Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#121

Post by throwaway991872 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

to3m wrote: post #101

throwaway109211 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Vim is far easier to learn than Visual Studio. The menus are completely unintuitive, bureaucratic and painful to use. I always use cl.exe from the command line with Makefiles.

Why not stop using the menus then? ;) Visual Studio can be operated pretty much entirely from the keyboard. The default shortcuts are fairly sensible, and you can always add more from the options. There is one major omission: changing build configuration or build target. (You can give the configuration manager a keyboard shortcut, and do it that way, but it's a bit unwieldy.) So I keep the relevant widget in the tool…

> Why not stop using the menus then? ;)

Because you have to learn more commands/shortcuts than in Vim? ;)

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#122

Post by jxy » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #98

masukomi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last one is compelling, but the new "editing language" and paradigm that's been put together is _really_ compelling. Being able to see what a "sentence" is going to do as you're typing it is a huge improvement on vim. I _love_ vim, but executing complex commands is like shouting into a dark tunnel and hoping the person on the other end understands what you were trying to say.

That's why I tend to use visual mode. It sounds like Kakoune is basically visual mode by default, which is cool but not that different. This example was a bit silly: "dtf will delete to next f, if you then realize that was one f before the one you targeted, you need to undo, go back to your initial position, and try again with d2tf." There's no need to undo. Just follow up with a dot and you're done. Which pretty muc…

Which is to say that they don't understand vim, or rather, they don't even grok vi.

You can't beat your enemy if you don't understand your enemy.

"Go ahead and down vote more, I just wish you guys can learn more of vi, so you can truly deliver something better. So far, these surface scratching alterations only build on irritations of those vi first-timers. Good luck.

"By the way, I use acme when I have graphics interface, nothing beats sam's structured regexp editing capability, apart from writing perl scripts. Learn something, guys.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#123

Post by hxegon » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

ncd wrote: post #10

This looks awesome (although I think the name could use a little work). It also brings up a question I have for HN: Every few years, I make an attempt to learn to use one of the classic editors like vim or emacs, and inevitably give up after the enormous productivity drop I suffer when writing code. I just can't seem to pick up the muscle memory required to become fast with these tools, and the overwhelming array of…

Happy vim user for 3 years, and SOOOOO worth it. Being able to work with text in an editing language immensely shortens the loop from thought to code, and having an editor that you can adapt to any language or framework or toolset you want is invaluable.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#124

Post by doppioandante » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

keepper wrote: post #11

I'm sorry... but "kak"? I love/like vi[m], I love/like emacs... I ... never mind lol The new editing language does look great, and I like the idea of the piped filters... but I can't get over the name :-/

FAQ on various things and what the name means:

https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/manpages/fa...

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#125

Post by omtose » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #102

keepper wrote: post #11

I'm sorry... but "kak"? I love/like vi[m], I love/like emacs... I ... never mind lol The new editing language does look great, and I like the idea of the piped filters... but I can't get over the name :-/

Which is funny, I read it as 書こうね (Let's write). Even fits in line with the growing fad of using Japanese in project names I've noticed the past 8~14 months or so.

Oh that makes a lot of sense, that's probably the origin of the name. The project is quite a bit older than that though (>4 years).

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#126

Post by doppioandante » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

omtose wrote: post #125

Nadya wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny, I read it as 書こうね (Let's write). Even fits in line with the growing fad of using Japanese in project names I've noticed the past 8~14 months or so.

Oh that makes a lot of sense, that's probably the origin of the name. The project is quite a bit older than that though (>4 years).

It's a new caledonian word, see https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/manpages/fa...

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#127

Post by vanderZwan » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

> Interactivity comes by providing feedback on every commands, the inverted object then verb grammar makes that possible, every selection modification has direct visual feedback, regex based selections incrementally show what will get selected, including when the regular expression is invalid, and even yanking some text displays a message notifying how many selections were yanked.

Did anyone else think of reverse Polish notation and concatenative languages like Forth when reading this paragraph?

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#128

Post by omtose » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

doppioandante wrote: post #126

omtose wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that makes a lot of sense, that's probably the origin of the name. The project is quite a bit older than that though (>4 years).

It's a new caledonian word, see https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/manpages/fa...

Mmh right, but that's not going to dispel my feeling that mawww is actually a weeaboo.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#129

Post by module0000 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

ncd wrote: post #10

This looks awesome (although I think the name could use a little work). It also brings up a question I have for HN: Every few years, I make an attempt to learn to use one of the classic editors like vim or emacs, and inevitably give up after the enormous productivity drop I suffer when writing code. I just can't seem to pick up the muscle memory required to become fast with these tools, and the overwhelming array of…

It's worth it, just have to get through that first few days where you want to run back to familiar territory. I don't know of any shortcuts, just repetition. My particular choice is Vim, and my only advice would be don't try to master it all at once. Work on just editing text, saving and opening files, find/replace. When that's all second nature, get wild and start using window splits, macros, and remapping keys(if you want to).

Once you're all trained up though, I think you'll really be happy you spent the time.

Re: Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor

#130

Post by Roboprog » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #98

masukomi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last one is compelling, but the new "editing language" and paradigm that's been put together is _really_ compelling. Being able to see what a "sentence" is going to do as you're typing it is a huge improvement on vim. I _love_ vim, but executing complex commands is like shouting into a dark tunnel and hoping the person on the other end understands what you were trying to say.

That's why I tend to use visual mode. It sounds like Kakoune is basically visual mode by default, which is cool but not that different. This example was a bit silly: "dtf will delete to next f, if you then realize that was one f before the one you targeted, you need to undo, go back to your initial position, and try again with d2tf." There's no need to undo. Just follow up with a dot and you're done. Which pretty muc…

The dot trick is fine, unless you wanted to paste the deleted text somewhere afterward, in which case you need to pick it up in one go.

Otherwise, yeah, dot is great. I love using that for repetitive stuff on "tabular" copied entries that I'm not thinking real hard about transforming. (E.g. - 5 lines or so that I'm not cooking up a regex or an perl/awk spell to transmute)