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Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

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Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#62
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never touched neovim as I'm perfectly happy with vim - what reasons are there for me to consider making the switch? I would guess neovim isn't even on the radar of most vim users. I don't see neovim surpassing vim any time soon, personally.

Neovim's popularity is more with extension developers. My understanding is that it enables them to develop features rivaling those in IDEs. Vim users won't switch for Neovim itself, but they might if extension writers only target Neovim. I think Neovim also has a pluggable engine, so IDE vim emulators can simply include that portion rather than implementing the functionality per platform.

This was true for a while, but vim 8 (and some of the last patches of vim 7) added async tasks, channels and built-in JSON encoding/decoding. It's a hassle to have to support two different interfaces, but I suspect most plugin authors are going to do that rather than force their users to use neovim. Some plugins (like neomake) already support both.

Edit: Forgot to mention, many of the improvements in vim 8 were clearly in reaction to Neovim's innovations. Both projects benefit from the other, this isn't a fight to the death.

Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#63

I love vim, and I'm always happy to read interviews with the developers who make and manage the tools I use or like. However, I find this article to be somewhat of a mishmash with an uncertain audience. From the title, I had expected this to be a transcript of an interview. But it's not. Thank you for the link. The article also heavily implies that Bram is the sole and only developer, and mentions that vim has had fo…

It's also on a scammy review site for hosting affiliate links, and fake crappy "ratings"

Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#64
post #57
post #22

I don't know if I am too old or just think differently than vim enthusiasts, but I somehow couldn't bring myself to like vim. Of course that's might be since I can't find motivation to dig into it further. As a developer I use it almost daily when doing something on the server, like editing some config etc., but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a short…

I use vsVim which is a vim plugin for visual studio, so I get the best of both worlds :)

Sadly, vsVim doesn't properly handle the undo history, so pressing `u` often ends up just deleting single characters instead of what was changed during an insert mode session.

ViEmu though, is fantastic.

Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#65
post #22

I don't know if I am too old or just think differently than vim enthusiasts, but I somehow couldn't bring myself to like vim. Of course that's might be since I can't find motivation to dig into it further. As a developer I use it almost daily when doing something on the server, like editing some config etc., but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a short…

> but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a shortcut for everything. As the quote goes, "The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned." The word you're looking for is "different". Vim (and Emacs) have different shortcuts than what you're used to from Windows. That's because they're much older . Vi and Emacs actually predate th…

> Vi and Emacs actually predate those "intuitive" shortcuts of yours.

Yes, but that is different, since in "normal" IDE, I dont need to use shortcuts for everything. In vim, you must learn how to select something, then how to copy it and how to paste it. In an IDE, I just select it with mouse, since in all other software I also select the exact same way, and shortcuts are only ctrl-c ctrl-v. Of course I also use other shortcuts, like F2 and ctrl-F2 for bookmarks, but normally I don't need them for everything.

Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#66
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that so long as the primary rhetoric from the NeoVim camp is "vim is dead, long live NeoVim", with a dash of disrespect for Bram and his goals of continued platform compatibility and coding style... I personally don't expect such acknowledgement. Doing so might make Bram the 'better person', but I wouldn't blame him if it makes him a bit resentful.

What? I've seen tarruda and co. explicitly express gratitude and thanks to Bram.

By critiquing his reluctance to accept patches because he'll be stuck maintaining that code? By forking Vim and removing some compatibility and legacy support features when tarruda's multithreading patch was not accepted?

No, the core contributors have not been outright in their criticisms, but IMO the fork itself shows a lack of respect for Bran's work and a lack of willingness to work with him to make Vim better. And now tarruda has stepped back from NeoVim, perhaps recognizing himself the cost that Bram bears.

By simply contributing to the tests - one of the outright critiques of Vim itself - they could have brought a lot more confidence to accepting such patches to Vim, but they chose to take their ball and play elsewhere instead.

What frustrates me the most is that instead of two branches of Vim that are moderately better (with the future of one of the branches being left behind), we could have had one which was much better.

Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#67
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never touched neovim as I'm perfectly happy with vim - what reasons are there for me to consider making the switch? I would guess neovim isn't even on the radar of most vim users. I don't see neovim surpassing vim any time soon, personally.

That got me: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/FAQ#how-can-i-change-t... It feels faster to me, but I haven't compared to vim 8. I don't use any plugins doing work in the background, so that's not the difference here.

you can do that in vim as well http://pastebin.com/LLm0tx88

Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#68
post #22

I don't know if I am too old or just think differently than vim enthusiasts, but I somehow couldn't bring myself to like vim. Of course that's might be since I can't find motivation to dig into it further. As a developer I use it almost daily when doing something on the server, like editing some config etc., but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a short…

Try the VSVim plugin, it's good software.

Re: Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8

#69
post #22

I don't know if I am too old or just think differently than vim enthusiasts, but I somehow couldn't bring myself to like vim. Of course that's might be since I can't find motivation to dig into it further. As a developer I use it almost daily when doing something on the server, like editing some config etc., but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a short…

> but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a shortcut for everything. As the quote goes, "The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned." The word you're looking for is "different". Vim (and Emacs) have different shortcuts than what you're used to from Windows. That's because they're much older . Vi and Emacs actually predate th…

Everyone says that about nipples, but anyone whose had a kid knows that its not always easy for a baby to learn how to latch onto a nipple. It can take a day or two and all they while you are terrified your baby is going to starve.
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