IDEs?

[Dr.Willy]

I generally respect vi(m) for chosing a different approach to editing. After all thinking outside the box is what generates true progress.
I just don't think the modal concept works out and I see no reason to stick to (or jump on) a failed attempt.

It can be used keyboard only? Well that's nice but also true for many editors.
Commands like '5dd' to delete 5 lines seems gimmicky to me: Either I can catch the number of lines (words, …) in one glimpse, then I don't win much by such a command or I have to start counting which is more effort than deleting lines one by one. If I'm editing something and want to jump to the next word, how is <ESC>wa shorter than <CTRL>RightArrow?
And then there's the issue of the hotkeys. To most vim-users I talked to this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. In reality it's just trying to make QWERTY usable. But why would you build on a broken design in the first place?

[ppurka]

5dd kind of stuff is less usefull unless you don't have to count, that is, you want to modify a small number of lines. But this is speaking of vim as vi from 20y ago. In current vim, you use v (select by characters) or ctrl-v (select by blocks) or V (select by lines) to select what you want to modify and then you modify. For instance you can select a block of text and apply the find and replace to this block of text only. It helps if you can write basic regex, since you can do more complicated find and replace. You can change the selection between these three options v/ctrl-v/V mid-way, i.e., you starting selecting by using v, but you changed your mind and wanted ctrl-v, then just press ctrl-v and the selection mode will change. This is just one small example of what an editor should be able to do with ease and save you time by allowing you do handle this kind of repetitive stuff.

If you just want to write text (and not do advanced editing), you might as well just start vim in easy mode (view or gview) and type away.

One thing that is lacking in vim is a good IDE mode. Some other IDEs are filling in this gap, by having a vim mode instead. Then, it is the best of both worlds.
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emerge --quiet redefined | E17 vids: I, II | Now using e from git | e18, e19, and kde4 sucks :-/

[dmitchell]

Another approach is ':M,Nd', which deletes lines M through N. You do display line numbers, don't you? You can omit either M or N, and the current line will be used in its place.
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Your argument is invalid.

[pjp]

I thought :M,Nd was something everyone knew who actually tried to use vi*.

I generally have trouble remembering the syntax for search & replace. I can do the basic stuff, can't think of exact situations that are difficult.

I've tried to make note of some useful stuff, but I just don't need most of it very often, so I never remember it.
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The whole system has to go. The modern criminal justice system is incompatible with Neuroscience. --Sapolsky

[jonnevers]

[ppurka]

Nope. Line #s are turned off in mine. And I typically use gvim, and it looks like this.
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emerge --quiet redefined | E17 vids: I, II | Now using e from git | e18, e19, and kde4 sucks :-/

[py-ro]

What about:

[marens]

[Bones McCracker]

Ever try using ed? It's a fun exercise. See 'info ed'.

Good way to polish your regex skills.
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[ichbinsisyphos]

[McGruff]

Will check that out.

[Bones McCracker]

If anybody is looking for an editor that's a light compromise between a bare-bones editor and a graphical IDE, SciTE is nice. Very easy on the eyes, gtk+, Scintilla-based (fast, pretty, syntax highlighting for about 80 or 90 languages, well-documented API), dozens of configurable key-bindings, set up to plug in your build system, so you can build and run without leaving the editor.

Fast. Worth looking at. Fits a niche.
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[wildhorse]

Alright, let's see what you folks had for dinner: Edlin (another Microsoft product)

[piedar]

I'll throw Geany into the mix. It's a lightweight hybrid somewhere between text editor and IDE with tabbed editing and sessions. It's GTK2-based and looks nice in GNOME or XFCE. Synatax highlighting, symbol listing, some basic file management, nice options for auto-indentation, lots of plugins including spell check, GDB support, etc. It has some support for builds and make, though I don't use it - just give me the embedded terminal and I'm happy. I use it for almost all my writing (txt, latex) and coding (Java, bash, Python, C).

[Bones McCracker]

[Shadow Skill]

Emacs. Not perfect but better than most of the so-called editors out there. Which is sad since Emacs is a REPL rather than an editor.[/b]

One really neat feature that I need to remind myself to use more often is Narrowing. In Emacs you can select a block of text and make the buffer only show the selected text, with the added benefit that while narrowed all of the text manipulation functions will only apply to the visible text. This kind of thing really shines with languages where functions can get really long or the file very long like the various lisp dialects and Javascript. This particular function is named narrow-to-region. A name that is memorable even if the default binding is not, this is a pattern with Emacs. (That isn't to say that they don't have some ridiculous names for functions in there like hippie-expand.)

I don't bother with trying to remember the bindings for commands I use with frequency beyond the basic stuff like saving files and splitting windows, I can just memorize the whole or a part of the name of a function and move on from there. If I use a given function often enough the binding for it will eventually sink in. If you can't be bothered with the rather odd keybindings you could try something like Ergoemacs which is a set of less weird keybindings for Emacs. If you use Emacs definitely install autocomplete it doesn't analyze code but it provides a convenient interface for word completion based on open files. It is capable of displaying Emacs lisp (and probably other modes with the right configuration) docstrings as a tooltip.

One place where I do think that Emacs really falls down is with editing files that have sections with multiple programming languages in them. Probably the single best plugin available for Emacs that handles a host of these types of things reasonably well is nxhtml but it doesn't have html5 support and it ends up being a sort of omnipresent mode that while not interfering with modes that don't use it, it will slow down Emacs' startup time. It is still significantly faster to startup even with the added load of nxhtml than pretty much every Java IDE I have ever used and Visual Studio which I use frequently.

Go on give it a try, you know you want to.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[avx]

As for Sublime Text 2, here is an online video course (downloadable) for free.

Topics:

[Prenj]

Back in the days I coded in anjuta/kate, with all other panels/views closed. Just code view, and terminal for compiling/running stuff. Never saw any reason to distract myself with a fancy/gimmicky editor. Just interrupts the flow of transfering abstracts into code, and you spend lot of time fiddling.

I mean the only thing that is useful in a fancy editor is debugger/trace stuff, and being able to jump to definitions of classes and stuff. Autocomplete is ok, if it works properly, I thought anjuta did it nice.

[szczerb]

[Prenj]

[ichbinsisyphos]

I'm working on a more complex fun project right now and I am beginning to lose oversight again
I just thought what would be great is an editor that splits up the source into classes and functions and presents them in a way similar to a good documentation program, like doxygen or something, where you see what each class, function does, what output it produces, what input it requires and how they interact and where you could then try to find the most effective and readable implementation for each task.
I think this would be pretty much perfect for me.

[Prenj]

I think there are IDE's with good class browsers out there, but I can't come up with a name. Google class browser editor?

[Crooksey]

My 6 year old thinkpad runs Eclipse/PyDev with no problems at all, so why people maon about bulky IDE's I have no idea.

I now use Aptana Studio (python web dev)

Its opensource and works great.

If you want to look at another python IDE, everyone always raves about PyCharm, but I refuse to pay for software.

[Dr.Willy]

[juniper]