Comment by ctrlmeta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ctrlmeta | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for the reply. I do have some questions to understand how far vim-slime can go in providing a good lisp interaction environment. For instance,

1. Can I select an s-expression (along with all the nested s-expressions within it) and send it to the REPL? When I checked vim-slime I saw that it has no understanding of s-expressions. The onus of carefully selecting the s-expression and sending it to REPL relied on the user. If I selected what amounts to nonsense and send it to the REPL, vim-slime sends that nonsense for evaluation. vim-slime did not seem to help with these things. Is that your experience too?

2. Does vim-slime use the compiled functions for autocompletion/suggestions? SLIME and I think SLIMV too helps with autocompletion, shows the valid arguments of a function automatically in the status line, and such things as I type code. SLIME/SLIMV make use of the compiled functions to provide IDE like completion/suggestion features. Can vim-slime do this?

SLIMV or real SLIME do have key-bindings to send any s-expression the cursor is on, or send a top level form automatically and send it to the REPL. Seeing the valid arguments in the status line as I type code is useful for functions where it is easy to forget which argument goes first and which goes second. Just some of the many small features I rely on while using the real SLIME with Emacs. Can vim-slime do these too? When I checked vim-slime it could not do these things and it could not do a bunch of other things that I consider essential for lisp interaction.

Sorry for all the edits, just want to write all my thoughts down in one place.

1. Various interactions I frequently have:

- `va(C-cC-c`. Select the current parentheses text object (s-expression) and send it to the repl.

-`C-aC-a`, switch to repl to view output, interact with debugger, etc.

- `ggVGC-cC-c`, select the entire file and send it to the repl.

- I've never done this one but since you mentioned it as useful to you: `?^(<CR>va(C-cC-c`, evaluate a top level form. Not perfect, but probably good enough especially if a line formatter is used to enforce sane indenting like this one for Clojure[6]. If a line formatter does not exist, the usual `ggVG=` built-in vim indenting works just fine.

- `:set makeprg=<command to run unit tests with line numbers>:make`. Batch error reporting and fixing, very useful[1]. In Clojure, e.g. `lein test` with some additions to set error format might be the `make` program.

vim-slime does not have an understanding of s expressions but vim itself does, using the parentheses object. See `:help text-objects`. I like that vim-slime does not have this understanding because what if I'm using it with Ruby or something. But vim support of text objects is good enough that it's never a problem. While I'm on the subject, `])` and `[(` searching for parens in vim is awesome.

Vim operates using an entirely different set of values than emacs. Selecting and searching for text should not be the purview of a plug-in, it should be built into the editor. Compiling code should be delegated to compilers. Vim does a great job of this kind of separation of concerns, it is the Zen of vim, its core philosophy. Emacs is great and it works fantastically, it just operates using a different philosophy.

2. I work more in Clojure but I'm trying to get more into common lisp. Clojure has suggestions in neovim via language server protocol[2]. The suggestions are very good[3]. This is not as developed for the common lisp story[4] but I'll try it out and see how good it is.

I've never had much patience for autocompletion. I don't even like it when the editor puts in pairs of parentheses when I've only typed the first left parentheses. Vim does have autocomplete through the language server protocol, but I don't use it.

Regarding suggestions as I type, there's ale[5], but I think I would find suggestions as I type a little too distracting and might slow me down. I find the normal LSP stuff to be good enough.

1: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Errorformat_and_makeprg

2: https://blog.inkdrop.app/how-to-set-up-neovim-0-5-modern-plu...

3: https://github.com/clojure-lsp/clojure-lsp

4: https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp

5: https://github.com/dense-analysis/ale

6: https://github.com/venantius/vim-cljfmt

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