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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

#81

Post by andylei »

owaislone wrote: post #58
mbel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Features might be a compelling reason to switch. The fact that something is furiously developed by hundreds of developers is a very poor reason. What does this rather meaningless "health" of Neovim gives to the end users? Fresh new bugs? I'm not arguing that there are no good reasons to try Neovim. I just don't see any logic in your argument. You speak about loosely defined "health" and "momentum" as if there was a c…

> The fact that something is furiously developed by hundreds of developers is a very poor reason. What does this rather meaningless "health" of Neovim gives to the end users? Fresh new bugs? It's not like Neovim (or any open source project) is an open house where anyone can come, throw some code over the wall and get it merged. Like any big project (Vim included), it is being maintained by a set of core responsible d…

> The more momentum a project has, the more contributions it gets

that's not disputed. the question is, what specific impacts do these contributions have on me, the user? why should i, a user of vim, switch to neovim?

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

#82

Post by dominotw »

greyman wrote: 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…

>where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a shortcut for everything.

you can learn that intuition easily by learning 'vim language' , there are no shortcuts.

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

#83

Post by mkonecny »

mikekchar wrote: post #9

I was surprised to learn that vim started out on the Amiga. Back in those days I was using DME, by a certain Matt Dillon (of Dragonfly BSD fame, not the actor ;-) ). At the time it was the only editor that could drag me away from Emacs. Ironic that Vim later seduced me away from Emacs again...

Cooincidental, not ironic.

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

#84

Post by fatbird »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #12
owaislone wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neovim is Vim for me and many other users. Vim is irrelevant to me now. The community is rallying behind Neovim and it shows great potential. It just needs to be bundled by major distros so it can be installed on servers with 1 command and that'll be the end of old Vim. Bram has done a tremendous job with Vim but it's time to move on to the Vim of the future.

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 async already has tremendous plugin support and is most obviously felt in new build plugins like neomake that do async linting--no more locking up the interface on saving, and this already works well.

Neovim's embedded terminal also works great and is something vim doesn't have.

Neovim is simple to try out because it's a drop-in replacement--all your old plugins will likely work out of the box, along with your .vimrc.

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

#85

Post by cygned »

ismailk wrote: post #67
cygned wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's interesting! I guess, neovim's behavior is just a convenience wrapper around this, then.

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

#86

Post by a3n »

executesorder66 wrote: post #28
greyman wrote: 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 don't know if I am too old or just think differently than vim enthusiasts You make it sound like vim is a new thing. It's 25 years old. And vi is 40 years old. If you've been writing code for longer than that, then damn. I'm impressed. > prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a shortcut for everything. Like what? ctrl + c or ctrl + v? I doubt anyone has every figured tho…

> > prefer a software, where you do things intuitively without needing to first learn a shortcut for everything.

> Like what?

Like mouse-select, copy, paste. Once learned (however that happened, however long ago), it works across virtually all OS/gui combos (except gvim without knowing vim :), and you can immediately get something done. If you're dropped down into an environment, and have to get something done, using your slow but working general methods is pretty attractive, compared to having to learn a whole new way of merely copy/pasting before you've done a single thing.

Having used vi, and later vim, since the mid eighties, it can be painful for me to sit with someone as they mouse around cutting, copying and pasting. Watching someone reversing the order of two lines, or two characters, with a mouse is really frustrating. But they're getting something done, focusing on the task instead of the how, and beyond an offer to help them with vim if they like (they usually don't), I just sit there and accept.

I like my mouse, I'm just glad it's not all I have. But keep in mind, it's really frustrating for someone to have to listen to someone else telling them "you can do this a better way!". It's just meta distraction.

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

#87

Post by a3n »

dorfsmay wrote: post #55
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> "The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned." I did not know this saying, thanks. This explains why I cannot work on a GUI without a track point!

I hate those things! I've never been able to get the desired effect, except almost by accident, just like everything else in life that looks like those things. Total mystery.

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

#88

Post by deong »

elsjaako wrote: post #80
vbezhenar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be the end of old vim? I've never used neovim and I don't plan to use it, vim is perfectly fine for me, as it is. I guess, most of vim users don't even know of neovim. Sure, it's good to have a choice.

For me the major improvement is that it puts the settings in the .config folder. I like this because I keep my settings in a git repo. The main advantage on the other hand is that my friend stopped bothering me about having to switch to neovim, which I guess is a non-issue for most. Now he's trying to get me on to zsh.

I've kept pretty much all my settings in a git repository for years -- you don't need the program to explicitly make that easier.

    $ git clone > $HOME/config
    $ ln -sf $HOME/config/vim/vimrc $HOME/.vimrc

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

#89

Post by tornadoboy55 »

falcolas wrote: post #66
hxegon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. A…

Way to misrepresent it. They made the async patch - it wasn't accepted. So they rewrote it to Bram's liking - still wasn't accepted. 5 rewrites further Bram says 'lol well actually I don't feel like accepting this PR at all'. Its very understandable to feel a bit of animosity after bending over backwards for someone with commit access and then after all the effort still having the PR refused. That's called being led on, and its ultimately a dick move.

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

#90

Post by johnsea »

falcolas wrote: post #66
hxegon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. A…

I don't think this is a fair assessment. Before forking an attempt has been made 'to make vim' better. It's open source thus imho all is well if there are two source trees with different 'philosophies' (one 'a bit' centralistic the other more team-like).

Regarding cost. Most developers need to be paid. I read [here](https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/vimannounce/conversation...) that Google provided (some) funding to Bram. With neovim initially there were lots of new things (clean-up, async, terminal), I don't see a problem if there should be a bit of slowdown now. It's a team. I think it's robust. I prefer Neovim and occasionally use MacVim too, thus grateful to Bram also. No need for frustration imho (but I'm glad there is neovim:)

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