Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim • Hacker News Board

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#311

Post by dllthomas » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:13 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #301

blhack wrote: 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 just hate programs that change patterns that are standard everywhere else. E.g. 99% of software uses control+c and control+v to do copy and pasting, so of course software that maps it to something totally different is going to be very frustrating. The same thing with vim using nonstandard way of quitting. Discoverability is another problem. You can have weird keyboard commands, but make it possible to find them wit…

Approximately 0% of terminal programs use control-c as copy. Conventions depend on context.

"Control-C sends SIGINT" has been a standard for longer than "Control-C means copy".

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#312

Post by isthisnagee » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:13 PM UTC

vladimir-y wrote: post #296

Want to edit text use Vim, want to edit code - use proper IDE.

Is code not ... text?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#313

Post by oblio » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:17 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #166

logicallee wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm requesting the exact syntax I just wrote. EDIT: the replies to this don't get how feature requests work. yes, I could write this basic feature myself. thanks.

So write a script and assign an alias.

You're missing his point. Defaults matter. A huge majority of users (80%?) never change the defaults, often for good reasons.

A minor usability investment on the part of 1-2 git developers would prevent thousands of hours wasted by newbies and perpetual intermediates (https://blog.codinghorror.com/defending-perpetual-intermedia...).

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#314

Post by kowdermeister » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #130

I'm going to be perfectly honest, I got trapped like this in vi, decided that anything so complicated to exit out of wasn't for me and stuck with nano ever since.

Perfectly sane thing to do, you are not missing much.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#315

Post by OJFord » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #46

dwyer wrote: post #9

Why would you ever exit vim?

Sometimes you'll need to update it for example.

It's presumably possible to update and spawn a new instance from inside vim, but I won't say it's sensible.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#316

Post by chpmrc » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #305

I met my wife because she was stuck in VI. I was a unix sysadmin in the early 90s, and she was a grad student. She came to me for help (like most of the 1st years did) because she couldn't get out of vi. However, to be fair, this was not her fault per-say. She actually knew how to use vi, but just couldn't find the ESC key. Does anybody remember the DEC keyboards where there was no traditional ESC key, but it was F11…

THIS is the "How I met your mother" we want.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#317

Post by chpmrc » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

draw_down wrote: post #84

Ugh, these types of editors drive me batty. Why can't it just be easy to quit? Why, why?! If I absolutely must use an editor in the terminal I use nano.

Nano? nah...no.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#318

Post by omni » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:27 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #251

omni wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(kill-emacs) C-x C-e Pretty straightforward.

> (kill-emacs) C-x C-e > Pretty straightforward If this is a joke, it's totally whooshing over my head right now

C-x C-e evaluates the Emacs Lisp expression before the point. This gives the same result as the much more obvious M-x kill-emacs, but with the added fun of writing and executing Lisp directly in whatever buffer you're in. So to close the editor, we've written some code in a weird ancient language into some random text file, fired up an interpreter that's probably so portable you can run it on a 1980s toaster, and executed an expression which we had to make sure was wrapped in those vile parentheses everyone loves to hate.

Straightforward.

But I just had to explain my own joke, so I'll go wallow in shame for the rest of the day. :(

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#319

Post by Houshalter » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:31 PM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #311

Houshalter wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just hate programs that change patterns that are standard everywhere else. E.g. 99% of software uses control+c and control+v to do copy and pasting, so of course software that maps it to something totally different is going to be very frustrating. The same thing with vim using nonstandard way of quitting. Discoverability is another problem. You can have weird keyboard commands, but make it possible to find them wit…

Approximately 0% of terminal programs use control-c as copy. Conventions depend on context. "Control-C sends SIGINT" has been a standard for longer than "Control-C means copy".

I'm well aware of that and the historical reasons that it's the case. I'm just using it as an example of breaking well established patterns that screw new users.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#320

Post by Crito » Tue, May 23, 2017, 10:37 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #240

Crito wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're changing the subject. You said: > that no actual user of the software has? It's not an iphone, it isn't meant for use by the general public. You're obviously wrong. Millions of users of the software have that problem. It is used by the general public. It's irrelevant whether they intended to be users of the software or not. No one decides on a distro based on the default text editor, and some people are still…

Changing the subject? Oh, I'm sorry. I could have sworn I was replying to you saying:

>Many of us get dropped into vim by accident.

>> It's not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.*

can be used for anything != should be used by everybody

>It is used by the general public.

Laughable.