Vim vs. Emacs!!

I am writing this post from the backseat of a van on my way to San Diego on a mission trip. I had some trouble coming up with a topic for this post, I finally settled on the legendary Vim vs. Emacs debate.



At the moment I use both on a regular basis. I use Vim for my programming and Emacs for everything else. I am more comfortable sitting in Emacs for extended periods of time than I am in Vim. The reason for this is the ability to embed a terminal emulator within the Emacs window. I know this is is possible within Vim with the vimterm patch but, that requires me to build Vim from source. That is far more hassle than it's worth.



WHAT I LIKE ABOUT EACH:



Vim: I love Vim for it's speed and flexibility. I find it easier to use for long periods of programming.



Emacs: I love Emacs for it's ease of expansion. I really like LISP that is used quite extensively throughout all of Emacs.



WHAT I DISLIKE ABOUT EACH:



Vim: I dislike the gui Vim (gVim). I don't know exactly what I dislike but, there is just something about it that doesn't feel as smooth as it should. I also dislike the default mapping of switch to normal mode as , it is really inconvenient.



Emacs: I'll admit it, it's kinda bogged down with unnecessary code. The games and crap included is just a waste of space. I dislike using modifiers (eg: C-x, C-f) to get to functions.



CONFIGURATION:



Vim: I had to put a lot of work into configuring Vim. I really like vimscript, I didn't have to learn anything new to write my .vimrc.



Emacs: I like LISP, although I had to learn it as a additional skill along with just learning Emacs, it was worth it in the end. It is so much nicer than vimscript. Although I enjoy vimscript, LISP is more useful.



(I will attach my .vimrc and my .emacs files when I finish tweaking them. I will also put links to all of my plugins for each)



CONCLUSION:



Because I have to use Vim at work I will probably be using Vim more than Emacs for the time being. I hope to explore each more thoroughly in the coming months. I will write a new article on this topic when I am done with this endeavor of exploration.



Please no hating from the hot-headed opinionated geeks. :-)

What do I think about... (1)

What do I think about political parties?



I believe that the whole Political system is out of whack but, my biggest complaint is with the political parties. My whole family is Republican and I'm the black sheep Independent. When a conversation comes to being over Politics (it inevitably does), my opinions are ignored.



In one phrase my opinion on political parties is: "They shouldn't exist". I'm not alone on this I have some big names that agree with me, namely George Washington. Upon leaving office he warned the congressmen to avoid factions (parties).



I'm all for people with similar ideals congregating to discuss their ideas. Who would want to always argue when discussing a topic? The main error I see with today's system of party-dominated politics is summed up in this one question: What are the odds of a person that is not a Republican or Democrat winning a position of power? Why is it so low?



The answer to the is simple, because stupid people vote. These are the people whose thought process of deciding who to vote for is very similar to this: "Well, my dad was a Republican. I guess that makes me a Republican. I'll vote for this guy, the paper says he's a Republican." It saddens me to say that there are people in my family that do that.



Ridding the world of parties wouldn't solve the problem completely. Yes, a lot of the people that used to have the fore mentioned thought process would start thinking for themselves. Yet, there are those people who are so incapable of thinking for themselves that would just pick people at random.



I am sure to have more on this topic when I work up the motivation to type it.

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Look forward to my first actual blog post later tonight.