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Spacemacs vs Vim: What are the differences?
# Introduction
1. **Customization**: Spacemacs comes pre-configured with a curated set of packages, while Vim requires manual setup and configuration.
2. **Learning Curve**: Spacemacs features a more structured and modern interface, making it more user-friendly for beginners compared to Vim's steep learning curve.
3. **Package Management**: Spacemacs utilizes a layer system for organizing and managing packages, whereas Vim relies on plugins and manual installs.
4. **Modes**: Spacemacs is based on Emacs, providing access to the extensive package ecosystem of Emacs, while Vim has its own unique mode-based editing system.
5. **Native Language**: Spacemacs is built using Emacs Lisp, offering better integration with Emacs, while Vim is written in Vimscript, limiting its compatibility with other systems.
6. **User Interface**: Spacemacs offers a more visually appealing and modern interface compared to Vim's traditional terminal-based layout.
In Summary, Spacemacs and Vim differ in customization, learning curve, package management, modes, native language, and user interface.
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Learn MorePros of Spacemacs
Pros of Vim
Pros of Spacemacs
- Advanced support for Vim key bindings14
- Discoverability12
- Easy setup10
- Never have to touch the mouse10
- Community-driven configuration7
- Cross-platform7
- Documentation6
- Emacs5
- Fast-paced development4
- Evil4
- Nice UI4
- Git Integration2
- Autocompletion1
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 Spacemacs
Cons of Vim
Cons of Spacemacs
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Cons of Vim
- Ugly UI8
- Hard to learn5
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What is Spacemacs?
Since version 0.101.0 and later Spacemacs totally abolishes the frontiers between Vim and Emacs. The user can now choose his/her preferred editing style and enjoy all the Spacemacs features.
Even better, it is possible to dynamically switch between the two styles seamlessly which makes it possible for programmers with different styles to do seat pair programming using the same editor.
What is Vim?
Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.
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What companies use Spacemacs?
What companies use Vim?
What companies use Spacemacs?
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What tools integrate with Spacemacs?
What tools integrate with Vim?
What tools integrate with Spacemacs?
What tools integrate with Vim?
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What are some alternatives to Spacemacs and Vim?
Neovim
Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.
Emacs
GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.
SpaceVim
SpaceVim is a Modular configuration, a bundle of custom settings and plugins, for Vim. It got inspired by spacemacs.
Git
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
GitHub
GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.