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Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

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Re: Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

#11

Post by joeld42 »

Casey switched to a modal editor for the handmade hero livestream (because of RSI issues). It's not vim, but it's similar since it's modal. He's only just switched about a month ago, but he's already pretty quick, though not as fast as he was with emacs. You can compare old episodes to current ones to see someone editing with a vim-like editor and emacs one.

I've personally gone through phases of using vim, emacs, notepad++, Visual Studio, and (currently) SublimeText and xcode. My opinion is that the editor is never the "bottleneck" with programming speed, so just use whatever is the most comfortable for you. One nice thing about vi/vim is that some variant of it is installed almost everywhere so you're always likely to have a usable editor available if you learn it.

Re: Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

#12

Post by Mikeb85 »

Zekio wrote: post #2

Only people who can save & exit vim holds it as the pinnacle of editing technology. :) the rest of us can't save files in it

Use GVim if you want a gentle introduction. It has GUI buttons for all the basic functions, but key shortcuts still work.

Re: Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

#14

Post by capote »

You first need to learn the differences between these editors, and determine what you expect from an editor.

It's pointless to compare vim, atom, and eclipse in the same thought process because they're completely different tools for different tasks.

> ... as to why vim is superior

Vim is not superior categorically. If you expect your editor to autocomplete Java code for you and fill in imports and look up methods for you, and have extra features that aren't even connected to editing, Eclipse is tremendously better. But Eclipse is a different tool. It's a full IDE.

Atom is a gui-based editor.

Vim is a cli-based editor.

I've been seeing people left and right comparing editors as if there were some definitive lockdown about to happen that binds you to a single editor. Use whatever you like and what gets your job done. You can also use more than one for more than one task.

I use vim when I'm editing files via ssh remotely, Sublime when I'm editing local files, and VS Pro when I'm working with .NET at work, because these are, respectively, my tools of choice for these tasks.

None are "better" or "worse". They're just different.

Re: Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

#17

Post by shadeless »

shadeless wrote: post #9

I've seen a lot of comments saying this answer on stackoverflow opened their eyes to using Vim: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most...

Also, from my own experience I can't really tell if I'm actually typing/coding faster faster since switching to Vim/Spacemacs, but I did notice a significant change in achieving and staying in a state of flow. Not having to touch the mouse or consider how a text transformation should be done (but just doing it mechanically) helps me stay in the zone. YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

#18

Post by pgbovine »

Vim user for ~10 years ... I find Vim more productive for writing prose than coding, since oftentimes the limiting factor when coding isn't pure typing/editing speed. And, as other posters have mentioned, good IDEs nowadays have a lot of integrated support for the entire software lifecycle and not just for pounding out code as fast as possible.

Re: Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

#19

Post by dionidium »

dsmithatx wrote: post #3
Zekio wrote: post #2

Only people who can save & exit vim holds it as the pinnacle of editing technology. :) the rest of us can't save files in it

:wq

The problem uninitiated users have with vim is that it's modal. It's not that they can't type :wq; it's that they don't know where or how to type it or even, conceptually, what the heck is going on when they type that command and it shows up as text.

I'm a long-time vim user, but it's at least worth confronting the criticisms head on (even if this one is a bit tired).

Re: Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

#20

Post by capote »

capote wrote: post #14

You first need to learn the differences between these editors, and determine what you expect from an editor. It's pointless to compare vim, atom, and eclipse in the same thought process because they're completely different tools for different tasks. > ... as to why vim is superior Vim is not superior categorically. If you expect your editor to autocomplete Java code for you and fill in imports and look up methods for…

Now, all that said, I do have a story about speed with Vim:

When I was in high school, I bragged to my dad about typing something like 110 words per minute. He said… that's nice; I can type 1100 words per minute. Incredulously, I asked him to show me. He fired up his vim setup, opened a few files, started a new one, and sure enough in under 60 seconds he had a ~1100 "word" Sybase stored procedure (or something) written.

Of course he didn't literally type all of it. Of course it was a loooot of copy pasta, and the whole thing was tongue-in-cheek. But it was a good example of what you can do with Vim given the right scenario.

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