With Vim, text editing feels like playing the piano. For every action, you compose a sequence of bindings and execute on it. It is really a language of editing.
Emacs feels more like blacksmithing, hammering the text into a proper shape. There's no composition, you just select the correct tools and applies it. And emacs have a lot of those tools.
I still have my meow config, but currently disabled. The kakoune model is definitely what you're looking for if your desire is to edit text with the fewest keystrokes, it's far better than vim. I think the vim model is better, though, because motion-as-selection is fundamentally exhaustive, and in vim, by the time you realize what you're going to do, you go into operator pending mode (e.g. pressing d) and the next keystroke also feels obvious, while in meow you may have to reset the selection by doing some movement.
What works best for me is no modal editing at all. Definitely requires the most keystrokes, but that's not a limiting factor for me. It just feels nice never having to think about modes or constantly pressing Esc, and instead navigating with a mixture of default Emacs keybinds and great, joyous to use packages like Avy, smartparens, tempel and combobulate. Meow's KEYPAD is also not really helpful, it does save some keystrokes but doesn't make anything easier to remember or reach for. For the commands that it is worse, it is much worse.
Ended up writing an alternative to Meow which addresses the issues I had.
It's currently in review for Melpa, see:
I used vim for 8 years and after switching to Emacs, realized that I'm the same. I was spending way more time (in vim) thinking about (to borrow another commenter's metaphor) how I was going to play the notes than what notes I was going to write.
Later I tried boon, devil mode and meow but I just can’t get comfortable with mental overhead anymore. From those I’ve tried boon was the most interesting - some surprising QoL features, ergonomic layout.
What made chords bearable for me is a homerow mode on my Glove80.
Given how bad the defaults are, that's not a good aim
When I was looking for my text editor 15 year ago I did try vim first because it was the hipster choice back then. I really tried and told myself it would be like learning a new language or something: it sucks today but one day I'd be talking the language of text editing.
It didn't seem to be happening so I tried Emacs instead. As soon as I disabled the awful GUI stuff my love affair started. It all just made complete sense. Key "chords" just work for my brain. I must know hundreds of them without really trying. And Emacs's version of a "mode", as in major modes and minor modes, is just perfect (I think other editors like VS Code have copied this aspect).
I've tried evil mode since but I still just don't see the point. Other than Emacs pinky (which is mostly solved by the caps/ctrl key switch) is there any other advantage at all?
I use both kinds and have done since the late 70s. It's fine to disagree btw, there are many editors, these ones are mine.
I still edit with chords in insert mode but meow enables me to take actions on a variety of subjects more easily (current string, until start of scope, until the next 2 -, next 5 words).
I had a few packages to do similar things before (expand-region) but none of them clicked like meow did.
I use "i" to get into editing mode (normal emacs mode) and control-backspace to get to god-mode. I mostly use searching for moving in the buffers. In god-mode it means pressing "s" and then typing the search text with enter marking the search text completion. Then I use "." to search forwards and "," to search backwards. If I want to search for the word(s) at point, I do "s" and "enter" and then "j" to grow the search word, word by word. When ready, again "." searches forwards and "," backwards.
The most common operations, like changing buffers and emacs windows, are under single key press. Everything is quite effortless.
The best properties for god-mode for me is that you can use the same key combinations as normally, just producing them in a sligthly different way, and that you can also do keychord edits in editing mode if that is convenient. You don't have to exit editing mode at all, if that helps.
The obvious compromise with modal editing is that you have to know in which mode you are in and that some of the useful commands are not available in the editing mode, and then you have to switch modes to get them. However, with god-mode related editing mode you always have all the keys available, and you only have to know the mode you are in (at least partly). I would never settle with evil mode, but god-mode works very well. A lot of benefits with moderate amount of downsides, therefore a win all in all.
I think the vim model in particular is great in terms of becoming muscle memory in like, a few months. It saves a few keystrokes compared to Emacs specially if you're counting Control as a key press. Navigating is a tad nicer with hjkl being next to each other. Having to press Esc after each edit just sucks though.
Starting out emacs i got super fatigued with all the long pinky driven commands for mostly used commands. It felt usable after I added keybindings for commands like switch buffer, close buffer, duplicate line(s), move line(s), find in project, find file in project, indent (wrote my own sane (for me)) indention code). The windows/apple key is great for those things because they are not used by emacs.
On linux I settled on using emacs vanilla key commands for copy/paste/cut but that took a looong time to feel comfortable with and I still mess it up sometimes, also with the ctrl+shift-X version of them in the terminal. On iOS, using the apple key like for the rest of the system is sweet relief.
jasperry•4mo ago