifically made for use with Configura’s space-planning software.

    I actually like the language, I just hate that it’s extremely niche.

    Edit: the similarity between the names Magik and Configura Magic is not lost on me, but I don’t think they’re related.

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    [–] rtxn@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    Neovim with Nvchad is what finally made me ditch pretty much all other IDEs. As much as I used to like Jetbrains, they've pivoted to vibe coding so hard that I can't justify using their IDEs.

    [–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    I like neovim for personal projects in Rust, Lua and JS but for collaborative work in Java it's not really usable for me. Database access, merging big PRs, unit testing tools, debugging, integrations with Spring... I always saw too many feature gaps to even try.

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    [–] verstra@programming.dev 15 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)
    [–] Deebster@infosec.pub 5 points 2 weeks ago

    I guess we are more on the vim side in the editor wars, but only against our shared foes

    [–] clif@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    I decided to give it an honest try after somebody mentioned it on lemmy a few weeks ago.

    ... I really like it.

    I still pop open Theia if I'm just doing some research that has me hopping all around, or sometimes on a separate monitor for a referenced project/library associated with my work, but I do the actual work in Helix.

    There are dozens of us!

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    [–] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
    [–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

    All time classic.

    Im not going crazy just playing around a bit, remapping some keybindings and so on. It is in fact kind of fun.

    (I actually just tried jumping to the first line of my comment while writing it using C-a, which is the default keybind for this in emacs. I think its getting worse. Aaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhh)

    [–] promitheas@programming.dev 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    Im a neovim user myself, and i swapped my caps and escape keys at the os level. I touch another computer and am WONDERING WHY IM WRITING LIKE THIS xD

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    [–] Wofls@feddit.org 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    Save yourself the trouble and just skip ahead: real programmers use butterflies

    [–] elvith@feddit.org 13 points 2 weeks ago

    Good ol’ C-x M-c M-butterfly

    [–] mlg@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (6 children)

    Use micro after everyone makes fun of you for using nano

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    [–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

    I may be crazy, but for regular text file, VIM is usually my go to. But, because of tag auto completion Bluefish has been my HMTL/CSS editor for a while. Most other things are in VIM. Bash? VIM. Python? VIM. C? Trash bin! Did not like the C class I took last quarter!

    Exception being things like .docx or .odt files that have no business being opened in VIM.

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    [–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    Say goodbye to your pinkie

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    [–] outerspace@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago

    The problem with Emacs is that it sucks but there is nothing better, and you are getting stuck with it forever. Welcome!

    [–] callyral@pawb.social 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

    I used to use Neovim until I got tired of it and switched to Helix. I tried Emacs for a bit but turns out that Helix does everything I need it to do without any extra configuration.

    And of course I use caps:swapescape because I am not reaching all the way to the Escape key all the time.

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    [–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    emacs kicks ass

    It becomes a tool for doing whatever you are doing at the moment.

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    [–] yetAnotherUser@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

    Emacs and (Neo)Vim are a bit too overwhelming for me. I've tried Neovim for a relatively long time, but I felt kind of overloaded with the vast amount of features and plugins it has. I've tried Emacs a bit, but its complexity always scared me (not to mention it uses its own version of Lisp, a language that is notorious for its ability of creating new language features on the fly, hence even more complexity). I've been using Helix, and I couldn't be happier. I've realized that I don't really care much about editor customization, and that what I was looking for was just a cool modal editor with some useful features (such as file picker, LSP, tree-sitter, multiple cursors, ...). The keybinds are also easier to grasp, as fewer of them feel arbitrary compared to Vim. In Vim and Emacs, it feels like you can do everything, while in Helix, it feels more like you can do everything the developers think that might be useful for you. Who knows, maybe I'll try again Emacs and (Neo)Vim again in the far future, but I don't feel like it for now.

    [–] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    May I recommend Helix? It’s a modal editor like vim, but has a better out of the box experience, better discoverability for commands, and uses an easier to understand select->command syntax.

    [–] WhosMansIsThis@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

    Just started using helix a few months ago and I'm in love. The movement took a second to get used to but its super efficient once you get the hang of it. I highly recommend it, especially if you're doing any kind of programming or sysadmin work and you hate gui ides.

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    [–] Siethron@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
    [–] LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 weeks ago

    WARNING: buffer has changed, add ! To quit without saving!

    [–] whimsy@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 weeks ago

    Emacs is love, emacs is life

    [–] Alcan@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    One of my year goals is to change from vsc to vim hehe

    [–] lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    This is also my goal! ...since 2020.

    I love vim/nvim but I've gotten used to using VIM more as a text editor then an IDE. Writing a script? Taking notes? Maybe even a small program? VIM all the way. Working on a big project that needs an LSP? Either spend the next 20 hours fucking with your VIM config and 20 plugins to get basic functionality... Or just open VSCode and install one plugin

    Heres to hoping since NVIM 0.11 with their LSP overhaul I can finnally make the full switch

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    [–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago (7 children)

    I keep thinking that as I use vim, I'll feel the need to learn more commands, but I hardly do anything except:

    • q, wq, or q!, quit with or without saving
    • i, insert
    • set:paste, preserves spacing
    • Shift-insert, pastes if shift-ctrl-v doesn't work
    • / , search for a string (iirc, don't really need it much).

    What are your vim GOTOs?

    [–] Stitch0815@feddit.org 6 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    My most used commands are also just the classics

    cw - delete the next word amd enter insert mode

    dd - delete line

    gg - go to first line

    G - go to last line

    :s/searchphrase/replacephrase - search and replace

    And a couple of visual mode commands do cut and paste blocks or comment out blocks of code

    [–] GiveOver@feddit.uk 5 points 1 week ago

    To build on cw:

    ciw works when the cursor is anywhere in the word

    ci( to delete everything between brackets and enter insert mode. Also ci" ciW or whatever

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    [–] Lyubo@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Good, good! You're on the right way! But remember, there is a world outside your Emacs, don't forget about it.

    [–] Stitch0815@feddit.org 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)
    [–] MrChewy@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

    Surely, you mistyped neovim?

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