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a return to simpler times!


NB: I'm not sure what this post is supposed to be. I kinda started writing and then forgot what my goal was. Enjoy!

My development environment has changed a lot throughout the years. Believe it or not, but when I very first started "programming", outside of environments provided by BASIC or VB, I used Notepad :-). I think I've come a long way since then!

In brief, I now use a mixture of both Vim and Emacs, even though I'm told it is an unholy combination and that one of these nights RMS will visit me and run rm /usr/bin/vim on my machine. Alongside these two I also use a bunch of plugins for both, and the occassional loading of Sublime. The reason I use Vim + Emacs is because I feel like they both do a better job at certain things than the other. Now, it may also be that I've not spent enough time (~5 years) learning either editor, or OS for Emacs, enough to be able rely on it solely, but I digress. I'll get into the details of my setup and usecases, but the deal with Sublime is to just look at code.

"I did shortly attempt to become hip and cool and use VSCode. I simply didn't like it. I wasn't as productive in it as I was with my other tools and editors. Of course, if I stuck with it for a few years, all would be good, but there's just something magical about staying inside my terminal with Vim or popping into Emacs that VSCode didn't give me. Not to mention the approach the other editors take to editing text/code. It's almost a different paradigm I feel."

# Setup

# Vim

# Emacs

# Why?

I've read so many debates, and been in a few myself, over the years on Emacs vs Vi(m). Fact is, I've come to the conclusion both are too complex for any one person to judge which one is better. Both have their own paradigms, their own ways of making you do things, and their own way of organizing your text or code. Prepare for a dump:

I enjoy Vi's modal paradigm, I don't like Emacs's stance towards my precious Tabs, though I understand it, Org-mode has allowed me to be incredibly productive at task keeping, organizing thoughts, and plenty of other things.

Vim lets me do what I want without a squeak and at light speed, Emacs lets me do whatever I want and Lisp is super fun to learn.

Surprisingly, I don't hate Emacs' keybindings/key combinations, even though I do use Evil.

I can play games in Emacs, but I can use Vim anywhere.

Emacs lets me do things I'd normally need a different program or application for (git reviews, emails, etc...).

Vim allows me to open truly huuuuge files with no problem. I'm constantly SSH'd into servers, so again, Vim to the rescue.

When in either Vim or Emacs, I think about text differently, not sure what it is, but I do, and this affects how I edit blocks, lines, move things around, etc.

# Other

I usually open up my terminal and Emacs as soon as I login (well, my startup scripts do this for me). Emacs loads with my todo.org and I launch Tmux + restore my previous session, panes, and windows if necessary (i.e, if I'm going to be working on the exact same thing as yesterday... which is often).

Here's what it's looking like at home on my T430 (i3 + polybar + rofi + KDE):

# Misc

16/06/2020