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Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

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Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it is, I don't see the relevance of this comment.

Exclusively used by Middle Aged Computer Scientists . E.M.A.C.S.

Still not relevant (the earlier comment; this comment does help clarify your intent in the other one). Hacker News isn't Reddit or Slashdot.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#182
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.

In Jessie, visudo lands you in nano, unless you explicitly set the $EDITOR.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#183
post #110
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us get dropped into vim by accident.

That's your distro's problem, not vim's. There is no reason to fuck up vim just because distros are poorly configured.

Perhaps an alternative is a "first run" mode which could do something like ask "did you intend to open vim? Y/N (answering N will close vim)". If you answer Y then you get a lesson in closing vim, if N then you always get the "first-run" mode until you answer Y?

The impact on vim users would be virtually nil whilst also respecting that non-vim users are caused problems. Who is most to blame is not usually the most helpful focus.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#184

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.

It’s tremendously important to realize that Vim comes from a VERY long line of text processing utilities that stretches back over a half a century. Vim is the result of constant iteration on a set of design ideas and conventions that predates it. `Q` for `Quit` is one of the oldest Vim commands, tracing its roots all the way back to the `QED` editor of the 1960s[1]. Changing it now would be foolish.

[1] http://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20150203071645/http://cm.b...

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#185
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took the modal interface away from vim, you wouldn't have vim anymore. If you don't want a modal interface, don't use vim. You may as well expect Porsche to move the 911's engine to the front.

> If you took the modal interface away from vim, you wouldn't have vim anymore. If you don't want a modal interface, don't use vim. The vast majority of people don't use vim, so this "solution" has already been widely adopted. (Which in turn causes people who like vim to periodically wonder why more people don't use it.) The problem comes because there are scenarios where you don't have a choice as to which editor to…

> you don't have a choice as to which editor to use

Like... nano? Or pico? All quite broadly available, and easy as dirt to use. You can even use them to work with `visudo`, one of the few times where I could imagine you don't have a choice.

Also, if you can edit it remotely over SSH, you can scp it in two directions and use your own favorite editor (assuming that editor doesn't already have something like network editing already built in; most do).

If you "don't have a choice", you're not looking hard enough.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#186
post #171

I spent almost 10 years doing IT for a company whose backend was based entirely on as/400. If you've ever used a system like that, I'm sure you know where this is going... The console's that the front-desk or clerical users used every day had a steep learning curve. It was something that you would definitely not be able to walk up to and just intuit. However , once you figured it out, there is never going to be a fas…

I work for a reservation systems company (a GDS) that is used by thousands of travel agencies. Of course, since the system was created 30 years ago, you were only able to create reservation with a text-based interface at the time, with short commands, inconsistent and complex flows to do some non-trivial things etc. So it's despised by newcomers because learning curve is steep.

However, the company has been building new web-based solutions for a while, but all of them have so called "cryptic mode" where you can still directly input the commands, as it is order of magnitude faster, mandatory feature for experienced old-timer travel agents.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#187
I remember getting stuck in emacs as a teenager on my only computer and having to just hold the power button down to get out because I had no way to search the Internet for the exit command. Haven't used emacs since. Good times.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#189

The last graph shows, of people who get stuck in vim what language they use the most. This means this could just be a graph of the most used programming languages. eg if there is a uniform 10% probability that anyone will get stuck in vim. I would find it interesting to see a graph that show what percent of each language's users get stuck in vim.

The latter is indeed what that graph is showing: what percentage of each language's users get stuck in Vim (or more precisely what % of their Vim visits are to that question). It's not being confused with the most used programming languages.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git bash on windows has vim as the default editor when editing commit messages

Maybe someone should file a bug to them? I don't think vim is a sane default value for EDITOR, but I have no idea whether there's any sane alternative on Windows.

I believe POSIX defines vi as mandatory visual text editor, which makes it present on any compliant OS and thus a sane default value for EDITOR.
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