Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

stackoverflow.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 489 posts

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#341

Post by throwaway7645 »

srcmap wrote: post #162
geofft wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a “viitor”. Not a “emacsitor”. Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!" https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.txt

Using vi/vim lets one enter a secret dark corner of programmer society. Memorize vi keystrokes is knowing the secret handshakes. Able to Exit vim is finding the door to enlightenment. If vi comes with an easy "back" button like all browsers, no-one will learn it. One needs to be trapped inside for a while to feel the power of the dark side.

Is ":q!" really that crazy after 2 secs with Google?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#342

Post by emodendroket »

oblio wrote: post #313
emodendroket wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... ).

A feature like undo is never going to be implemented as a core thing because there are too many instances where it's not clear what it should do.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#343

Post by mattbgates »

I remember my first dealings with Vim. It was awful. I kept having to hit the X button and reconnect, only to find that nothing saved. I've since switched over to nano and prefer it over any editor in Linux. Easy to use, easy to save. That's how it should be!

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#344

Post by milesvp »

mattbgates wrote: post #343

I remember my first dealings with Vim. It was awful. I kept having to hit the X button and reconnect, only to find that nothing saved. I've since switched over to nano and prefer it over any editor in Linux. Easy to use, easy to save. That's how it should be!

Sadly, nano has (had?) the nasty habit of adding invisible characters on save (some combination of \r \n). I once almost got into a fist fight with a coworker over this, until he let me show him that his modifying the config was why some application kept crashing on restart.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#345

Post by codingninja »

hawski wrote: post #295

Reading title I thought that it will be about helping people switch to a different text editor. One that is not an improved version of a text editor from 70s. I am a vim user, but I want to switch to something different. I mainly use it now, because of inertia. Don't bother with replying how editing model of vim is still relevant today. Or how one should think about vim as a language - a verb and a motion. I know all…

Try Sublime Text, it has a VI mode that helps the move.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#346

Post by 6502nerdface »

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…

Interesting, wonder what the reasoning was for folding ESC into F11. Did ctrl-[ work, too?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#348

Post by void-star »

Am I the only person who clicked on this link hoping it would provide guidance and help on how to switch to a different text editor after being "poisoned" by vi for so long?

Whenever I write code (or anything else) in another editor I still always have to carefully check diffs to confirm I don't have any vi control mode characters interspersed with whatever I was writing.

But I still can't quit using vi for everything else or my productivity goes into the toilet.

vi why can't I quit you?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#349

Post by gadders »

jakub_g wrote: post #186
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 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…

Lotus 1-2-3 (the spreadsheet before Excel) used to have a text-based interface that people could rattle through.

It was so popular, you can still bring up 1-2-3 text menu equivalents in Excel by typing "/".

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#350

Post by entelechy0 »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #341
srcmap wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using vi/vim lets one enter a secret dark corner of programmer society. Memorize vi keystrokes is knowing the secret handshakes. Able to Exit vim is finding the door to enlightenment. If vi comes with an easy "back" button like all browsers, no-one will learn it. One needs to be trapped inside for a while to feel the power of the dark side.

Is ":q!" really that crazy after 2 secs with Google?

I always use ZZ
Post reply on HN