throwawayish

My impression about VS Code being popular is also from workplaces at several companies, VS Code was literally on every machine and VS Code project config files are nowadays checked in with project into version control. (In the past I would not have been happy about config files in version control, but I just accepted it by now.)

That's actually kinda concerning 😅. I hope I can remain free to use whichever IDE suits me best. But thanks for pointing that out as it's a very realistic scenario.

How to setup VIM/NEOVIM or EMACS as a descent C# IDE?

Hehe, the crux. Honestly, I'm not very optimistic that it can do everything one might be used to do on something like Jetbrains' Rider. Nonetheless, I'll try to get it as close as I can and see from there if I'm willing to deal with it. I'm not entirely opposed to rely on other IDEs from time to time for specific functionality I'd be missing otherwise.

I like Spacevim a lot

Have you tried any of the ones mentioned in the OP? If so, would you be so kind to elaborate upon why you prefer SpaceVim over the others?

(inspired by SpacEmacs)

Interesting. Would you be so kind to elaborate on what this entails?

you can use neovim as the underlying vim package as well. Then update init.toml with whatever layers/plugins you want

That seems kinda hella streamlined and straightforward, which is honestly pretty cool. Is this different from how it works on any of the '(Neo)Vim distros' and/or by default?

I honestly believe that Helix will eclipse NeoVim because it’s designed better, the source code is more maintainable, and the philosophy is a bit more balanced and welcoming to users that care more about productivity than customizability. Refactoring Vim’s spaghetti C code is a massive task, and C as a language drags it down. Where the NeoVim ecosystem is currently fractured among many Lua “distributions,” Helix just builds on itself in one source tree. I think starting with a solid core before supporting plugins will be good for the future of Helix.

Perhaps I should have done a better job at formulating the question. Btw, this writing is cool. Thank you for that. I also believe it contains some excellent pointers regarding topics I should read into. However, my question was more related to the following: As you know; it doesn't matter whichever IDE I'm using, there's definitely a plugin (or perhaps even built-in functionality) that allows me to utilize my Vi(m)-acquired skills to improve my productivity on any given IDE. Do you think that Helix' keybindings (I believe they're at least to some degree inspired by Kakoune) will be similarly found either built-in or as a plugin on whichever random IDE you might come across?

Once Helix has plugins, it might be possible to get something closer to true Vim emulation.

This is the answer I was seeking. Makes sense.

Yea I think Helix is here to stay, and it will continue stealing market share from other terminal editors. It probably won’t convert anyone that’s already invested years in learning and configuring (Neo)Vim, but for newcomers looking for a powerful option with sane defaults, Helix is far easier to get started with.

Perhaps I should have done (yet again) a better job at explaining what I meant. As you know; it doesn't matter if I'm on some random Linux distro or on macOS, I'm sure that Vi(m) is installed by default and I can rely on it. Same applies to some random remote device I'm accessing; if anything, I can expect that my Vi(m)-acquired skills will be of good use. Do you think that Helix or some of the functionality it offers (from its keybindings to anything (really)) will somehow be beneficial to me in some remote accessed device or any other similar setting?

Of course, all of these questions stem from the fact that -if possible- I want usage of my IDE to be beneficial to how I engage with my text editor and vice versa. Otherwise, these questions don't make any sense at all. Perhaps, I should instead reconsider if this is important in the first place. Currently, I'm at least naive enough to believe that it's worth pursuing. But feel free to convince me otherwise 😉!

For completeness' sake, Helix has definitely peaked my interest. I will look into it and see how I might benefit from it (if at all). Thank you.

It’s unfortunate that nothing really has Kakoune bindings other than Kakoune.

That's indeed very unfortunate...

And after you type the ‘2w’, the selection shows what you’re about to delete, because it’s a separate command.

That genuinely seems like very useful functionality. Thanks for pointing that out!

Sure, you can use visual mode in vim but it feels like an afterthought in a lot of ways.

Could you perhaps give some examples so that I can better understand/grasp why you feel that's the case?

Those two are I think the main reasons I like Kakoune.

I haven’t really had problems with it, at least. Maybe because I’ve used vim for a long time before Kakoune. TBH I also don’t really use vim a lot anymore except on one remote machine that isn’t mine.

I am very grateful to you for sharing your experiences as a long time Vim user that currently prefers Kakoune over it. It has definitely impressed me and made me a lot more curious towards it. And I genuinely feel like I should think this over properly before I rashly commit to Vi(m). Thank you for raising such awareness!

I’m a bit surprised that no-one mentioned ALE. If you want to turn vim into an IDE it goes a long way.

That's very useful! Thank you for mentioning that!

I’ve recently developed a Java program entirely in vim using Eclipse’s LSP.

Very interesting! I'd assume one would have to be relatively fluent in Vimscript to pull that off. Would you mind sharing your thoughts regarding Vimscript? I especially feel the need to ask as a lot of other users so far have been championing Neovim with some of them being particularly vocal regarding their dislike towards Vimscript. And would you also be so kind to share your thoughts regarding Neovim?

I’ve tried so many (Sublime, Atom, PyCharm, Jetbrains stuff, Eclipse ((ew)), Visual Studio code, and neovim)

Hehe, that's for sure a long list 😜. I'm very curious to learn how your experiences with Neovim went in particular and what ultimately led you to prefer Doom Emacs over it.

I feel like with Doom i’ve concluded my search for the “best” text editor and settled for a highly extensible but also highly intuitive text editor that works right out of the box and can work flawlessly for projects in a lot of the popular languages (I’ve personally used Rust, Haskell, Python and markdown and HTML editing with it). Something I can use forever without succumbing to the enshittification that inevitably lies for most proprietary solutions (end of open source dogma rant)

Honestly, I think you've done a great job at vocalizing my ambitions related to Emacs. From, what I've seen so far, I can't envision any other editor that has as much potential to become my 'endgame'. Though, I'd have to admit that Neovim's advancements seem very promising. And I can definitely envision some use for it alongside Emacs.

Also, pro tip is, when you’re in a project and want to search for a keyword in one of the files in your project, type then slash (/). Super useful and it’s really fast. Welcome to Doom 😊

Hehe, thanks for the tip! And thank you for welcoming me to Doom 😊!

As for configuring it for development I started with spacevim and managed with half the functionality normal IDE provides for quite some time. The experience was still good. About 6 months ago I set up nvim and now I have everything I need. I think setting up nvim for rust was as complicated as setting up spacevim. Spacevim provides way more out of the box but changing configuration is not easy at all.

Would it be fair to assume that the switch from SpaceVim to Neovim was due to how difficult changing its configuration was to better suit your needs? Would you say this is SpaceVim's fault? Or rather Vimscript is to be blamed?

I don’t worry about vim/nvim “schism”. The support is still great.

I also meant it in the sense that perhaps later down the line something else will come out to 'replace'/'improve' upon Neovim. Until -in turn- that one is one day replaced as well and so on and so forth... Like, we've already gone from Vi -> Vim -> Neovim. While, on the other hand, Emacs still is Emacs. Thankfully, the modal editing part of Vim should persevere regardless; even if the name of the editor changes every so often.

I would say just go with nvim, spend a week to set it up and don’t get too obsessive if small things don’t work. Enjoy the amazing responsiveness and great editor and you will figure out everything eventually. And if you have any questions just ask. I can share my config.

Thank you for the encouragement! At this point, I intend to start with Vi(m) to get used to the core experience.

As to why - because it, like any other computer science topic, is a topic of active research, and Kakoune is the next generation of research into modal editing.

Interesting. First time I'm hearing this, but I'm very interested to learn about it. Thank you for mentioning this!

That’s right, but as a Neovim user, it’s hard for me to use Vi, because it lacks many features, and I don’t know which ones.

Very interesting. Did you first start with Vim or Neovim?

Which distribution is right for me?

Step 1: Take a look at the most popular desktop environments: Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma and Xfce. If possible, consider even booting up a so-called live-usb and/or VM for some proper testing.

Step 2: Pick either one out of Fedora, Linux Mint, openSUSE and Pop!_OS as long as they provide a Flavor/Spin of your favorite desktop environment (which you should have found out by now (See Step 1)). While not exhaustive, the following might help you out:

• If you have an Nvidia GPU, then just use Pop!_OS. Unless you really, but like really hate its GNOME implementation.
• Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are arguably the most newbie-friendly out of these. This doesn't mean that Fedora or openSUSE are hard by any means. (Heck, I started my Linux journey with Fedora.) However, both Fedora and openSUSE are known for their great adherence to FOSS. Therefore, some decisions related to initial setup might not have been taken with a focus on making it as user friendly as possible.
• If security is your highest priority, then consider either one of Fedora or openSUSE with GNOME/KDE Plasma. It's not like the others are security nightmares, however Fedora and openSUSE are known to take security more seriously than the others do.
• Both Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are distros that are based on LTS distros. As such, the base system will not change a lot until you upgrade to the next big release; which happens once every two years. Fedora, is able to change more considerably between its major releases; which happen once every half year. On the other hand, openSUSE Tumbleweed doesn't really hold back updates at all; there's an (almost) constant stream of updates. Though openSUSE also offers distros with a 'more stable^[1]^' release cycle; the likes of Slowroll and Leap come to mind.

Where can I find useful resources for learning about a given distribution?

Consider asking it here. We'll do our best to answer. Furthermore, DistroWatch.com is a great resource.

1. Stable, in this context, refers to slow to no rate of change while running software. So, in this context it isn't used to convey breakage etc.

I’ll add that there’s some preconfigured plugins for most popular languages in Doom (complete with LSP) that makes it a breeze to go from install to feeling like home. You just have to uncomment them in the config file and reload emacs.

That's actually really cool! Thank you for that tip!

i’d like to try gnome or kde plasma

I'm surprised to see that no one has mentioned the following yet:

"KDE Edition

In continuation with what’s been done in the past, Linux Mint 18.3 will feature a KDE edition, but it will be the last release to do so.

I would like to thank Kubuntu for the amazing work they have done. The quality of Plasma 5 in Xenial made backports a necessity. The rapid pace of development upstream from the KDE project made this very challenging, yet they managed to provide a stable flow of updates for us and we were able to ship good KDE editions thanks to that. I don’t think this would have been possible without them.

KDE is a fantastic environment but it’s also a different world, one which evolves away from us and away from everything we focus on. Their apps, their ecosystem and the QT toolkit which is central there have very little in common with what we’re working on.

We’re not just shipping releases and distributing upstream software. We’re a product distribution and we see ourselves as a complete desktop operating system. We like to integrate solutions, develop what’s missing, adapt what’s not fitting perfectly, and we do a great deal of that not only around our own Cinnamon desktop environment but also thanks to cross-DE frameworks we put in place to support similar environments, such as MATE and Xfce.

When we work on tools like Xed, Blueberry, Mintlocale, the Slick Greeter, we’re developing features which benefit these 3 desktops, but unfortunately not KDE.

Users of the KDE edition represent a portion of our user base. I know from their feedback that they really enjoy it. They will be able to install KDE on top of Linux Mint 19 of course and I’m sure the Kubuntu PPA will continue to be available. They will be able to port Mint software to Kubuntu itself also, or they might want to trade a bit of stability away and move to to a bleeding edge distribution such as Arch to follow upstream KDE more closely.

Our own mission isn’t to diversify as much as possible in an effort to attract a bigger chunk of the Linux market, and it’s with a bit of sadness that we’re letting this edition go. We focus on things we do well and we love doing to get better and better at doing them. KDE is amazing but it’s not what we want to focus on.

With Linux Mint 18.3, we’ll release one more KDE edition. I wanted this announcement to come before the release. It will hurt its popularity of course, but I wanted to give users time, either to react right now or to take their time, upgrade and adapt to this later on. I’m sure this edition will be missed and I hope its users understand our decision."

From this Linux Mint blog post*.

Note that this doesn't mean that you can't use KDE Plasma (or GNOME for that matter). Though you have to be aware that you'll be on your own whenever something breaks. And if you have to ask how to change Desktop Environment in the first place, then I think that you might not be ready yet for such a ride. Instead, consider using a distro that actually does offer GNOME and/or KDE Plasma editions of its distro; the likes of Fedora, openSUSE and Pop!_OS come to mind.

It seems to offer a leaner approach. If you've used any of the ones mentioned in the OP, would you consider offering a more elaborate comparison between them?