Comment by susam
11 hours ago
I use both Vim and Emacs, extensively, so I'd just like to share my experience with mode switching in Vim. Personally, I don't find Vim mode switching to be much of a problem while editing text. It has become muscle memory to stay in normal mode by default. After any insert-mode operation, I instinctively return to normal mode. It's just a habit at this point.
Take, for example, writing a for loop. I might type:
for (int
Then, say, I pause briefly to think about the variable name. If you happened to look over my shoulder at that moment, you would find me in normal mode. Even if I only pause for a second, I reflexively return to normal mode the moment I stop typing.
Because of that, I don't really treat insert mode as a separate "place" in my mind. Let's say I want to insert the text "abc". I don't think, enter insert mode, type "abc", then return to normal mode. I just see it as a single action in normal mode that includes the key sequence "i a b c ESC".
Or say, I want to open a new line above and insert "xyz". Again, I think of it as a single operation in normal mode that includes the key sequence "shift+o x y z ESC".
This applies to all insert-mode operations for me. Normal mode feels like "home" and insert mode is just an editing phase I dip into when I need and exit. That's why it doesn't feel like I am constantly switching modes (even though I am).
I think one (often forgotten) good advice to get used to the mode-switching is to move the ESC key to Capslock on the keyboard. It's tedious to learn to always go to the ESC key, upper left of the keyboard. Capslock is available from home row, and you should probably not use CAPSLOCK anyway, it's a bad practice.
Put ESC key there instead and vim becomes wayyyyyyyy more ergonomic.
For a win, replace Caps Lock with Esc when tapped and with Control when held.
Indeed! Sometime between 2010 and 2015, I used to often work with Windows computers, so I wrote a tool for myself back then to remap Caps Lock to Esc on Windows machines:
https://github.com/susam/uncap
While it was certainly possible to do that by editing Windows registry (and I have noted those techniques too in the README), registry changes couldn't be enabled or disabled without a reboot. That's what motivated me to write the above tool. And indeed, having the Caps Lock work like Esc made using Vim a much better experience!
I map 'jk' in Insert mode to <Esc>. In Insert mode, it takes me out to Normal mode. If I'm already in Normal mode, it simply moves down a line and right back up. This habit is so burned into my muscle memory that I often end up typing 'jk' into non-Vim input areas (like this HN comment box).jk
I’d recommend taking it even further and mapping capslock to escape when pressed by itself and CTRL when held in sequence with another key.
at most one y in way since Capslock is an unergonomic key in itself - it requires an unergonomic lateral movement of your weakest finger of your weaker hand
I used Vim for 5-ish years and I kinda got into that mindset, but on occasion I would fail to switch to insert mode (I think by not hitting the i or a key properly, but when in the flow I don't really pay attention to what my hands are doing) and stuff would go haywire. After 5 years of that happening intermittently I got really fed up with it and I started trying various alternatives.
I have been using Emacs for about 6 years now and when I fail to engage a modifier key properly all that happens is that I type some text in the active buffer. If I really manage to do a silly mistype, I can just hit C-h l to show my recent keystrokes to find out what I did.
> Take, for example, writing a for loop. I might type:
> for (int
> Then, say, I pause briefly to think about the variable name. If you happened to look over my shoulder at that moment, you would find me in normal mode.
I personally wouldn't but that's only because even in the case above I think in the same way as you mentioned next:
> I just see it as a single action in normal mode that includes the key sequence "i a b c ESC".
in the sense that I will ESC only after I have instered a "semantic-ish unit", which would include the variable name.
So I'd probably enter:
and think there (and finalise with ESC N . N .)
It never made any sense to me that people claim Emacs has no modes. What do you think you're doing when you hold down a modifier key? What else would it be except entering a mode in which other keys have a different meaning? Is that really different from vim's mode switching? They're just different ways of expressing modifiers.