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Emacs vs Sublime Text vs Vim: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Emacs, Sublime Text, and Vim
Emacs, Sublime Text, and Vim are powerful text editors widely used by developers and programmers. Each editor has its own set of features and advantages that cater to different needs and preferences. Here are the key differences between these three text editors:
Usability and Learning Curve: Emacs is known for its steep learning curve and complex user interface. It offers extensive customization and scripting capabilities but may require significant time and effort to master. Sublime Text, on the other hand, has a more intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easier to use for beginners. Vim falls in between, with a command-line focused interface that takes some time to learn but ultimately provides efficient keyboard-centric navigation.
Customization and Extensibility: Emacs is highly customizable and extensible, offering a plethora of packages and modes that can be integrated seamlessly. Users can personalize almost every aspect of the editor, making it a favorite among power users. Sublime Text also supports customization, but it has a limited selection of official plugins and lacks the extensive customization abilities of Emacs. Vim, known for its powerful modal editing features, can also be heavily customized through plugins and scripts.
Performance and Resource Consumption: Emacs is notorious for its high memory usage, especially when running several extensions simultaneously. Sublime Text is relatively lightweight and performs well, even with large files or when handling multiple projects concurrently. Vim is renowned for its blazing-fast performance and minimalistic resource consumption, making it an ideal choice for working in remote machines or low-spec environments.
Built-in Features and Functionality: Emacs comes with a wide range of built-in features, including a powerful text editing engine, an integrated Lisp interpreter, and extensive support for version control systems. Sublime Text provides a more polished user experience with features like distraction-free mode, multiple cursors, and intelligent auto-completion. Vim, being a modal editor, focuses on efficient text manipulation with its unique command mode, making it incredibly versatile for editing tasks.
Platform Availability: Emacs is available on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it highly accessible. Sublime Text also supports all major platforms, ensuring cross-platform compatibility. Vim, being based on the original vi editor, is ubiquitous and available on almost every Unix-like system. Additionally, various ports and distributions enable Vim usage on different platforms.
Community and Ecosystem: Emacs boasts a vibrant community that actively contributes to its development, resulting in a vast collection of user-contributed packages and configurations. Sublime Text has a large user base and an active package ecosystem, albeit smaller than Emacs. Vim, with its long history and dedicated following, enjoys a gigantic community-driven ecosystem that offers an extensive catalog of plugins and scripts.
In Summary, Emacs offers unparalleled customization and scripting capabilities but requires a steep learning curve, while Sublime Text provides a user-friendly interface with a limited selection of official plugins. Vim focuses on modal editing and efficient text manipulation, with a highly performant and resource-efficient design.
For a Visual Studio Code/Atom developer that works mostly with Node.js/TypeScript/Ruby/Go and wants to get rid of graphic-text-editors-IDE-like at once, which one is worthy of investing time to pick up?
I'm a total n00b on the subject, but I've read good things about Neovim's Lua support, and I wonder what would be the VIM response/approach for it?
Neovim can basically do everything Vim can with one major advantage - the number of contributors to the code base is just so much wider (Vim is ~100% maintained only by B. Mooleanaar). Whatever you learn for Neovim you can also apply to Vim and vice versa. And of course there is the never ending Vim vs Emacs controversy - but better not get into that war.
Actually, the biggest advantage with Neovim (as a VS user) is that you can embed REAL Neovim as the editor UI, rather than using a "Vim emulation", you're using actual NVIM, embedded in VS!
"asvetliakov.vscode-neovim" is the extension you are looking for:
- Install the 'vscode-neovim; extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode-neovim)
- Install Neovim version 0.5+ nightly
- Start winning.
(You can install neovim-nightly separately for just vscode, I usually build and install it to /opt/nvim - it's enough enough to do - let me know if you need help).
Works wonderfully. It might not work out of the box if you have some 100K epic nvim initialization file, but the plugin documents a workaround for having an embedding/VS specific configuration.
I don't actually notice much of a difference between the two, as the end result looks identical. If you use Vim and are switch to Neovim it's an extremely easy 1-minute process. I switched from Vim to Neovim. I can't say I found much of a difference, but the key points where Neovim could be better than just vim is that first, there are much more people maintaining Neovim compared to vim, which means fewer bugs and a modern code base. It also has a smaller code base which might result in a small speed improvement. Another thing is that it's basically just a fork of vim, so what harm can it do? ;)
I recommend using vim 8+
it has native plugin support
if you need language supports you can install the package vim-nox which will come with support for python, lua, ruby, etc
It truly depends on whether you want to completely avoid GUI and stick to TUI and command lines. If you want to edit all of your codes within a terminal, then Vim or neovim would be the choice. Emacs can be run in a terminal, but the functionality is limited. Most people use Emacs using GUI and emacs-client not to use too much memory.
My general preference is to use an independent text editor, which is better if it is highly customizable and programmable. So, I have used Emacs for several years. For beginners, I guess Emacs requires significant time to learn to fully enjoy its wonderful functionalities. In that sense, using atom would be a recommendable option.
Regardless of all the situations, learning basic vim in the terminal will help you in any case. In summary, I recommend 1. vim as a default editor in the terminal 2. atom if you are a beginner, or 3. Emacs if you have a long-term plan to master a programmable editor
Other editors like sublime text, VS code, and so forth are also worth learning and using. But, no matter which editor you choose, stick to one or two until you become an advanced user. Being able to use most text editors at an intermediate level is waste of time.
I hope it helps.
The hints on the codebase's contributors and the VSCode integration helped me make up my mind.
I really appreciate all comments, though.
Thanks a bunch!
Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.
Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.
Since communication with Github is not necessary, the Atom is less convenient in working with text and code. Sublim's support and understanding of projects is best for us. Notepad for us is a completely outdated solution with an unacceptable interface. We use a good theme for Sublim ayu-dark
I decided to choose VSCode over Sublime text for my Systems Programming class in C. What I love about VSCode is its awesome ability to add extensions. Intellisense is a beautiful debugger, and Remote SSH allows me to login and make real-time changes in VSCode to files on my university server. This is an awesome alternative to going back and forth on pushing/pulling code and logging into servers in the terminal. Great choice for anyone interested in C programming!
Pros of Emacs
- Vast array of extensions65
- Have all you can imagine44
- Everything i need in one place40
- Portability39
- Customer config32
- Your config works on any platform16
- Low memory consumption13
- Perfect for monsters11
- All life inside one program10
- Extendable, portable, fast - all at your fingertips8
- Enables extremely rapid keyboard-only navigation6
- Widely-used keybindings (e.g. by bash)5
- Extensible in Lisp5
- Runs everywhere important5
- FOSS Software4
- Powerful multilanguage IDE4
- Git integration4
- May be old but always reliable4
- Asynchronous3
- Powerful UI3
- Huge ecosystem1
Pros of Sublime Text
- Lightweight720
- Plugins652
- Super fast641
- Great code editor468
- Cross platform442
- Nice UI280
- Unlimited trial260
- Cmd + d is the best command ever153
- Great community92
- Package control, modules46
- Mac OS X support26
- Easy to get started with23
- Monokai22
- Everything you need without the bloat21
- Built in Python21
- Easy18
- Speed14
- Session & edit resuming12
- Package Control10
- Well Designed9
- Multiple selections8
- ALT + CMD + DOWN is the best command ever7
- Nice7
- Fast, simple and lightweight7
- It's easy to use, beautiful, simple, and plugins rule5
- So futuristic and convenient5
- ALT + F3 the best command ever5
- Great5
- Find anything fast within entire project4
- Easy to use4
- Free4
- Simple and clean design4
- Hackable3
- Pretty3
- UI + plugins3
- Sublime Merge (Git Integration)3
- Totally customizable2
- Color schemes and cmd+d2
- Material theme best theme forever2
- Const0
Pros of Vim
- Comes by default in most unix systems (remote editing)347
- Fast328
- Highly configurable312
- Less mouse dependence297
- Lightweight247
- Speed145
- Plugins100
- Hardcore97
- It's for pros82
- Vertically split windows65
- Open-source30
- Modal editing25
- No remembering shortcuts, instead "talks" to the editor22
- It stood the Test of Time21
- Unicode16
- VimPlugins13
- Everything is on the keyboard13
- Stick with terminal13
- Dotfiles12
- Flexible Indenting11
- Hands stay on the keyboard10
- Efficient and powerful10
- Programmable10
- Everywhere9
- Large number of Shortcuts9
- A chainsaw for text editing8
- Unmatched productivity8
- Developer speed7
- Super fast7
- Makes you a true bearded developer7
- Because its not Emacs7
- Modal editing changes everything7
- You cannot exit6
- Themes6
- EasyMotion5
- Most and most powerful plugins of any editor5
- Shell escapes and shell imports :!<command> and !!cmd5
- Intergrated into most editors5
- Shortcuts5
- Great on large text files5
- Habit5
- Plugin manager options. Vim-plug, Pathogen, etc5
- Intuitive, once mastered4
- Perfect command line editor4
- Not MicroSoft1
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Cons of Emacs
- So good and extensible, that one can get sidetracked4
- Hard to learn for beginners4
- Not default preinstalled in GNU/linux1
Cons of Sublime Text
- Steep learning curve8
- Everything6
- Flexibility to move file4
- Number of plugins doing the same thing4
- Doesn't act like a Mac app4
- Not open sourced3
- Don't have flutter integration2
- Forces you to buy license2
Cons of Vim
- Ugly UI8
- Hard to learn5
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