I regret nothing. Say what you want.
Edit: I just saw the two typos. If you find them, you're welcome to keep them.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Vim and emacs are text editors.
Vs code is a code editor (but really it's also just a text editor)
Maybe they mean IDEs like visual studio?
I've never really heard it called a coding GUI before.
I see you've never used emacs.
"it's a bit limited for an operating system"
So an IDE is a code editor that ships with an LSP server, not just an LSP interface? (Doesn't have to be LSP as such but "stuff that an LSP server does").
I would say that an IDE is something that includes build/run tools integrated into it. Everything else is just a text editor. (But that's just my opinion of course)
To expand on my point, I don't think it makes sense to call vs code an integrated development environment if it doesn't actually have the environment integrated.
Visual studio and idea would be examples of IDEs, they actually have all of the tools and frameworks needed to run the languages they were built for out of the box.
You can't run node or python out of the box with just vs code for example, without their respective tooling, all vscode can do is edit the code and editing code is not functionally different from editing any other text.
So I maintain that both vim and vscode are text editors and not IDEs
My understanding has always been:
Text Editor: just writes text, no formatting (other than line endings)
Code Editor: A family Text Editors that have additional capabilities such as syntax highlighting. And optionally a plugin or extension ecosystem. (VSCode, vim family, Emacs, even gedit )
IDE: An application that includes Code Editor functionality, but also includes tools for a building on given tech stack. This comes out of the box, are a "part of" the application, are peers to the code editor, and cannot be removed, but can optionally be extended through plugins or extensions.
For me a web app IDE includes a DB manger, HTML previewer, etc.
A text editor edits text, an IDE is an Environment that Integrates Development tools.
I never quite understood the massive hard-on programmers have for splitting hairs.
Vim and emacs usually run in the terminal and require keyboard commands to complete actions.
A GUI IDE like vscode or pycharm has mouse driven menus and buttons, although of course it's possible to use keyboard commands.
That to me is the difference. Personally, I use vim mod with pycharm and some messy hybrid combination of vim commands and ctrl + ?
It is most certainly not usual to run Emacs in the terminal.
And you can use Emacs with a mouse.
I thought emacs was all about ctrl + ?.
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
I use vim, but considered emacs. I thought the plugins like organisers and such seemed a cool idea.
It is, but you have gui features
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I use Emacs and neovim. Each is better in different scenarios.
Vim (and NeoVim) are as much coding environments as VS or JetBrains. The difference is in the defaults.