I hit the 20 minute mark fast and I feel like I barely scratched the surface of some of these differences and how I came to form my opinions around them. If there are any particular points that warrant a more focused video, please let me know. Edit: Audio muffles around 0:30 but is back by 1:37
I also hit the 20 min mark fast while watching, which I suppose is a good thing. You're a very zen and chill guy to listen too. It's somewhat of a breather in-between fast paced quick jump cut youtube. I vastly prefer 20 mins of natural conversation compared to 5min paced
The anti-LukeSmith: China as opposed to US City instead of a rural area Emacs instead of (Neo)Vim Video in a coffee shop instead of "Why I Won't Go to Restaurants in 2023" Hair. Long hair.
I love the way you format these so much. It may be at odds with growing more quickly but there's nothing I'd want to change (Noises from the city included). Was at first hesitant to click on this video but as soon as I realized it was you I knew I'd enjoy it immediately
I moved from vim to emacs about 4 years ago. I've written packages for emacs, and I'm a big fan of lisps and schemes in general. But I will be the first to admit that elisp is pain and the single threaded nature of emacs is often frustrating. But that's my main gripe and it's not enough of an issue to make me consider switching away from emacs because of how engrained emacs has become in every aspect of my workflow. My overall stance has become Emacs for programming and writing, Vim for quick edits in the terminal and remote editing. Also while I think the editor wars are amusing, at the end of the day people should just use whatever tool works best for them.
I'm glad you use both. IMO n/vim is good for quick edits, and emacs is a place to hang out for a while. I never could grok vimscript or lua for vim, but after following a series on emacs config from scratch I got the hang of elisp. Evil mode is just necessary!
IMO the biggest hurdle for learning Lua to configure nvim is understanding its only data structure - the table. If you get its semantics and how to manipulate it, it's a breeze. I use Fennel to transpile to Lua for my config, and using a Lisp to manage tables has been a blessing.
Neovim isn't necessary on the terminal, they made significant refactors over Vim that allow implementing different UIs for it, instead using the default TUI. One example is Neovide. But yes, these GUIs are still limited on what Neovim can do. They cannot do multiple font sizes for example.
It's hard to imagine the potential emulation of Vi or Vim within Emacs as its irony. If anything worth noting, that is more of a reason to praise Emacs. It stands a testament to Emacs' sheer breadth of capabilties. I may have misunderstood the presentation of your point regarding Evil Mode's popularity and the implication that the default bindings got something wrong. From my understanding, however, you're misunderstanding. Evil mode is not a sledgehammer to the Emacs philosophy because it gives you vim keys to push less buttons. Destroying the non-modal state of Emacs doesn't mean Richard Stallman was full of shit. It makes Emacs better, actually. Evil mode is there for people who want the Vim style in Emacs itself. You can use this, the default bindings, or both at once. Kaboom. Now, you get Emacs with your favorite buttons. Neovim and Emacs + Evil are thusly neck and neck with each other, and at that point it comes down to preference. I will say though, that Emacs having GUI capabilities gives it a pretty dicey edge, especially when considering accessibility, desktop integration, and visual customization. At that point, now it is Neovim that requires the plugin goose chase. To land my point, I ask you to consider why someone would just... do it, installing Evil mode and using Emacs in that state. You said you use it to make documents look pretty, essentially. Others use it as a music player, or email client, which both arrive by default. Emacs doesn't just want you to live inside of it. it helps you, the same way neovim does. I also disagree with the constant floating of the point regarding the UNIX philosophy. Everything inside of Emacs is there when you need to perform a supplementary task while maintaining focus on a core project. This strongly implies its adherence, not divergence, to the Unix philosophy. Emacs is neither an operating system, nor a text editor. it's a meta lisp interpreter. That's pretty much it. As far as that goes, it is perfectly within the bounds of the UNIX philosophy. I'm not gaslighting you. Really look at Emacs and tell me if it's a text editor meant to be a text editor alone. It isn't. It's an interpreter that went into big mode sometime in the early 2000s. It just had a text editor in it.
I've felt that completely switching the workflow works better when you want to try something new. For example when I switched from vscode to nvim, I just stopped using vscode for a month. The same with emacs
Then don’t. If you are comfortable then no need to change. You can get a similar setup with Emacs most likely but it is probably not worth the time investment (coming from an EMacs user)
1 vim has guis gvim. 2. Neovim has GUI clients available that talk to a Neovim process local or remote 3. Neovim can also support graphics in the terminal using certain packages that support terminals with graphics protocols such as iTerm, Kitty etc
I'll have to check some of these graphical layers out. I've heard that their functionality is limited, but I'll try to forget what I've heard and assess the state of these projects in the near future
Yeah but emacs is one and only one product. Without fragmentation, you can do what you want. Beside this, i love emacs because writing in lisp is much more familiar in respect to lua for neovim
What's your opinion on `vis`? It's another Vi-like editor but it's more true to the Unix philosophy. It also adds multi-cursors by taking some inspiration from the Sam editor.
I use org mode to do assignments that have a lot of mathematical content, since you can integrate LaTeX equations and symbols into it, and even compile them to images so they display in the editing buffer (this makes editing the equations a lot easier, as you can check to see if you've done it right in real time). Regarding ELISP, there's a reason all other GNU projects that use a LISP for configuration use Guile Scheme, and not the janky ELISP.
I frequently redirect standard in and standard out in emacs. Not only that but with emacs shell you can pipe stuff straight from shell into a file if you wanted to look at the output in a scratch buffer you can easily do that and more. It's C-u C-| you can remap these as well.
Really interesting video. Appreciate your take on it. I find that org-export on emacs is something I quite like - being able to export in md, rst, docx, etc. I haven't been using emacs for a very long time, but I find note taking to be very good within the structure that is guaranteed/forced by org-mode. I also find that I have to spend a good deal of time hacking at lisp when I want to extend it because I don't really get elisp.
This is the most honest comparison of emacs and vim I have ever seen. Ive veen using vim (now neovim) for 6+ years, and being a unix-loving power user, I was always interested in what emacs was, given its popularity. Most people who talk about emacs give all the positives and spend time talking about what vim doesnt do, but this was a great demonstration of everyday use and what really matters. I was planning on trying emacs out some time, but this video has made me reconsider (for now!). Unix philosphy is one of the most important things to me
I respectfully request a video on Typst. It got on my radar a while back as a longtime, avid user of both LaTeX & Md, and since you're technically light years ahead of me I would be ecstatic to hear your take on it.
It's certainly on the list! That's going to be a video that I want to make sure I do properly. Everyone has heard about Vim/Emacs etc but I feel like most of the future userbase of Typst have yet to know it exists. So much potential.
I would love to see a Typst video also. I've been using LaTeX now for 5 years, and find it very powerful. But I switched from vim to nvim to keep up with the modern times, and I would love to switch to something modern like Typst if it is a full LaTeX replacement.
if i could unlearn latex and reinvest that time, I would do so with typst. I think its much better than latex. so much more simple. I'ts like they took everything good from latex and just put it into a better syntax and made typst.
My take on 5:31 regarding modality is many of the things listed as 'Modes' in Emacs are termed 'Options' (or something similar) in Vim. IMO it's just different terminology for the same thing. I don't think that these differences in phrasing constitute an improvement of one editor over another. Example: I see that one of the modes listed in emacs is Display-Line-Numbers. Maybe I don't understand emacs, but as far as I'm aware, that is also an option in the majority of editors, but you wouldn't necessarily be calling visual studio code a 'modal editor'. I always try and minimize bias but I do have a personal bias towards Vim as I have never fully gotten into Emacs (not for lack of trying though) and I welcome any corrections, as I know that I might be wrong on the specifics here. But this is from my viewpoint as someone who uses Vim.
IMO, Helix is still in a very developmental phase at the moment, and, if someone is looking for a very OOTB experience then Helix is a great choice since it supports all the good stuff like - (improved) Vim motions - LSP support for many languages - Pretty colours for those who care about them. It would be interesting to see a comparison between Helix and Neovim.
2nd comment after watching the entire video: I totally agree with you on the points, and i can tell that this POV comes from someone who genuinely likes emacs as a concept but struggles to "drink the emacs koolaid" let's say where i see a lot of people just religiously (and i use this word really specifically) adhere to everything emacs does as gospel and the one true way and any resistance is blasphemous. I also love emacs for many reasons, you mention you don't care much for all the extra stuff that emacs does and i agree but for example the entire multiplexing of windows and buffers is extremely fluid and instinctive to me vs the neovim / terminal way. i understand that one can't really compare neovim to emacs in that sense but i do love it. you also mentioned the emacs discoverability ad structure of accessing all the build in f unctions directly f rom meta-x this is such a fantastic thing about emacs... once it clicks in the brain the discoverability of emacs is unparallelled. I also love the fact it's more of a "container" for everything rather than just a editor in a greater collection of independent tools where cohesive design is never really acheivable having said that, i do find that neovim sometimes "just works" and comparing it's speed and snappiness is unmatched (no matter how much emacs fanatics want to argue otherwise "AKTSHUALLY, my emacs is faster than vim on my machine you're just doing it wrong" -every emacs nerd anyways great video and channel, followed you for more tech-goodness...
Hi, Andrew! I have watched all of your videos so far, and I must say they do not disappoint! Would you mind sharing what branch of IT you work in? Thanks for your videos!
In addition to getting my degree(s), I work cybersec which has allowed me to be a multitool and get experience doing tons of different tasks. I especially love when I get to do rugged dev ops work without all the strange scrum/agile song and dance. This is not where I envision myself ending up though.
I have used both emacs and (n)vim professionally as a programmer, and I agree. I especially like the idea of composability you touched on - neovim seems to be designed in a way that allows using other programs with it, and often this makes things way easier. Also it's pretty funny to think "eight megabytes and constantly swapping" used to be a big thing - nowadays I need to run multiple language servers in order to do my work so this truly is peanuts :D
I started learning Vim and Emacs this year, I really like both to be honest. I used Doom Emacs a little, and that helped get my feet wet, but I'm trying to learn vanilla Emacs now. I also use Neovim a lot with Kickstart
And tbf, some emacs features are also available in vim if you so desire - i personally use stuff like Neorg because i prefer it as a system for note taking over obsidian as i hate having to leave the terminal. and this you can export to markdown if you need to.
I deactivate vim swap files and don't have any problems. But I don't tend to edit the same files in multiple different vim instances anyway. In my workflow I use a terminal multiplexer (optional, just for terminal tabs), and every shell actually runs vim as a server as the parent process. This "shell" starts vim with most UI hidden and with vim's terminal emulator running bash in a persistent vim tab. That is great because I can use my config's vim keybindings for scrollback selection, and stuff like ls, meta-escape to normal mode from shell, cursor to file, and vim keybinding to open. Vim runs as a "server" using vim --servername, I have a command called "v" which has many options like reading file lists from stdin or args, and whether to send them to open vim buffers or tabs or splits or quickfix list in the current vim session "server". So it is all integrated and nice and I only use one instance of vim. It has also reduced the number of vim- integrations like fzf and lf, as I can just use those in a vim terminal and bind e.g. lf's open to "v " to open in a new tab.
I learn specific radicals in my own time and character strokes aren't really something I study. Stroke order is one of those systems that you learn once and then apply forever. Even if it's a character you've never seen before, it's not too hard to correctly guess how to write it. My Anki decks are just for cramming more sentence structures and vocabulary into my brain. As for Guile Scheme, that's some territory I've not walked too far down. It looks like there are some ways to make that work, but the Emacs configuration language is a variation of Lisp appropriately called Emacs Lisp.
I have been toying with eMacs for a weeks now and love it. I have been using nvim for ~2 years. After some of these points I’m really tempted to set up org mode and tab / window management and host nvim in eMacs. Maybe set up Elisp functions that open different file types automatically in eMacs or embedded nvim. (md, Tex, org, etc in eMacs editor) and (py, rs, hs, go, sql, etc) in embedded nvim. Bind my navigation keybinds back to eMacs for handling all of that and editing bindings to whichever editor is active in the file. No need to respond but let me know what you think of this idea. Maybe you think it’s a waste of time? But I’m starting to see this as an opportunity to think less “war” and more “best of both worlds”.
I really hate these wars on whats better and whats worse, literally the worst kind of gatekeeping. Just use what you like, what you feel comfortable with and what makes use productive.
Both demand quite a bit of time investment. Too much configuration, too much context switching, and both are quite opinionated about how to do things. You totally _could_ do it, but it's not a "they're complementary" situation.
they both do similar things very differently, meaning that you would have to pick and choose what functionality you would want to adopt, and which editor you want to use. Most editors combine functionality, meaning that every time you switch between Emacs and Vim, you will be losing some functionality that you miss from the other respective editor, which is why, in my opinion, it would be a waste of time, and very frustrating.
I would not say Emacs is a GUI or TUI application. It is both, as you choose to use it. And as both at editors they can be compared. Emacs is not a modal editor like vim, but you have different collection of functionalities, that is called modes. Emacs doesn't need tmux, as it has the server, which can be connected from many places in the same computer. And you can even make systemd user start Emacs in server mode when you log in. You don't need to use Dired if you don't want to, but why? Who want to start the editor, when you have emacsclient? And you have large help in Emacs. Emacs do read the standard input, if you want to, and in Emacs you can pipe buffer through pipes.
You can do all your file management with whatever you wanted if you wrote some code for it in elisp. Just take in whatever the program spits out to standard in and have emacs read it.
That's true but I suppose my point is that it's still locked to Emacs. The two file manager that I used before on nvim are the same terminal file manager that I use for my whole system. A completely standalone application that can nicely integrate into neovim for that overlap of functionality. No need to reinvent the wheel for each task.
Remembering a bunch of different flags for different programs instead of the same commands for every program and a unified way to make those interactive
Thanks for comparing Emacs vs NVIM; I understand your points. EMACs can be optimized ELISP functions can be byte compiled, there is some GCCEmacs project that recompiles, suppose also improve EMACS performance. For me, I find emacs easier to use; I just can't stand modal editors and how it works, just upsets me; to each their own. I like EMACS more. 1 point is NeoVIM isn't just work in a terminal, I read there is some NeoVim GUI version called GVIM. The initial problem I had with EMACS was I found it hard at first and gave up; but thanks to youtube there is some nice EMAC newb tutorials and if you really follow it you can started fast, For starters the EMACs team should have really easy preference changes; like get rid of the glaring white screen when you first use EMACS, lol.
There's no debate. If you write any dialect of lisp, it only makes sense to use Emacs, as neither Vim nor Neovim, nor any of their distributions as far as I'm aware provide a lisp interpreter, nor the capability to evaluate s-expressions within those editors without janking it on top of them yourself. If you don't write lisps, you don't need that entire ecosystem of REPLs, scratchpads and all that jazz. You can of course bolt on top of all that pandemonium the tools you actually need, but why would you do that? It's like, I dunno, installing Manjaro or Garuda on your server just because you want to use pacman, then wasting more time on installing utils you actually need and then arguing that "what do you mean why I installed Garuda? It had pacman, I needed pacman - a pretty obvious decision", despite it including all the UI stuff you're never gonna make use of on a server, when Arch exists. I hope I expressed my opinion clearly enough.
@@AndrewGiraffe well, I mean, I don't have any idea why some people prefer Emacs either 😸 Like, Vim motions and commands are clearly superior, unless maybe you're one of those guys from the original Ghost in the Shell I guess; y'know - dudes with fingers on their fingers. Vim also runs in terminal by default (if memory serves me, there's a terminal Emacs, too, but let's be honest, nobody uses it), and it's way more stable and fast; built-in terminal emulator is better, too, both in terms of stability and drawing things to the screen. But Emacs has a built-in package manager, which surprisingly worked almost perfectly at least in my experience, and it has a number of interesting features out of the box, with calendar, email client and VCS support being very helpful if you wanna just install it and immediately start coding away without even changing the default light color scheme, you damn heathen. Installing a lisp interpreter on top of Vim is fine I guess, but it won't give the experience of integrating your lisp code into an existing code base. I pulled that one entirely out of my ass, lol, as I don't know if it's all that useful - like, does it really matter how well your web app will integrate into a weird nerd OS that only a handful of dudes like you use? After all, you won't deploy whatever spaghetti you cooked up AND Emacs to your customers and force them to use it instead of whatever they originally had? Although now that I say that, I'm starting to have my doubts... 😸
I usually use Obsidian for my note taking, and Neovim for my code editing. I'm almost considering if emacs would actually be superior to Obsidian for that task... but I will have to see. Some day. Maybe.
I dunno I spent months making a config with everything I want, it's all taped together with elisp and so are the plugins. It's fascinating but the whole thing is kind of jankedy. Sublime is practically better. If I ever get into vim at least there's a Lua based version but I don't even plan to.
I added a plugin for orgmode in neovim yesterday. I like emacs and just like you i want it to be the best GUI editor. But i can't always use it because 1. I'm just faster with neovim (maybe because I'm super used to it) 2. I could not det up codeium with emacs. It does not work alongside lsp So I'm sticking with neovim
I feel like I understand Emacs users now. It's basically what I feel about Obsidian "Neovim is where I get my work done, Emacs is where I have my documents look nice" is exactly what I feel about obsidian, not to mention the ecosystem and the plethora of addons
Notable points that bring me to the Emacs camp are compatibility with LSPs, the ability to partially render Latex and such, Obsidian is proprietary and uses election, and Emacs tends to be much more visually customizable. All of that said, Obsidian does appear to integrate nicely between devices. That wouldn't get me using it, but definitely something that open projects ought to take note from.
But take this debate seriously you can get vim emulation almost any editor, IDE including emacs. In addition, emacs can be used with modern keybinding (i.e. ergoemacs) There is no reason to argue which one is the better or worse. Use whatever you want.
This was IMHO a fair, practical comparison between the two from the perspective a seasoned professional. I would also choose nvim without a thought, for most of the usecase described in the video for Emacs nowadays is rather use Obsidian or Logseq.
I tend not to be the biggest fan of electron applications, and also Obsidian is proprietary. Perhaps soon I'll find something that will make me fully jump ship and I'll stop using Emacs. Just need to make sure whatever I choose continues to be maintained into the future.
I bow to this I'm only an enthusiast, when younger me gave a go at Emacs specifically for org-mode LISP sort of happened and now I use electron apps =) In all seriousness, if you ever find something that completely fits the bill, please let us know !
@@AndrewGiraffe Obsidian is proprietary but it's free to use and it is like the Emacs of the note taking world and the most amount of plugins and obscure plugins exist only there. So sorry but Emacs or Neovim can't beat Obsidian because they simply do not have the manpower to compete on the notetaking side.
I have 2000 chinese characters, with traduction-mp3-pinyin, 10000 russian words with mp3, and 10000 german words with mp3 all this in emacs headers. I need to get a life maybe
Hopefully in that new life you plan to get, you can now speak with many more people. I'm having a blast getting better at Mandarin every day over here.
I prefer the paradigm of working with my shell to do all the things pre baked into emacs, nvim is lighter and I prefer lua over elisp, the sheer quantity of parenthesis has put me off from the get go and just couldn't get past over it yet.
I think that it mainly comes down to the fact that vim is more lightweight and good for a terminal based workflow, and emacs is good if you're looking to absolutely have 100% finegrained control over absolutely everything. And to be honest - there's a fit for both types of people. It's good that all these options exist, because there are those people out there that need that 100% customizability, but there are also people out there that really are set into that terminal based lifestyle.
@@joshuarose3186 You could argue that a terminal workflow allows for even higher level of fine grained control since you aren't limited to things developed specifically for emacs, they can accomplish the same stuff, but emacs is a gui app which gives it an edge with rendering text better and displaying images natively. Ultimately it comes to personal preference.
emacs have bunch of great stuff that I still prefer it over anything else but I am programmer, 90% of the times I work with coding and neovim handle that specific thing much better. I really wish emacs can change or we can have alternative tool that have those cool stuffs I miss from emacs
Treesitter started freaking out because you either need to TSInstall vimdoc, or you need to TSUpdate. Your vim helpdoc treesitter grammar is either outdated, or doesn't exist
I love Luke Smith, and learn a lot from his video. This video reminds me of his. But I don’t mean your video is imitation, your opinion resembles mine that Vim and Emacs are not comparable. They focus on different jobs and solve their own problems. I do hope Neovim could get a better interface for users to discover its features. I know how to use Vim/Neovim starting from when I know how to search help pages with it. 最后 欢迎你来到深圳 玩得开心 注意安全！
@@AndrewGiraffeI don’t think Shenzhen city itself is a good place for traveling, after all it’s not a tourist city. However, it may be a good idea to visit some small restaurants, try out local foods especially those for breakfast. Guangdong province is famous in cuisine. Btw, Guangzhou city is a better place for people who enjoy local foods and culture. 玩的開心！(say in Cantonese, just imagine it)
I hit the 20 minute mark fast and I feel like I barely scratched the surface of some of these differences and how I came to form my opinions around them. If there are any particular points that warrant a more focused video, please let me know.
Edit: Audio muffles around 0:30 but is back by 1:37
I also hit the 20 min mark fast while watching, which I suppose is a good thing. You're a very zen and chill guy to listen too. It's somewhat of a breather in-between fast paced quick jump cut youtube. I vastly prefer 20 mins of natural conversation compared to 5min paced
Typst is a great typesetting language, it would be cool to see your take on it!
I wouldn't mind a round two to get into the weeds on points not touched on in this video.
Luke Smith has changed
wow. is he doing an impression because he sounds a lot like him!
ya luke has many burner accounts
I knew I recognized his cadence from somewhere.
@@gjsb6wfg995 I think this means you get the joke
It sounds uncanny like him lol
by far, my favorite Luke Smith fork! subbed
can you recommend another one?
The anti-LukeSmith:
China as opposed to US
City instead of a rural area
Emacs instead of (Neo)Vim
Video in a coffee shop instead of "Why I Won't Go to Restaurants in 2023"
Hair. Long hair.
lol
Hegel dialectics in action. Or, should I say... Luke's dialectics?
Wow LOL!!
LMAO THIS IS CRACKED I LAUGH OUT LOUD HJAHAHAH
EMACS! EMACS! EMACS! EMACS! * explodes due to lack of emacs *
Ambatuemacs
where can i find this clip?
Only the 3rd video and already surpassing the bald luke in terms of quality
😭😭
Is this Luke?
I love the way you format these so much. It may be at odds with growing more quickly but there's nothing I'd want to change (Noises from the city included). Was at first hesitant to click on this video but as soon as I realized it was you I knew I'd enjoy it immediately
blasphemous lisp slander... starts shouting emacs
I moved from vim to emacs about 4 years ago. I've written packages for emacs, and I'm a big fan of lisps and schemes in general. But I will be the first to admit that elisp is pain and the single threaded nature of emacs is often frustrating.
But that's my main gripe and it's not enough of an issue to make me consider switching away from emacs because of how engrained emacs has become in every aspect of my workflow.
My overall stance has become Emacs for programming and writing, Vim for quick edits in the terminal and remote editing.
Also while I think the editor wars are amusing, at the end of the day people should just use whatever tool works best for them.
I still prefer EMacs for remote editing because of Tramp. However Vim is still preferable for quick edits.
I'm glad you use both. IMO n/vim is good for quick edits, and emacs is a place to hang out for a while. I never could grok vimscript or lua for vim, but after following a series on emacs config from scratch I got the hang of elisp. Evil mode is just necessary!
If you want a lisp config for neovim you can use fennel. Never tried it but as a clojurist, fennel does look pretty neat to me
+1 for fennel, it really makes it enjoyable to hack with neovim (without leaving your lisp comfort zone)
IMO the biggest hurdle for learning Lua to configure nvim is understanding its only data structure - the table. If you get its semantics and how to manipulate it, it's a breeze. I use Fennel to transpile to Lua for my config, and using a Lisp to manage tables has been a blessing.
Neovim isn't necessary on the terminal, they made significant refactors over Vim that allow implementing different UIs for it, instead using the default TUI.
One example is Neovide.
But yes, these GUIs are still limited on what Neovim can do. They cannot do multiple font sizes for example.
I want an rpg game where a gnome can randomly appear and screams EMACS EMACS EMACS EMACS EMACS
It's hard to imagine the potential emulation of Vi or Vim within Emacs as its irony. If anything worth noting, that is more of a reason to praise Emacs. It stands a testament to Emacs' sheer breadth of capabilties.
I may have misunderstood the presentation of your point regarding Evil Mode's popularity and the implication that the default bindings got something wrong. From my understanding, however, you're misunderstanding. Evil mode is not a sledgehammer to the Emacs philosophy because it gives you vim keys to push less buttons. Destroying the non-modal state of Emacs doesn't mean Richard Stallman was full of shit. It makes Emacs better, actually.
Evil mode is there for people who want the Vim style in Emacs itself. You can use this, the default bindings, or both at once. Kaboom. Now, you get Emacs with your favorite buttons. Neovim and Emacs + Evil are thusly neck and neck with each other, and at that point it comes down to preference. I will say though, that Emacs having GUI capabilities gives it a pretty dicey edge, especially when considering accessibility, desktop integration, and visual customization. At that point, now it is Neovim that requires the plugin goose chase.
To land my point, I ask you to consider why someone would just... do it, installing Evil mode and using Emacs in that state. You said you use it to make documents look pretty, essentially. Others use it as a music player, or email client, which both arrive by default. Emacs doesn't just want you to live inside of it. it helps you, the same way neovim does.
I also disagree with the constant floating of the point regarding the UNIX philosophy. Everything inside of Emacs is there when you need to perform a supplementary task while maintaining focus on a core project. This strongly implies its adherence, not divergence, to the Unix philosophy.
Emacs is neither an operating system, nor a text editor. it's a meta lisp interpreter. That's pretty much it. As far as that goes, it is perfectly within the bounds of the UNIX philosophy. I'm not gaslighting you. Really look at Emacs and tell me if it's a text editor meant to be a text editor alone. It isn't. It's an interpreter that went into big mode sometime in the early 2000s. It just had a text editor in it.
I've tried Emacs, but my Neovim setup is perfect for me. I'm not going to use anything else.
I've felt that completely switching the workflow works better when you want to try something new. For example when I switched from vscode to nvim, I just stopped using vscode for a month. The same with emacs
nope, you're going to use Emacs buddy.
Then don’t. If you are comfortable then no need to change. You can get a similar setup with Emacs most likely but it is probably not worth the time investment (coming from an EMacs user)
1 vim has guis gvim. 2. Neovim has GUI clients available that talk to a Neovim process local or remote 3. Neovim can also support graphics in the terminal using certain packages that support terminals with graphics protocols such as iTerm, Kitty etc
I'll have to check some of these graphical layers out. I've heard that their functionality is limited, but I'll try to forget what I've heard and assess the state of these projects in the near future
Yeah but emacs is one and only one product. Without fragmentation, you can do what you want. Beside this, i love emacs because writing in lisp is much more familiar in respect to lua for neovim
What's your opinion on `vis`?
It's another Vi-like editor but it's more true to the Unix philosophy. It also adds multi-cursors by taking some inspiration from the Sam editor.
Great quality of videos! Keep up the good work!
You seem like such a chill and nice guy, not a lot of people casually film Linux videos outside on the streets of a Chinese city
I use org mode to do assignments that have a lot of mathematical content, since you can integrate LaTeX equations and symbols into it, and even compile them to images so they display in the editing buffer (this makes editing the equations a lot easier, as you can check to see if you've done it right in real time).
Regarding ELISP, there's a reason all other GNU projects that use a LISP for configuration use Guile Scheme, and not the janky ELISP.
I frequently redirect standard in and standard out in emacs. Not only that but with emacs shell you can pipe stuff straight from shell into a file if you wanted to look at the output in a scratch buffer you can easily do that and more. It's C-u C-| you can remap these as well.
I loved doing this in ruby, running a shell alongside code editing and compiling in emacs itself.
Muy choice is: emacs=note taking, neovim=code. Emacs with org roam wins against obsidian, notion, etc
Actually, would be cool to see a comparison orgmode vs obsidian vs notion
Obsidian mobile client tho
wrong, you're going to use Emacs for everything, no exceptions.
fr I’m just using both like that too.
@@JJ-hb9in beorg
Really interesting video. Appreciate your take on it. I find that org-export on emacs is something I quite like - being able to export in md, rst, docx, etc.
I haven't been using emacs for a very long time, but I find note taking to be very good within the structure that is guaranteed/forced by org-mode.
I also find that I have to spend a good deal of time hacking at lisp when I want to extend it because I don't really get elisp.
What went wrong with treesitter + help is that you don't have the vimdoc parser installed.
what is that neovim startup screen with the hydra on it? looks cool
This is the most honest comparison of emacs and vim I have ever seen. Ive veen using vim (now neovim) for 6+ years, and being a unix-loving power user, I was always interested in what emacs was, given its popularity. Most people who talk about emacs give all the positives and spend time talking about what vim doesnt do, but this was a great demonstration of everyday use and what really matters. I was planning on trying emacs out some time, but this video has made me reconsider (for now!). Unix philosphy is one of the most important things to me
Luke, how did you regrow your hair?
I respectfully request a video on Typst. It got on my radar a while back as a longtime, avid user of both LaTeX & Md, and since you're technically light years ahead of me I would be ecstatic to hear your take on it.
It's certainly on the list! That's going to be a video that I want to make sure I do properly. Everyone has heard about Vim/Emacs etc but I feel like most of the future userbase of Typst have yet to know it exists. So much potential.
@@AndrewGiraffe indeed !
I would love to see a Typst video also. I've been using LaTeX now for 5 years, and find it very powerful. But I switched from vim to nvim to keep up with the modern times, and I would love to switch to something modern like Typst if it is a full LaTeX replacement.
if i could unlearn latex and reinvest that time, I would do so with typst. I think its much better than latex. so much more simple. I'ts like they took everything good from latex and just put it into a better syntax and made typst.
My take on 5:31 regarding modality is many of the things listed as 'Modes' in Emacs are termed 'Options' (or something similar) in Vim. IMO it's just different terminology for the same thing. I don't think that these differences in phrasing constitute an improvement of one editor over another.
Example: I see that one of the modes listed in emacs is Display-Line-Numbers. Maybe I don't understand emacs, but as far as I'm aware, that is also an option in the majority of editors, but you wouldn't necessarily be calling visual studio code a 'modal editor'.
I always try and minimize bias but I do have a personal bias towards Vim as I have never fully gotten into Emacs (not for lack of trying though) and I welcome any corrections, as I know that I might be wrong on the specifics here. But this is from my viewpoint as someone who uses Vim.
What about helix in comparison to nvim?
IMO, Helix is still in a very developmental phase at the moment, and, if someone is looking for a very OOTB experience then Helix is a great choice since it supports all the good stuff like
- (improved) Vim motions
- LSP support for many languages
- Pretty colours for those who care about them.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between Helix and Neovim.
@@joshuarose3186 Another Desktop OOTB editor seems to be Zed, the next editor after atom, written in Rust.
2nd comment after watching the entire video:
I totally agree with you on the points, and i can tell that this POV comes from someone who genuinely likes emacs as a concept but struggles to "drink the emacs koolaid" let's say where i see a lot of people just religiously (and i use this word really specifically) adhere to everything emacs does as gospel and the one true way and any resistance is blasphemous.
I also love emacs for many reasons, you mention you don't care much for all the extra stuff that emacs does and i agree but for example the entire multiplexing of windows and buffers is extremely fluid and instinctive to me vs the neovim / terminal way. i understand that one can't really compare neovim to emacs in that sense but i do love it. you also mentioned the emacs discoverability ad structure of accessing all the build in f unctions directly f rom meta-x this is such a fantastic thing about emacs... once it clicks in the brain the discoverability of emacs is unparallelled.
I also love the fact it's more of a "container" for everything rather than just a editor in a greater collection of independent tools where cohesive design is never really acheivable
having said that, i do find that neovim sometimes "just works" and comparing it's speed and snappiness is unmatched (no matter how much emacs fanatics want to argue otherwise "AKTSHUALLY, my emacs is faster than vim on my machine you're just doing it wrong" -every emacs nerd
anyways great video and channel, followed you for more tech-goodness...
Why would you need anything other than monospace?
Hi, Andrew! I have watched all of your videos so far, and I must say they do not disappoint! Would you mind sharing what branch of IT you work in? Thanks for your videos!
In addition to getting my degree(s), I work cybersec which has allowed me to be a multitool and get experience doing tons of different tasks. I especially love when I get to do rugged dev ops work without all the strange scrum/agile song and dance. This is not where I envision myself ending up though.
@@AndrewGiraffe thanks for satisfying my curiosity
the lack of reading from stdin is indeed a bit odd.
u can do `emacs -nw
I have used both emacs and (n)vim professionally as a programmer, and I agree. I especially like the idea of composability you touched on - neovim seems to be designed in a way that allows using other programs with it, and often this makes things way easier.
Also it's pretty funny to think "eight megabytes and constantly swapping" used to be a big thing - nowadays I need to run multiple language servers in order to do my work so this truly is peanuts :D
i immediately knew this was gonna be a pro emacs video as soon as i saw the facial hair :D
go emacs!
I started learning Vim and Emacs this year, I really like both to be honest. I used Doom Emacs a little, and that helped get my feet wet, but I'm trying to learn vanilla Emacs now. I also use Neovim a lot with Kickstart
3:50 actually, neovim can do that with some plugins and a supporting terminal
And tbf, some emacs features are also available in vim if you so desire - i personally use stuff like Neorg because i prefer it as a system for note taking over obsidian as i hate having to leave the terminal. and this you can export to markdown if you need to.
why the name of orgmode is 剩女 ? lol
It was the title of a unit for a course about modern Chinese society
@@AndrewGiraffe haha 有趣的课程
I deactivate vim swap files and don't have any problems. But I don't tend to edit the same files in multiple different vim instances anyway.
In my workflow I use a terminal multiplexer (optional, just for terminal tabs), and every shell actually runs vim as a server as the parent process. This "shell" starts vim with most UI hidden and with vim's terminal emulator running bash in a persistent vim tab. That is great because I can use my config's vim keybindings for scrollback selection, and stuff like ls, meta-escape to normal mode from shell, cursor to file, and vim keybinding to open.
Vim runs as a "server" using vim --servername, I have a command called "v" which has many options like reading file lists from stdin or args, and whether to send them to open vim buffers or tabs or splits or quickfix list in the current vim session "server". So it is all integrated and nice and I only use one instance of vim. It has also reduced the number of vim- integrations like fzf and lf, as I can just use those in a vim terminal and bind e.g. lf's open to "v " to open in a new tab.
Great video! thanks for this!
Btw what is your window manager? it looks awsome!
this was a great breakdown, thanks!
Hello new Luke. Is there any chance you could explore the lore behind this channel ?
Do you study character strokes and radicals with Anki? Also, can you configure Emacs with Guile Scheme?
I learn specific radicals in my own time and character strokes aren't really something I study. Stroke order is one of those systems that you learn once and then apply forever. Even if it's a character you've never seen before, it's not too hard to correctly guess how to write it. My Anki decks are just for cramming more sentence structures and vocabulary into my brain.
As for Guile Scheme, that's some territory I've not walked too far down. It looks like there are some ways to make that work, but the Emacs configuration language is a variation of Lisp appropriately called Emacs Lisp.
I wonder if there's a holy plugin for neovim. I think a lot faster in EMACS movement commands, but neovim is improving rapidly.
There are lots of file managers for Emacs. Dired is just the one that’s baked in. But honestly, pair it with Wdired; what more could you wish for?
have you look at asciidoc?
I have been toying with eMacs for a weeks now and love it. I have been using nvim for ~2 years.
After some of these points I’m really tempted to set up org mode and tab / window management and host nvim in eMacs. Maybe set up Elisp functions that open different file types automatically in eMacs or embedded nvim. (md, Tex, org, etc in eMacs editor) and (py, rs, hs, go, sql, etc) in embedded nvim.
Bind my navigation keybinds back to eMacs for handling all of that and editing bindings to whichever editor is active in the file.
No need to respond but let me know what you think of this idea. Maybe you think it’s a waste of time? But I’m starting to see this as an opportunity to think less “war” and more “best of both worlds”.
Shaun White uses emacs?
You can show images with smaller scale, you don’t have to go with the original size
With the forced indentation in Org mode: that's org-indent-mode, presumably on by default in Doom.
I really hate these wars on whats better and whats worse, literally the worst kind of gatekeeping. Just use what you like, what you feel comfortable with and what makes use productive.
Don’t be so gay
…as long as it's Emacs
This guy gave LukeSmith's vibe
Why not both?
Both demand quite a bit of time investment. Too much configuration, too much context switching, and both are quite opinionated about how to do things. You totally _could_ do it, but it's not a "they're complementary" situation.
they both do similar things very differently, meaning that you would have to pick and choose what functionality you would want to adopt, and which editor you want to use. Most editors combine functionality, meaning that every time you switch between Emacs and Vim, you will be losing some functionality that you miss from the other respective editor, which is why, in my opinion, it would be a waste of time, and very frustrating.
I would not say Emacs is a GUI or TUI application. It is both, as you choose to use it.
And as both at editors they can be compared. Emacs is not a modal editor like vim, but you have different collection of functionalities, that is called modes.
Emacs doesn't need tmux, as it has the server, which can be connected from many places in the same computer. And you can even make systemd user start Emacs in server mode when you log in.
You don't need to use Dired if you don't want to, but why?
Who want to start the editor, when you have emacsclient?
And you have large help in Emacs. Emacs do read the standard input, if you want to, and in Emacs you can pipe buffer through pipes.
I love your thumbnail
is this hyprland?
There is no debate. Emacs is an obvious winner.
Is contrarian day today?
@@no_name4796 huh? Emacs won objectively, decades ago.
No. Vim is the winner
@@philipmrch8326 You're delusional.
@@vitalyl1327 no you
are u luke smith's brother??
excited for the typedown video
What is this window manager ? Hyprland ?
yeah
yep :)
You can do all your file management with whatever you wanted if you wrote some code for it in elisp. Just take in whatever the program spits out to standard in and have emacs read it.
That's true but I suppose my point is that it's still locked to Emacs. The two file manager that I used before on nvim are the same terminal file manager that I use for my whole system. A completely standalone application that can nicely integrate into neovim for that overlap of functionality. No need to reinvent the wheel for each task.
@@AndrewGiraffe I suppose so I just don't know why you would when dired is probably just better and extendable if you want to add something
I guess the point is that emacs usually has programs that all work quite together whereas Unix has programs that all work poorly together.
Remembering a bunch of different flags for different programs instead of the same commands for every program and a unified way to make those interactive
GNU EMACS, with custom theme, custom keybindings, custom everything.
I look forward to your Typst video
luke smith if he was based:
but luke smith **is** based
Damn Luke, that travel to south america changed you
i have taken a liking to helix.
helix deez nuts GOTTEM
Wish it wasnt stubborn and just used vim bindings
@@hamm8934 no I akshually like helix keybindings better
@@inversebrah ive heard that. I just prefer the ubiquity of vim. Its literally everywhere. Even a GUI app like todoist ships with native vim bindings
Thanks for comparing Emacs vs NVIM; I understand your points. EMACs can be optimized ELISP functions can be byte compiled, there is some GCCEmacs project that recompiles, suppose also improve EMACS performance. For me, I find emacs easier to use; I just can't stand modal editors and how it works, just upsets me; to each their own. I like EMACS more. 1 point is NeoVIM isn't just work in a terminal, I read there is some NeoVim GUI version called GVIM. The initial problem I had with EMACS was I found it hard at first and gave up; but thanks to youtube there is some nice EMAC newb tutorials and if you really follow it you can started fast, For starters the EMACs team should have really easy preference changes; like get rid of the glaring white screen when you first use EMACS, lol.
There's no debate. If you write any dialect of lisp, it only makes sense to use Emacs, as neither Vim nor Neovim, nor any of their distributions as far as I'm aware provide a lisp interpreter, nor the capability to evaluate s-expressions within those editors without janking it on top of them yourself. If you don't write lisps, you don't need that entire ecosystem of REPLs, scratchpads and all that jazz. You can of course bolt on top of all that pandemonium the tools you actually need, but why would you do that? It's like, I dunno, installing Manjaro or Garuda on your server just because you want to use pacman, then wasting more time on installing utils you actually need and then arguing that "what do you mean why I installed Garuda? It had pacman, I needed pacman - a pretty obvious decision", despite it including all the UI stuff you're never gonna make use of on a server, when Arch exists.
I hope I expressed my opinion clearly enough.
> need to write lisp
> so I install a lisp interpreter to run on top of neovim
Where's the problem?
Joke reply aside, thanks for sharing the tools you use often and how that shapes which editor you spend your time in
@@AndrewGiraffe well, I mean, I don't have any idea why some people prefer Emacs either 😸
Like, Vim motions and commands are clearly superior, unless maybe you're one of those guys from the original Ghost in the Shell I guess; y'know - dudes with fingers on their fingers. Vim also runs in terminal by default (if memory serves me, there's a terminal Emacs, too, but let's be honest, nobody uses it), and it's way more stable and fast; built-in terminal emulator is better, too, both in terms of stability and drawing things to the screen. But Emacs has a built-in package manager, which surprisingly worked almost perfectly at least in my experience, and it has a number of interesting features out of the box, with calendar, email client and VCS support being very helpful if you wanna just install it and immediately start coding away without even changing the default light color scheme, you damn heathen.
Installing a lisp interpreter on top of Vim is fine I guess, but it won't give the experience of integrating your lisp code into an existing code base. I pulled that one entirely out of my ass, lol, as I don't know if it's all that useful - like, does it really matter how well your web app will integrate into a weird nerd OS that only a handful of dudes like you use? After all, you won't deploy whatever spaghetti you cooked up AND Emacs to your customers and force them to use it instead of whatever they originally had? Although now that I say that, I'm starting to have my doubts... 😸
I usually use Obsidian for my note taking, and Neovim for my code editing. I'm almost considering if emacs would actually be superior to Obsidian for that task... but I will have to see. Some day. Maybe.
I moved to org mode nvim because obsidian is proprietary while org mode has been around for decades and honestly ive loved every second of switching
Deep down, you know the answer.
I dunno I spent months making a config with everything I want, it's all taped together with elisp and so are the plugins. It's fascinating but the whole thing is kind of jankedy. Sublime is practically better. If I ever get into vim at least there's a Lua based version but I don't even plan to.
Take your 500th like, giraffe.
I added a plugin for orgmode in neovim yesterday.
I like emacs and just like you i want it to be the best GUI editor. But i can't always use it because
1. I'm just faster with neovim (maybe because I'm super used to it)
2. I could not det up codeium with emacs. It does not work alongside lsp
So I'm sticking with neovim
I feel like I understand Emacs users now. It's basically what I feel about Obsidian
"Neovim is where I get my work done, Emacs is where I have my documents look nice" is exactly what I feel about obsidian, not to mention the ecosystem and the plethora of addons
Notable points that bring me to the Emacs camp are compatibility with LSPs, the ability to partially render Latex and such, Obsidian is proprietary and uses election, and Emacs tends to be much more visually customizable. All of that said, Obsidian does appear to integrate nicely between devices. That wouldn't get me using it, but definitely something that open projects ought to take note from.
We got ginger chinese luke before GTA 6. Wild.
0:20 bro mews when saying shenzhen
how the hell do i learn emacs, im pretty good with vim but emacs feels like it will take an eternity to learn and be effective with
You can start with just the tutorial by doing "Ctrl-h t"
But take this debate seriously you can get vim emulation almost any editor, IDE including emacs. In addition, emacs can be used with modern keybinding (i.e. ergoemacs) There is no reason to argue which one is the better or worse. Use whatever you want.
This was IMHO a fair, practical comparison between the two from the perspective a seasoned professional. I would also choose nvim without a thought, for most of the usecase described in the video for Emacs nowadays is rather use Obsidian or Logseq.
I tend not to be the biggest fan of electron applications, and also Obsidian is proprietary. Perhaps soon I'll find something that will make me fully jump ship and I'll stop using Emacs. Just need to make sure whatever I choose continues to be maintained into the future.
I bow to this I'm only an enthusiast, when younger me gave a go at Emacs specifically for org-mode LISP sort of happened and now I use electron apps =) In all seriousness, if you ever find something that completely fits the bill, please let us know !
@@AndrewGiraffe Obsidian is proprietary but it's free to use and it is like the Emacs of the note taking world and the most amount of plugins and obscure plugins exist only there. So sorry but Emacs or Neovim can't beat Obsidian because they simply do not have the manpower to compete on the notetaking side.
very nice luke smith fork, starred
Fair, neutral comparison. Thank you
I have 2000 chinese characters, with traduction-mp3-pinyin, 10000 russian words with mp3, and 10000 german words with mp3 all this in emacs headers. I need to get a life maybe
Hopefully in that new life you plan to get, you can now speak with many more people. I'm having a blast getting better at Mandarin every day over here.
@@AndrewGiraffe Appreciate it man, i really need to hear that
I started with Vi/Vim and I'm going to die with Vim/Neovim.
That's a sad hill to die on
@@gksudolol I mean, it works for them. Personally, I'm happy they found a good fit/editor.
Nice Luke fork, subbed
I prefer the paradigm of working with my shell to do all the things pre baked into emacs, nvim is lighter and I prefer lua over elisp, the sheer quantity of parenthesis has put me off from the get go and just couldn't get past over it yet.
I think that it mainly comes down to the fact that vim is more lightweight and good for a terminal based workflow, and emacs is good if you're looking to absolutely have 100% finegrained control over absolutely everything. And to be honest - there's a fit for both types of people. It's good that all these options exist, because there are those people out there that need that 100% customizability, but there are also people out there that really are set into that terminal based lifestyle.
@@joshuarose3186 You could argue that a terminal workflow allows for even higher level of fine grained control since you aren't limited to things developed specifically for emacs, they can accomplish the same stuff, but emacs is a gui app which gives it an edge with rendering text better and displaying images natively.
Ultimately it comes to personal preference.
wow you just made a lot of people angry.... loved it.
you look like an inspiring human being
emacs have bunch of great stuff that I still prefer it over anything else but I am programmer, 90% of the times I work with coding and neovim handle that specific thing much better. I really wish emacs can change or we can have alternative tool that have those cool stuffs I miss from emacs
People in this comment section keep saying: "It's a deepfake."
I'm just happy Luke really tried Emacs this time.
As a metalhead, vi vi vi all day
Dracula theme only
And Thinkpads only because they're the most metal computer
I have only respect for this setup. Rock on
I can't believe Luke grew out his hair and became ginger (jk I love your channel lol)
Neovim changed my life. I am more successful, better looking and when the ladies see my config file they can't resist me.
This guy knows whats up
When i see vim vs emacs in my feed I click. no exceptions.
Luke changed his skin to enter China
luke smith is back before gta 6
You definitely forgot to mention "magit"! 😉
They both have It now .. even org
Subbed.
Treesitter started freaking out because you either need to TSInstall vimdoc, or you need to TSUpdate. Your vim helpdoc treesitter grammar is either outdated, or doesn't exist
I love Luke Smith, and learn a lot from his video. This video reminds me of his. But I don’t mean your video is imitation, your opinion resembles mine that Vim and Emacs are not comparable. They focus on different jobs and solve their own problems. I do hope Neovim could get a better interface for users to discover its features. I know how to use Vim/Neovim starting from when I know how to search help pages with it.
最后 欢迎你来到深圳 玩得开心 注意安全！
我还在深圳，所以如果你有任何特定我回去美国以前应该做的推荐，请告诉我。
@@AndrewGiraffeI don’t think Shenzhen city itself is a good place for traveling, after all it’s not a tourist city. However, it may be a good idea to visit some small restaurants, try out local foods especially those for breakfast. Guangdong province is famous in cuisine. Btw, Guangzhou city is a better place for people who enjoy local foods and culture.
玩的開心！(say in Cantonese, just imagine it)