2019-01-17 15:11:16 +00:00
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---
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title: My Experience with Atom as A Vim User
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date: 2014-11-18
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2019-09-12 22:49:03 +00:00
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series: medium-archive
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tags:
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- atom
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- vim
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2019-01-17 15:11:16 +00:00
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---
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Historically, I am a Vim user. People know me as a very very heavy vim
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user. I have spent almost the last two years customizing [my .vimrc
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file](https://github.com/Xe/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc) and I have parts
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of it mapped to the ways I think. Recently I have acquired both a Mac Pro
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and a Surface Pro 3, and my vim configuration didn't work on them. For a
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while I had used Docker and the image I made of my preferred dev
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environment to shim and hack around this.
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Then I took a fresh look at [Atom](https://atom.io/){.markup--anchor
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.markup--p-anchor}, Github's text editor that claims to be a replacment
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for Sublime. Since then I have moved to using Atom as my main text
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editor for programming in OSX and Windows, but still using my fine-tuned
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vim setup in Linux. I like how I have Atom set up. It uses a lot of (but
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not all sadly) the features I have come to love in my vim setup.
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I also like that I can have the same setup on both my Mac and in
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Windows. I have the same
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[vim-mode](https://github.com/atom/vim-mode) bindings on both my machines
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(I only customize so far as to add :w and :q bindings), and easily jump
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from one to the other with Synergy and have little to no issues with
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editor differences. I typically end up taking my surface out with me to
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a lot of places and will code some new ideas on the bus or in the food
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court of the mall.
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Atom gets a lot of things right with the plugins I have. I have
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Autocomplete+ and a plugin for it that uses GoCode for autocompletion as
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I type like I have with vim-go and YouCompleteMe in Vim. Its native
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pacakge support and extensibility is bar none the easiest way to be able
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to add things to the editor I have ever seen.
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But there are problems with Atom that are mostly based on my usage of
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text editors and my understanding of programming with Javascript,
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Coffeescript, HTML and CSS. Atom is a mostly Coffeescript editor, it
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does mean that at runtime I can customize almost any aspect of the
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editor, but I would have to learn one if not 5 more languages to be able
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to describe the layouts or interfaces I would like to add to this
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editor. It also being a hybrid between a web application and a normal
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desktop application means that I am afraid to add things I normally
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would such as raw socket support for being able to collaborate on a
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single document, PiratePad style. Additionally, the Vim emulation mode
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in Atom doesn't support ex-style :-commands nor \<Leader\>, meaning that
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a fair bit of my editing is toned down and done more manually to make up
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for this.
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I wish I could just use vim natively with my preferred setup on Windows,
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OSX and Linux, but for now Atom is the lesser of all the evils.
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---
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Update: I am now atom-free on my surface pro 3
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