Eventually I had to switch to Eclipse, and didn't really need the Macros anymore, because of the refactoring functionality that comes with Eclipse. For example, in Emacs I used a macro to quickly generate getters and setters for my class variables (Java - I know...). Eclipse has a Source->Generate Getters and Setters Menu item, so I don't need to fumble around with Macros anymore.

Not saying that Eclipse is better, but I simply don't seem to be the kind of person who can remember 100 key combinations. I couldn't for emacs, either, even though sometimes I tried to learn new Emacs tricks.

I didn't learn that many keyboard shortcuts for Eclipse, either, even though I keep telling myself that I should. But I can only remember the most important ones, and I learn them because the menu items display a keyboard shortcut.

By the way, I seem to remember a quote by some Apple employee who said that in experiments using the GUI was actually faster than keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcut people thought they were faster, but they weren't. Not sure if it is true - hard to believe, but still.

That said, the beauty of vim (and I'm assuming emacs as well) is that with the macro facilities, you are basically writing small programs to manipulate your source code, interactively. Let's say I want to convert some markdown into HTML using vim. Let's create the following source code (using whatever method you want):

  * List item 1
  * List item 2
  * List item 3
  * List item 4

  <ul>
    <li>List item 1</li>
    <li>List item 2</li>
    <li>List item 3</li>
    <li>List item 4</li>
  </ul>

  ggO<ul><ESC>qqj^2s  <li><ESC>A</li><ESC>q3@qo</ul><ESC>

O - enter a new line above current line and enter Insert mode

<ul><ESC> - enter some text

qq - begin recording all keystrokes into register "q" (here is the "writing small program" part that I mentioned)

j^ - move down and to the beginning of the next line

2s - erase two characters, entering insert mode

<SPACE><SPACE><li><ESC> - enter some more text

A - move to the end of the current line and enter insert mode

</li><ESC> - enter some more text

q - stop recording

3@q - perform the keystrokes recorded in register "q" 3 times (run our "small program" 3 times). This step always makes me smile, because seeing such complex changes to a large piece of code with just a few keystrokes seems almost magical

o - enter Insert mode after the current (last) line

</ul><ESC> - enter some more text. Note: you may need to press Ctrl-d before typing </ul> if you have autoindent turned on, in order to decrease the indent

Task completed. That is a somewhat trivial example, but it's a small taste of something that no editor without keyboard macros -- and the power to control everything with keystrokes -- could ever accomplish.

It also showcases 4 different methods (O, s, A, o) for entering Insert mode (none of them being the typical i), all of them useful in their own right. These are the types of things I miss when using emacs (without viper-mode).

This gives you the <li>...</li> bits - add <ul> and </ul> by hand as you have to do in Vim.

The impressive thing is that the finder popup also includes context sensitive help for regular expressions. So If you type \, it gives you a list with all the options (\w for word character, \d for digit, and so on).

I am fairly good with regular expressions, not so much with keyboard shortcuts. Combined with the context sensitive help, the regular expressions are even more powerful.

I think Emacs also has regular expression search and replace, but without the context sensitive help.

I enjoyed working like that, also because one feels rather clever doing such things, but as I said, it didn't come up that much anymore with Eclipse. I am also not sure if I was really that much faster, because I often had to look up stuff like how to skip a word and so on.

However, I am very curious about vim and Emacs, as I am currently considering to switch back. Mostly I would really like an editor that allows me to extend it myself quickly. One can write Eclipse plugins, but I don't know how complicated it is. Maybe not that complicated - but it certainly would have to be in Java, which I'd like to get away from.

Probably I'll switch back to Emacs, as I already know it a little bit. I am worried that Emacs LISP is too messy to be worthwhile to learn, though (I am more of a Scheme person, I guess).

I never knew Vim was so extendible, it certainly sounds very interesting. I am not much of a Unix shell wizard, though - although I wouldn't mind becoming better at that, either (I've read that extending Vim draws on shell commands?).

Btw., what made me switch to Eclipse was a project that Emacs couldn't handle. It was J2ME programming, and back then as much code as possible had to go into one file. So I had a 10000 lines code file, and Emacs would just crash or not do much. It was also impossible to navigate without the "abstract code view" (which let's you click on methods and jump to their position in the code). My colleagues were using Eclipse and laughing about me... There are other niceties about Eclipse, like the local history or good svn integration.

It certainly seems a bit of a drag to set up Emacs for coding again (Ruby on Rails would be my next target). It can do a lot of things, like jumping to code snippets and so on, but first you have to set it up, somehow. As I said, I am lazy, I'd rather have an Editor or IDE that is configured properly out of the box.

I wasn't so impressed with Netbeans for RoR, though. Didn't look at it for long, but it didn't even help you fill in the parameters for the code generators - it merely provided some buttons to run them. If I could extend my editor easily, I would make something better (hopefully I will).

But that is the reason that I love it in vim. Because of the lack of mouse support and the powerful ways to move around in Normal mode, learning the different movement commands is a must. Then, when you go to build macros, you're using the same commands you always do.

Edit: I am suddenly intrigued to learn Vim. Is there a mode for editing MZScheme? Or what is the best way to program MZScheme with Vim? Ruby on Rails would also be of interest. JavaScript?

I have not yet found a language that doesn't have a vim mode, at least in my Gentoo installation. This includes HTML, CSS, Lisp, C, Python, Xorg.conf, various Gentoo system files, httpd.conf, and anything else I've seen.

That's suprising. What version of Emacs was this and what kind of machine did you have? How did you configure it? Anything capable of running Eclipse should have no problem running Emacs. And as far as clicking on methods and jumping to places in the code goes, Emacs+etags (and M-x visit-tags-table) have been doing that pretty well for the past 15 years.

I know about etags, but that is just the thing: you have to set it up and run it regularly. Also, it did not work as well as an IDE that really understands the code (etags don't understand the code). At least that was my impression - my "jumps" in Emacs would frequently lead to the wrong place.

Edit: also, what I meant for navigation was the code outline. In an IDE, you get an extra window listing only the methods you defined in your code. You can click on a method and jump right to the code. The IDE thing for emacs did that, too, but not as nicely (it was in a weird sidebar without proper scrollbars, for one thing).

That is also a Java sickness of course, that there are zillions of interfaces and abstract classes with the same name (BlubInterface, AbstractBlubBase, BlubImpl). But Eclipse then gives you a popup where you can select the proper class (showing the classes hierarchically).