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For example the Git integration is awesome and even better than Atom's (you can commit, push, ...).

Of course you can do a lot with extensions, but at least in Atom's case they break a lot for me.




Well, okay, let's talk about that. Is having source control in your text editor enough of a benefit to one's daily routine as to be a step change of productivity or quality of life? It may be for you and I'm not saying you're wrong for that, I'm asking because it isn't for me; I have an alt and a tab key.

Bear in mind that the claim wasn't that it's better in some ways, but that it's sweepingly better than the stuff that came before (and Atom wasn't even mentioned by the OP, which is funny--I mean, I don't use it, but it's obviously in the conversation).


"Well, okay, let's talk about that. Is having source control in your text editor enough of a benefit to one's daily routine as to be a step change of productivity or quality of life?"

Uh, if you edit tens or hundreds of text files per day, it's a game changer.


Being able to press ctrl+K instead of alt tab -> write "git commit -m" is pretty nice and much faster...

EDIT: that's only the most trivial benefit of git integration


Having the git diff in your editor gives you syntax highlighting and let's you edit it (the right side) like you're used to.

I guess the killer feature of VS Code is multiple cursors (Ctrl+D). I only know of Sublime Text and Atom who also have this feature on Linux, not sure about Kate. Sublime Text is closed source and not gratis, Atom is slow and buggy.


Not allowed to reply to your post, so replying here.

No, not built-in. They both have plugins, and allow you to set the key shortcut to whatever you please.

That they are not built-in really doesn't matter though. All these editors revolve around plugins, and it's common practice to save your preferences on github or the like so that it's easy to use the same settings and plugins on every machine.


> Not allowed to reply to your post, so replying here.

I think you have to wait a few minutes, then it gets activated.

> No, not built-in. They both have plugins, and allow you to set the key shortcut to whatever you please.

That's too complicated for me. Last time I've tried to set up vim and emacs to my liking it was a mess: A lot of copying and pasting around random code, changing configuration files I didn't understand, ...


In all respect, but you are presumably a software developer. If someone approached you saying that language x is a mess, as they've copy-pasted around random code and changed configuration files they didn't understand. Would you accept that as valid criticism or told the person to actually learn their tools?

Granted, Atom, Sublime, VSCode etc. are easier to start with because they expose customization through JSON files instead of a custom programming language. But if someone where to tell you that they didn't understand how multiple cursors worked in VSCode, you would tell them to learn their tools and send them a link to the relevant page of the documentation (if that).

If you know your editor, adding functionality like multiple cursors is easy. The greatest strengths of extensible lightweight editors like VSCode and Emacs, is that such functionality is only a package away.


> they didn't understand how multiple cursors worked in VSCode, you would tell them to learn their tools and send them a link to the relevant page of the documentation (if that).

No that's the thing: I would tell them to press Ctrl+D, simple as that. Multiple cursors in Sublime Text, Atom and VSCode are intuitive and it's the first time in an editor that I actually use them.


Emacs and Vim also have multiple cursors.


Built-in? What is the equivalent of Ctrl+D (Sublime Text, Atom and VS Code) in vim and emacs?


For me it does, depending on the project. (Using emacs/magit, having a dedicated buffer just for magit.)

I want to keep on top of my current branch, what is untracked, what is unstaged and staged, quick diffing, etc. It actually helps a lot with productivity since I don't have to actively query for this information when it's all in one screen.

If I used another editor, I would like to have similar features. Maybe it can be done, but I am quite fluent in magit already, and one major thing keeping me from moving to another text editor for my current projects (if it actually mattered.)


This is something I really do not understand. I can switch to my terminal, build, run, stage, commit, push all in like 5 seconds. As well as anything else I need to do in the terminal.

The only 'plugins' I use are a keyboard shortcut (cmd+space) which puts me in a terminal window and rupa/z[1] for jumping into a project directory.

[1] https://github.com/rupa/z


Let's say you look at `git diff` and notice something needs to be changed. What do you do now? You need to quit, open the file, find the line, do the change, save and quit. Now you need to reopen git diff and scroll to the old position. This all takes a lot more than 5 seconds on the terminal.

Another scenario: You type `git status` and see a file called `src/a/very/long/path/file.c` hasn't been staged yet. Now you need to type that file path for git add or git diff. Takes more than 5 seconds, but it's just a simple click on a + symbol in VS Code.




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