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Comment by tombh | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve primarily stuck with [vim] because it’s an extensible editor that doesn’t hog all the resources and kill my machines.

Exactly, BUT ... Vim has a non-mainstream shortcut interface, which I've always thought is an unfortunate caveat. So over the years I've actually managed to massage Vim into behaving like a 'normal' editor. It fits into a plugin if you're interested: https://github.com/tombh/novim-mode

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But then what's... the point? That vim has a rich and expressive language for text navigation and manipulation is the only thing that sets it apart from more modern competitors.

That was the part of the sentiment of the quote - the point is that Vim is notable for 2 distinct, but unfortunately inseparable, reasons;

1. Modal editing. 2. One of the most ubiquitous, lightweight, stable and extensible editors in existence.

I just want there to be at least a semblance of a possibility to separate these 2 things.

Have you tried emacs?

Yes, but it doesn't exactly have 'conventional' shortcuts either, right? It's a little more heavyweight over Vim as well. So in the light-but-powerful editor universe, I think Vim just pips it to the post. Which is why I use it, albeit with 'normal' shortcuts.

Depends on what you mean by conventional. It's the default key binding style in most terminals.

Just use nano if you don't want its shortcuts or even emacs. You don't have to use any predefined shortcuts in emacs. Everything is reconfigurable. The main selling point of vim is its shortcuts and modal editing. If it is not for you there dozens of great text editors that do a good job of just editing text compared to Atom.

How do I get autocompletion, linting, gitgutter, and so on in Nano? Emacs is another great editor for sure, but slightly heavier weight than Vim, so I've just invested in that.

There is no other editor that even comes close to being as lightweight and extensible as Vim (or Emacs). Whatsmore I absolutely love my editor being in a tmux pane. This is an unprecedented paradigm, that people should't have to miss out on just because of Normal Mode's learning curve.

If you put it like that you only have emacs left. Instead of an editor in a tmux pane you a shell in the editor. But Emacs is hardly lightweight. Compared to Atom though even something as heavy Spacemacs in emacs is much better.

> There is no other editor that even comes close to being as lightweight and extensible as Vim (or Emacs).

Sure there is, just not the free type so many people rather have.

Here is one example, almost as old as Windows (since 3.x days), https://www.slickedit.com

You would have to extend it yourself which others do for me with plugins in vim or emacs.

There are also people doing plugins for it.

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