Vim 8.0 is coming • Hacker News Board

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#171

Post by super_mario » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:31 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #123

super_mario wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's decidedly not true. Nor is this about customization of workflows. I am talking about actual unadulterated power to do things you cannot do in an IDE. All IDEs optimize for the average use case. If they do expose a set of advanced commands or transformations, they are hidden deep in the menus and what you can do with them is extremely rigid and limited. At most you have a few dozen commands (you would call them…

> "That's decidedly not true. Nor is this about customization of workflows. I am talking about actual unadulterated power to do things you cannot do in an IDE. All IDEs optimize for the average use case. If they do expose a set of advanced commands or transformations, they are hidden deep in the menus and what you can do with them is extremely rigid and limited. At most you have a few dozen commands (you would call t…

You are assuming I never use any GUI tools or never try IDEs. I do. I know how customizable most of them are (all except XCode which is absolute garbage). And you can spend a lot of time doing that (writing your own extensions or invoking those external command line tools on your text selections etc), but why bother spending time on that when I can use those tools directly in the command line? And if I'm going to write an extension (that's already programming something) then I might as well do it in the command line, and use it anywhere I can edit text.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#172

Post by hellofunk » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:31 PM UTC

mbrock wrote: post #84

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…

Emacs is free software developed by a worldwide community. It's a culture, an ecosystem, a way of life. The same with Vim, but I'm into Emacs. I love Lisp deeply, and I think Emacs is a truly amazing piece of technology. I had to use Xcode for a project and it gave me real anxiety. Weird things would go wrong and I had no idea how to fix them. The only sources of information were these horrible unanswered support thr…

>Xcode and Visual Studio are made for developing software in closed systems...

Xcode allows you to write and debug code for a specific compiler (like Clang or GCC). If you choose to use Emacs instead, you would typically use the same compiler as you'd use with Xcode, just a different way of editing and debugging your code. But whether or not you write software that is "closed" or "open" or "portable" or "platform specific" is a choice for the project, not the editor. Xcode is not for writing software in a closed system, it is for writing software, period. If you want to write software that is unique to OSX or iOS (using Apple APIs) you can do so more easily with Xcode, but a lot of my projects are command line tools that are used in any unix/linux variant, including OSX, and I choose to use Xcode.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#173

Post by illumin8 » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

joesmo wrote: post #158

tambourine_man wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use a magic trackpad and find it very good at giving me the best features of a mouse/pointer interface and a touch interface combined. You can do things like two-finger scroll in any document and 3 finger swipe between desktops minority report style... All kidding aside, it seems very productive, but I still keep a mouse plugged in just in case I need to run Visio inside a Windows 10 VM to do some diagraming... Mouse is much more precise and less fatiguing to use for serious diagramming...

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#174

Post by toyg » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

wtetzner wrote: post #159

toyg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

jEdit uses java-like beanshell for scripts, which is pretty different from elisp. So now you have to rewrite all your custom macros in a language you don't know and with an entirely different paradigm. But tbh, it's just an example -- any advanced workflow will require some time to adjust, for benefits which are hard to quantify.

Tried switching from QWERTY to DVORAK recently? Same thing.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#175

Post by cicero » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #161

tambourine_man wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Touch screens are not a 100% replacement for mice. They are an alternative, and for desktop/laptop PCs with vertical screens they are a non starter due to human physiology.

Mice are not a 100% replacement for keyboards. If you're doing lots of typing, there is something to be said for keeping your hands on the keyboard. Vim and emacs facilitate this much better than GUI-based editors.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#176

Post by Walkman » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

What does it mean to NeoVim? Does it affect it's development, split developers or anything? Is it good?

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#177

Post by sevensor » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

arnsholt wrote: post #18

zwarag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make a list for things I know would be faster if I knew them and go on. example of my vimimprove.md: - 5 deleting word while curser is in the middle of that word - 2 insert parantesis around the word im on .... when something reaches 10, I google it and write it on a note. Then the first thing I do in the morning is doing that thing 10 times. Before I leave work, I do it again. And of coarse if you use it while wor…

Since I happen to have the answer to both of those: `daw` and `diw` deletes a whole word (unlike `dw` which only deletes forward). They differ in what they do with whitespace; `aw` also trims trailing whitespace (or leading whitespace if there's no trailing) while `iw` leaves the whitespace alone. These two are text objects that can be combined with other commands and quantifiers, so that `yaw` copies a word without…

What's the difference between bdw and daw? I already use "b", "e", and "w" quite a lot, so the "a" and "i" infixes seem a little redundant. Is there an advantage to the infixes that I'm not seeing?

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#178

Post by eitland » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #143

zerr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then you have a GUI - menus/toolbars and after a couple of times use - you just remember the key binding usually specified along the label.

I'm not talking about superficial usage like that. I'm talking about productivity boosts like multiline edits, line swapping, cursor jumping over blocks, and more advanced tricks. Also about where to do all those little tweaks to the configuration you need to google for or ask a coworker about to get a hold of. Those are not discoverable with any GUI.

> ... Those are not discoverable with any GUI.

But kind of easy-to-guess once you have used Windows for a while. Examples (Primarily Netbeans on Windows and Linux):

Alt + shift + arrow -> move line(s) up/down or (de)indent.

Ctrl + shift + arrow up/down -> duplicate line up and down

etc.

Most of you already know I guess but I guess there are always some who didn't realize that on Windows and Linux (desktops that is) you can mostly always rely on

arrow -> move

ctrl + arrow -> move one word at a time

shift + arrow -> move while selecting

and combined:

ctrl-shift-arrow -> select whole words at a time

---

While I can find my way around vim and have also given emacs an honest try for me it was not worth it. If typing speed becomes an issue for me it is a sign of a deeper problem ;-)

That said I use a lot of multiline edits for database hacks, but what I really saves me some time and frustration when dealing with legacy code is

* Really good refactoring support

* ctrl-shift-d in Netbeans which brings up a stack of my latest cuts

* regex search/replace in Netbeans. Yes, that means you can search for something(crazyregexgoeshere)(anotherregex) and replace with somethingelse-$1-$2

If anyone is interested I might try to compile an overview of some of my workflows (no promise though)

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#179

Post by toyg » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

super_mario wrote: post #165

toyg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As parent said, good IDEs (like IDEA etc) can be customized to no end. You can remap pretty much all "menu" commands to shortcuts, and they have plenty of interfaces to extend their feature-set through plugins and custom commands to invoke the shell or what-have-you. Honestly, it's not a crime to like nice windows, y'know.

That's another misconception GUI people seem to have. You can have nice windows and color schemes in Terminal as well (even on Windows is you install MSYS2). Except you get absolute control over your windows layouts and behaviors with tmux and friends. And you don't have to reach for the mouse to interact with any of them.

Looking forward to drop shadows and brushed-metal in tmux, which you shall promptly post. Also fullscreen exposé-like dashboard with previews would be nice.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#180

Post by lottin » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #163

nsajko wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vi is not Vim.

Actually it is. Not only in the sense that Vim is a clone of vi (with added stuff), but more specifically in that in lots of distros the vi command is just vim (with some special flags). Old BSD vi today is, and has been for over a decade or so, dead.

It's not dead, it's finished. It's got all the features of the original vi, therefore mission accomplished. Software doesn't need to be developed ad-aeternum to remain 'alive'.