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Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

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Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#31

Post by weaksauce »

cryptoz wrote: post #4
doktrin wrote: post #3

Obviously my personal bias, but it's emacs I can never remember how to exit from.

Me too. I once helped organize talks at my school, and helped with bringing Richard Stallman to give a talk one time. I was a vim user, but I did a little bit of prep and refreshed my emacs memory etc. So we're setting up the room for the talk, and we're talking a bit, and some people start to arrive. He asks one if they've ever used emacs, she says no, so I said, "we should start an emacs tutorial here, we can teach…

It was probably because he knew what OS license you'd try to use.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#32

Post by lucideer »

colechristensen wrote: post #22
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #8

I'm somewhat amazed but mostly amused that the Vim developers care so little about user experience that they continue to ignore that people have trouble with exiting their tool and refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it.

Vim has a steep learning curve and making that one thing easier isn't going to make that curve any easier to climb. Powerful tools require documentation and looking up how to quit is the first task of many to use any of vim's power. Not everything has to be easy to use, some things benefit from not being obvious.

I think this is a poor argument. If it's the one singular thing that's frustrating this many users, that's a reason to focus on particular on fixing it somehow. You also need to take into account that most users encountering this problem are not deliberate vim learners: they ended up in vim by accident.

That said, as others have pointed out, the vim developers can't really be blamed here as it's just a very hard problem. There isn't a common convention, and vim already goes above and beyond to try and educate users on how to get out. People ending up on this SO question just seem unwilling to read.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#33

Post by jayflux »

tcoff91 wrote: post #18
ZenoArrow wrote: post #10

I barely use any Vim, but I'm more confused about there being some hidden complexity in exiting Vim that I'm not aware of. Isn't it just... [Esc] :wq ...or... [Esc] :q! ...depending if you want to save the current document or not?

No, it really is that easy. If you try to -c, the program even tells you to use :q It's just become a meme at this point.

But why would i be pressing -c in the first place if i don't know any Vim commands?

Edit: ah quit foreground process, ignore me

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#34

Post by placeybordeaux »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #8

I'm somewhat amazed but mostly amused that the Vim developers care so little about user experience that they continue to ignore that people have trouble with exiting their tool and refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it.

> refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it.

Which would be?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#35

Post by jszymborski »

Not that it entirely matters, but those country/prog. language stats are useless since they don't normalise to site-wide traffic (or at least they don't seem indicate they do).

Anecdotally, would get stuck in Vim having thought that the override command was :!q instead of :q!...

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#36

Post by optimuspaul »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #10

I barely use any Vim, but I'm more confused about there being some hidden complexity in exiting Vim that I'm not aware of. Isn't it just... [Esc] :wq ...or... [Esc] :q! ...depending if you want to save the current document or not?

It baffles me that it isn't just ^C like every other unix program.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#37

Post by signal11 »

jayflux wrote: post #25
vopi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally everytime you boot the first screen tells you how to quit and get help. So..read the screen that comes up Everytime? If you try Ctrl c it tells you it's :q.

> developers are often dropped into Vim from a git command or another situation where they didn’t expect to be, and they run into it infrequently enough to forget how they solved it last time. So the first screen doesn't help in this situation The sort of developers who get stuck in Vim are not the ones who are using it intentionally

Hitting Ctrl+C still works, it tells you to type ":quit".

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#38

Post by Symbiote »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #34
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #8

I'm somewhat amazed but mostly amused that the Vim developers care so little about user experience that they continue to ignore that people have trouble with exiting their tool and refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it.

> refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it. Which would be?

Control C.
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