Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim • Hacker News Board

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#151

Post by Gracana » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

zero_iq wrote: post #58

tcoff91 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so anyone with any terminal experience but no vim experience would press -c. Then, the program tells them "Type :quit to exit Vim" And if the user is capable of reading, they shouldn't have any problem. If they don't know about ctrl-c, they shouldn't be using a terminal editor.

Try actually following those instructions. They don't work. There is a step missing, and you may get warnings even if you know to hit escape first.

You don't have to hit escape, ctrl-c puts you in normal mode.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#152

Post by recursive » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

fishywang wrote: post #109

ashark wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add in the bonus confusion that you may not have even been trying to run vim, and in fact may not know what it is (hey, everyone's a beginner some time), but have landed there due to a default $EDITOR value. [EDIT] also, a typical mid-level computer user's tendency to slap "ESC" when panicked. Ha!

Which OS/Linux distribution set default $EDITOR to vim? Personally I've never seen one, and I don't think vim is a sane default value for $EDITOR.

Don't know about $EDITOR, but if you issue a git commit in Windows, and forget to specify -m, then you end up in vim.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#153

Post by falcolas » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #76

When I told my thesis advisor (in about 2001) that I was looking into backend web development as a career, he gave me a post-it note with the following content: chmod 0644 [Esc] :wq Best advice I've ever gotten.

Yes, please do chmod your SSH key, netrc, and other sensitive files as world readable!

Sincerely, that other guy on your multi-user OS.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#154

Post by kpil » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

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.

I don't particularly like vi, but as a intermittent user for 20 years, I don't like it to be changed just because a few junior front end developers (ok a million) think it's hard to use.

The default editor in distros could be set to nano or some other reasonably 'windowsy' editor instead. Those who want vi or emacs know how to fix it anyway...

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#155

Post by colordrops » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

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 works in a certain way. Once you understand it, the mechanism for exiting fits in just with the rest of the patterns. Why should they create a special case for exiting versus other operations? "Why is it so hard to search? Use ctrl-f instead of /" "Why is it so hard to cut and paste?" "why is it so hard to move the cursor?" You'd have a different editor if you changed the keybindings.

Vim's defining feature is the keybinding grammar, so it would no longer be Vim if you changed it.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#156

Post by thoth » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #95

masklinn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't it just quit? That's as stupid as Python's >>> quit Use quit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit The software knows perfectly well what I'm trying to do FFS.

So it actually doesn't, it's basically just a hack around the fact that the repl is basically: while True: print(str(eval(input()))) Case in point: >>> x = str(quit) >>> x 'Use quit() or Ctrl-Z plus Return to exit' I suppose you could implement quit.__str__ as sys.exit(0), if you really wanted to avoid this problem.

Whatever logic currently used to print the 'Use quit() or Ctrl-Z plus Return to exit' message could also... quit the REPL in the first place, right?

I don't program Python much but do its users constantly type "quit" but not actually want to quit such that the REPL special cases this situation?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#157

Post by lbebber » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #67

lucideer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prob…

There is a common convention, though, which is: don't use modal interfaces, modal interfaces are bad. The problem vim has is that its UI is entirely organized around modes, which makes the "people are terrible at using modal interfaces" problem a hard one for it to cope with.

Modal interfaces are not "bad".

They're often not intuitive, but intuitiveness is not the be-all and end-all of interfaces. It's a trade-off.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#158

Post by jjrh » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

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."

so forget about all the people who have used vi for decades?

It might make sense to have a bar at the bottom or top with some of the very very basic commands a new user may need (like quitting) that more experienced users can turn off with a command line option or a config value. (specifically if say you do crontab -e or something similar and had no intention of using vim and are now stuck)

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#159

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #3

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

C-x C-c.

It's too easy to hit accidentally, though. I got burned by it a few times, so I eventually unbound the command. I now use M-x kill-emacs when I want to quit (very rarely, anyway).

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#160

Post by dsp1234 » Tue, May 23, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #125

dsp1234 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA, https://zgab33vy595fw5zq-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/... It happens because people don't what they are doing. You assume that they hit ctrl+c, then immediately type :quit, but if they did, then they wouldn't be Googling it. They did something between trying to exit and quit that got them into a different mode.

I'm not assuming they're hitting Ctrl+C. What I'm saying is the screen that says VIM - Vi IMproved version 8.0.567 by Bram Moolenaar et al. Vim is open source and freely distributable Sponsor Vim development! type :help sponsor for information type :q to exit type :help or for on-line help type :help macvim for MacVim help disappears as soon as you enter insert mode (or really interact with Vim at all). If you're in…

Of course, yes. The above commenter mentioned insert mode and ctrl+c which is why I was missing that you particularly were talking about this one screen.