I used to use Evil mode and now I use God-mode[1].
Evil is great, but you end up having to know Vim keybindings and some Emacs keybindings since Evil doesn't cover everything.
It certainly can with additional Evil extensions and modifying your .emacs, but I still felt like there were some parts of Emacs where I needed to know Emacs key bindings.
God-mode works since it just makes it so that you can use Emacs keybindings without modifier keys. Everything works out of the box. Best part is that you can install extensions without needing to come up with Evil keybindings for them.
I keep hearing statements like this and I want to believe. I really, really do. I see the value in Emacs Lisp vs. vimscript immediately, though I feel that Lua in neovim is making up ground there.
I've tried evil-mode a few times over the years. Most recently I tried Doom Emacs twice. I _really_ want to experience the hype of org-mode. I want something like org-mode in my life. I am a heavy notes taker and I can see the value org-mode offers and I am willing to make the jump for it alone... But, I can't figure out how to get a proper workflow in Emacs that gets me to where I am in vim today. I just can't get it to click.
For what it's worth, I've been using vi(m) since the early/mid 2000s and my workflow is almost entirely terminal based for almost everything that I have ever done as a professional and hobbyist programmer. To the point that I feel like I cannot be as productive in ecosystems that are GUI based.
I started using Vim in mid/late 2000s, and successfully switched to Emacs. Without knowing your specific gripes, it's hard no know what'll end up helping you, but here are my two cents:
- use emacsclient and have aliases for emacsclient -c and and emacsclient -n for popping up a new frame or using the console, respectively. I even have a window manager binding to open a new Emacs client window
- Rainer König is the best at getting across org mode workflows. if you like watching nerdy videos, go watch him.
- keep vim around, I still use it, sometimes, but with no or veery minimal config.
- centaur tabs and the new tab stuff can help vim people who like tabs. I just got used to buffers.
- M-x is really Emacs' primary UI. don't try to think of a million and one key bindings up front, just bind what you find yourself using M-x a lot for. You just need a nice completing read like ivy, helm or so, but doom has that.
- use magit. While many claim that org-mode is the Emacs killer feature, I'd say magit is even more important if you code. There simply is no better git interface, nothing comes close. You think git the new porcelain is cool? Magit is a git jacuzzi.
I absolutely love magit. I tried using to emacs as my main development tool but couldn't be bothered to learn a proper workflow yet. I also tried learning org mode but I have no use case for it yet. But magit is just the best frontend for git.
Thank you for this list, I appreciate the effort. I've got some time off of work next week and the kids won't be home, so I'll spend the day digging into this.
To add onto this - I'm a huge org-mode user. If you're on iOS I highly recommend BeOrg[1]. It's the best org-mode app for iphones. It's highly extensible on it's own since you can put in settings and run scheme in a config file[2].
You can purchase extensions for it which are all pretty cheap. You can also pay for a membership to get all extensions - this costs only $10 a year.
The creator of the app is very active in the forums and is constantly updating and improving the app. I love it and it has made my usage of org-mode on the go much easier.
I'd like to add: org-mode is overwhelming, so just take it easy. Set up a notes folder, sync it to the web, and just use org as a plain markdown/todo list editor for a while. Perhaps add org-roam (like vimwiki with backlinks). Then, only if you feel the need to, give org-capture and/or the calendar/agenda features a try. Don't force yourself to use some obscure feature just because it's there in the manual on page 587, or because you saw someone on Youtube rave about it.
I switched to Doom Emacs about two years ago and while I miss the insane performance and simplicity of vim sometimes, the positives overall outweigh the negatives once you get over the initial differences (workspaces, command names, etc.).
I spent quite a bit of time with vimwiki Saturday and today. I really like it. I already stored most of my digital notes in plaintext files so this is a really nice migration path for me. Thanks a lot for the advice!
I've recently been picking up Emacs for org-mode. Evil does not support settings such as `:set nu` or a thousand other settings that I use once in a blue moon but expect to just work. Even `:wq` attempts to close all buffers, `:e` doesn't open files as expected, I could go on.
IdeaVIM get 90% of VIM right, and some things wrong (such as `u` for undo also undoing movements). Evil gets 95% of VIM right. But I have high hopes for NeoVIM allowing an actual first-class VIM implementation to be embedded, not copied, into an IDE or even Emacs.
For me, `:wq` saves the current file and attempts to close all buffers, though thankfully asks if other unsaved buffers should be saved before closing.
I was wrong about `:e`, it does work.
Instead of `:set nu` I'm using Alt-X UpArrow+ to find `display-line-numbers-mode`, which does what it says. But there are other settings which I have on muscle memory macro that do not work, such as `:set wrap!` which I use often with my portrait monitor.
Is it possible to do inoremap jk <ESC> yet in Evil? That's a huge optimization for a really large minority of Vim users and without that, Evil definitely isn't Vim's equal.
Have you taken a look at Evil-Escape[0]? I've bound the keys to "fd", because that feels natural, but it's trivial to do "jk". This package works on much more than just insert/normal mode switching as well.
