Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vim 8.0 is coming

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 420 posts

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#151

Post by jqm »

robenkleene wrote: post #124
dockerlocker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a good example for a stupid limitation and the enprmous waste of brian power just for a very simple thing. Have to start studying and doing real research for the most simple features. Waste!

Ideally, Vim is a tool you'll be able to use for the rest of your life, so an upfront cost in learning it is a cost that becomes small when measured against the time scale of your career. Furthermore, Vim needs to be setup and is configurable because it existed before many computer usage patterns had been standardized that we take for granted now (e.g., Vim's cut and paste system is different than any current big nam…

Agreed. Vim is one of the best investments in learning I've made to date.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#152

Post by bcook »

donkeyd wrote: post #149

I'm quite a noob at 'nix, so I tend to use nano whenever I need to edit something. Not sure if this is the right place, but could somebody explain the added benefit of spending the time to learn to use vim/emacs? I've tried vim, but it seems very complicated.

As a non-professional hobbiest, the biggest impact I can recall is that "vi" is universally included in every distro, while nano is not.

vim is complicated, but if you spend just an hour learning it's capabilities, your productivity will improve. vim is crazy(/overly?) complex though, so do not think you are alone.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#153

Post by ageofwant »

ed_blackburn wrote: post #29

With the age of their respective codebases, I'd love to know what lurks beneath? Immaculate, well factored code? A hornets nest of hacks - what do you expect from such old codebases - or have they been re-written so many times you'd never guess their ages from the codebase.

Pfft on immaculate, well factored code. All glory to battle hardened code that does the business everyday.

Of course it would be better to have both. But don't dismiss code that survived the withering infernos of real world use. All those edge hacks are there because they probably need to be.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#154

Post by ZenoArrow »

mikekchar wrote: post #142
ZenoArrow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think like this, but I don't any more. Both command line development tools and IDEs require work to get the most out of them. I used to think command line tools were better because I was more in control, then I realised if I just spent the time learning what IDEs were doing on my behalf I would still have more or less the same amount of control, especially if the IDE is customisable (which the best ones are…

The thing is, I'm a programmer. I want to extend my tools with code, not configuration. The power of the command line is not so much that it's a command line -- the power is that it is a programmable environment. I'm not limited to configuring what the tools are doing on my behalf. I'm writing my own tools. I think this is the biggest draw for Emacs. It's a fully featured lisp development environment. If you want to…

> "I want to extend my tools with code, not configuration."

You can do that with Visual Studio too with Visual Studio Extensions. You can also manage extensions (including those from other users) with a built-in package manager, just like in Emacs.

Here's a Visual Studio Extensions tutorial if you're interested:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Buildi...

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#155

Post by akerro »

yitchelle wrote: post #45
Scarblac wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs ) both vi and Emacs are from 1976. 40 years this year!

To be fair, vim is not strictly vi although they were related. Amazing, I was 1 year old when both were started. How many other software package has such longevity? Unix and its various guises?

I have a better question. Will those tools be still used in 40 years? And what modern tools will be used after that time?

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#156

Post by coldtea »

yitchelle wrote: post #45
Scarblac wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs ) both vi and Emacs are from 1976. 40 years this year!

To be fair, vim is not strictly vi although they were related. Amazing, I was 1 year old when both were started. How many other software package has such longevity? Unix and its various guises?

>Unix and its various guises?

Most of the UNIX userland is from then, though it has seen rewrites (including clean room ones) through the decades.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#157

Post by nZac »

donkeyd wrote: post #149

I'm quite a noob at 'nix, so I tend to use nano whenever I need to edit something. Not sure if this is the right place, but could somebody explain the added benefit of spending the time to learn to use vim/emacs? I've tried vim, but it seems very complicated.

The added benefit for me are, staying in the terminal where I do more than just edit, normal mode makes file navigation and text manipulation an extension of thinking, fast file switching, cross platform consistency, and a low maintenance burden (though the initial learning curve/setup is steep).

I work on Python apps all day and am constantly running she'll commands, interacting with git, starting / stopping services. Along with tmux, I can switch projects incredibly fast without having to wait for an IDE to load.

If you don't interact with text most of the day, I am not sure Vim is worth the curve.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#158

Post by joesmo »

tambourine_man wrote: post #119
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became an heavy Emacs user as I could not find the comfort of Borland IDEs in UNIX, as I started to use it. Since I moved away from C++ into Java and .NET land, never felt the need to use them any longer. And nowadays, with Qt Creator, Clion, xCode, AppCode and VS, I also don't feel the need of them when I need to go back to C++. It is very good to know the basics from plain Vi, because there are still commercial U…

So for me the question is why there are still people that enjoy working as if their computers are using a 25 year old developer experience. The GUI paradigm is over 30 years old. People still stick to the mouse even though we've had ubiquitous touchscreens for almost a decade. A good paradigm does not easily die.

Touch screens are even less efficient and ergonomic than mice which are pretty terrible at both those things. Track balls and pads are only a tiny improvement. All of these input methods are deeply flawed but there are no real alternatives that I know of. There's plenty of us that would move to better, more efficient, more ergonomic input methods were they available.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#159

Post by wtetzner »

toyg wrote: post #112
marklgr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It often _is_ the most sensible choice, _for them_. The problem is, not everyone is doing the same job in the same environement, and they have a hard time realizing that. Their empathy/imagination stays too close to their own experience.

... the same job in the same environment coming from the same background . If you've spent 5 years at university training yourself in vim or emacs, it makes sense to keep using that; if you've started on the job with jEdit or whatnot, it's hard to justify giving up high productivity for several years for some random promise of even-better riches down the line.

What does jEdit give you that you couldn't learn in Emacs in a day or two? Basic text editing is pretty straight forward to learn in Emacs. The part that takes time is learning all the other cool features, and that can be done gradually over time without giving up immediate productivity.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#160

Post by coldtea »

dan00 wrote: post #17
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became an heavy Emacs user as I could not find the comfort of Borland IDEs in UNIX, as I started to use it. Since I moved away from C++ into Java and .NET land, never felt the need to use them any longer. And nowadays, with Qt Creator, Clion, xCode, AppCode and VS, I also don't feel the need of them when I need to go back to C++. It is very good to know the basics from plain Vi, because there are still commercial U…

> So for me the question is why there are still people that enjoy working as if their computers are using a 25 year old developer experience. For me it's the question, why it's so hard to understand that people have different likings without to downgrade them? Everyone thinks that his/her decisions are the most sensible ones, but in most cases they aren't.

>For me it's the question, why it's so hard to understand that people have different likings without to downgrade them?

Because while everyone can have this or that preferences, personal taste is not the be all end all argument, except in the "it's a free country" way.

Whenever we want to assess the state of our tools, and what we need to make them better etc, we need to reach an agreement beyond "works for me" and personal taste.

Post reply on HN