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Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

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Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#21

Post by nerdponx »

israrkhan wrote: post #20

I tried spacemacs and some other distributions/vimrc config files. The problem is if you do not know the reason for each line in vimrc and each key mapping/plugin in your vim environment, you wont be able to appreciate the beauty of vim no matter which distro you use. A distro is sort of similar to MS office, where a typical user will need less than 10% of the features, and remaining 90% stuff just adds to the bloat.

Which of course defeats the purpose in using a complicated but customizable program like Vim in the first place.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#22

Post by Qwertious »

z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

Vanilla vim is like compiling - efficient, but with a huge upfront investment. A vim 'distribution is like JITing - you end up at roughly the same spot, but it actually lets you do the thing in the meanwhile.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#23

Post by hammerandtongs »

chongli wrote: post #11
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

This is also why I decided to use Keith Bostic's nvi [0], also known as vi from BSD. I got so tired of endless configuring and bikeshedding my own editor instead of getting work done. Since I switched to nvi I've learned way more about the powerful features of the base editor as well as shell tools like grep, fzf, fmt, column, wc, expand, pdftotext, pandoc, make, git... With tmux I have easy access to any REPLs and m…

As far as I remember you are foregoing text objects which are really one of the most powerful things in vim.

http://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/10/17/vim-text-objects-the-d...

Ironically I think most of the IDE (ie intellij etc) vim plugins have them while you do not.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#25

Post by pzone »

z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

You miss a major benefit: the ecosystems of these editors evolve very quickly. Packages are updated and broken regularly, adding new features and interoporability that you may not be able to learn about yourself.

A community configuration like Spacemacs will continually update to provide you with a configuration that is up to date and doesn't break.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#26

Post by microtonal »

pzone wrote: post #25
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

You miss a major benefit: the ecosystems of these editors evolve very quickly. Packages are updated and broken regularly, adding new features and interoporability that you may not be able to learn about yourself. A community configuration like Spacemacs will continually update to provide you with a configuration that is up to date and doesn't break.

A community configuration like Spacemacs will continually update to provide you with a configuration that is up to date and doesn't break.

As far as I understand, it currently does not do that, since elpa/melpa/... packages are updated out of sync with Spacemacs and the last Spacemacs release is over 2 months old. See:

https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/issues/2057#issuecomme...

But, there is hope, the release notes for 0.200 say:

For 0.201 we plan to introduce stable snapshots of elpa repositories, a new installation of Spacemacs will always install packages from this stable source.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#27

Post by microtonal »

pzone wrote: post #3

Interesting. If there is a workable org-mode replacement that gets org-agenda I would consider switching away from Emacs to Vim or Neovim. I'm sick of using such slow and crash prone software. (Emacs is much better on Linux. I would love to use Linux as my daily driver but it's just not an option.) Since I've switched to Spacemacs it wouldn't be hard to port my small tweaks to recreate my personal preferences. But I…

But I really can't give up org-mode!

...and inline LaTeX/image previews!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hf5x3p9bne3tqbg/Screen%20Shot%2020...

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#28

Post by RX14 »

sdrothrock wrote: post #10
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

One of the reasons I like vim is that I can find vim or vi almost anywhere I need to work, but I try not to configure it too much (and lose out on what people say is one of the greatest advantages) BECAUSE I work on so many servers... is there a solution other than "carry your config and plugins everywhere?"

Tramp mode in Emacs is great for this, you can edit files over ssh seamlessly from your desktop. It works even better if you use Emacs as a terminal, as then you pretty much use tramp for everything.

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#29

Post by arvinsim »

hammerandtongs wrote: post #23
chongli wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also why I decided to use Keith Bostic's nvi [0], also known as vi from BSD. I got so tired of endless configuring and bikeshedding my own editor instead of getting work done. Since I switched to nvi I've learned way more about the powerful features of the base editor as well as shell tools like grep, fzf, fmt, column, wc, expand, pdftotext, pandoc, make, git... With tmux I have easy access to any REPLs and m…

As far as I remember you are foregoing text objects which are really one of the most powerful things in vim. http://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/10/17/vim-text-objects-the-d... Ironically I think most of the IDE (ie intellij etc) vim plugins have them while you do not.

TIL that there are text objects for tags. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: A Vim distribution inspired by Spacemacs

#30

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

chongli wrote: post #11
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #7

In general, I think people really sell themselves short by using an editor "distribution." It's a "teach a man to fish" situation. The whole point of being able to configure Emacs or Vim is so that each person can make it into the tool he or she wants it to be. That's sort of why I recommend Vim as an IDE[1] to people. It teaches people how to configure Vim for themselves, so they can better understand how the pieces…

This is also why I decided to use Keith Bostic's nvi [0], also known as vi from BSD. I got so tired of endless configuring and bikeshedding my own editor instead of getting work done. Since I switched to nvi I've learned way more about the powerful features of the base editor as well as shell tools like grep, fzf, fmt, column, wc, expand, pdftotext, pandoc, make, git... With tmux I have easy access to any REPLs and m…

What programming languages do you use with nvi? Some seem awfully verbose without some kind of code completion.
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