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Comment by jaequery | Hacker News Reader

at the end, emacs always wins :)

I rock back and forth, depending on the languages I'm using. Emacs does more, but is in my experience more kludgy, even after having in aggregate spent many days customizing it (maybe it would rub better if I wasn't hardwired to the vi/vim modal editing/motions method). Vim feels cleaner and less annoying, but sometimes the easy integration with external tools tips the balance in emacs' favor. E.g. I use vim for Rails apps (where I didn't really feel enough difference from vim + terminal), but if I were writing Clojure, stuff like the repl integration would probably mean emacs.

Sublime is really pretty, and has great functionality out of the box.

Ultimately, vi/vim's contribution is the modal editing method (and derived things like motions), which can be transplanted to any other IDE or editor that cares to support it. But for the fundamendals - editing and switching between files - I've so far found vim to be the cleanest, most natural vim.

Emacs can be pretty pretty--perhaps not actively pretty, but very elegant in a minimalist sort of way. I'm pretty happy with how mine looks[1], for example.

[1]: http://jelv.is/emacs-blackboard.png

Also, have you tried Evil? Apparently it's a very good Vim-emulation mode for Emacs, highly recommended over Viper.

Indeed! I disagree with people who think vim and emacs are ugly: they have their own nice 8bit-esque aesthetic which I'd expect hackers to like, given that they've chosen to stare at terminals all day (I've rolled my own colorscheme for both vim and emacs). And they make good use of screen real-estate, very important when coding on a laptop.

I haven't tried Evil, in my last emacs phase it wasn't mature yet IIRC - maybe I should give that a go and see if it tips the balance yet again.

Woah how do you get your status bar to have the > shapes like that? Looks very nice :)

I'm using powerline.el[1]. It's an Emacs version of a Vim plugin.

[1]: https://github.com/jonathanchu/emacs-powerline/blob/master/p...

Excellent, thanks! Here's to hoping I can get it to work with nyan-mode, the most important emacs plugin :P

> Emacs can be pretty pretty--perhaps not actively pretty, but very elegant in a minimalist sort of way. I'm pretty happy with how mine looks[1], for example.

Obligatory vim can be pretty too, and I am happy with how mine looks.

http://i.imgur.com/ZC2xDxH.png

On a related note, I like how my terminal vim looks better than how the GUI looks. I don't use emacs much, but same goes for emacs.

What's your theme, BTW? I also like your custom status bar shape.

> What's your theme, BTW? I also like your custom status bar shape.

My screenshot doesn't have custom status bar shapes. GP does. Anyway, for that, you need powerline(available for both vim and emacs).

My color theme is ir_black https://github.com/wgibbs/vim-irblack If you are using it in terminal, you also need to set up ir_black theme for the terminal.

Hah, Haskell! Also my primary choice of magic potion :-)

> in my experience more kludgy

Not sure what that means

> even after having in aggregate spent many days customizing it

Do your work and if you find you can add something to your ~/.emacs then do

> Vim feels cleaner and less annoying,

I cannot empathise with that. Model editing is awful. I feel like i should have a foot pedal to actually toggle it

/oldest debate in the world

Sorry for the cliche, but the obligatory: http://xkcd.com/378/

Yep, after bouncing between vim w/plugins and Sublime Text for the past year or so, I spent a day messing with emacs and have somehow found a sweet spot for my workflow. (haskell-mode/ghc-mod and AuCTeX - schoolwork) I've tinkered with emacs on and off over the last decade but somehow for what I'm doing now it just feels better than my vim setup.

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