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Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

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Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#351

Post by nevatiaritika »

> It looks like developers in Ukraine, Turkey and Indonesia are getting stuck in Vim quite a bit: it makes up a larger portion of their Vim questions than in any other country. In contrast, in China, Korea and Japan the fraction going to this question is one-tenth as much. That might indicate that when developers in these countries enter Vim, they usually meant to do so, and they know how to get out of it.

I'd say no. I work in Japan and here everybody uses a Japanese equivalent of StackOverflow. This conclusion is so wrong.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#352

Post by kazinator »

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…

Hmm, it might have just been because "things like C-x C-c and stuff" sounds kind of dumb, not because it refers to quitting Emacs. Like imagine:

B. Kernighan: have you ever used Unix?

Student: No.

You: Hey, how about we start a Unix tutorial here; we can learn all about dollar-sign-1, and stuff.

B. Kernighan: * roll eyes *

:)

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#353

Post by flukus »

VLM wrote: post #288
jakub_g wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"inconsistent and complex flows to do some non-trivial things" Note that's a characteristic of bad design, not a characteristic of CLIs, where constraining the UI to GUI, will merely result in a hard to use GUI, instead of a hard to use CLI. Note that in an email or printed page I can provide any CLI walkthru and anyone can follow with minimal training ("Which key is the any key?"), but some purely graphical GUIs are…

There's a reason most desktop support still rely on the command line in the windows start menu.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#354

Post by flukus »

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…

> The same thing with vim using nonstandard way of quitting.

How do you quit man? How do you quit less?

'q' to quit is pretty standard in the TUI world.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#355

Post by photojosh »

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…

Best meeting story ever.

I met my wife in a physics lecture, and she credits me with her sticking with engineering, but your tale is better.

Important question: did she end up learning vi after that?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#356

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

6502nerdface wrote: post #346
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?

I'd venture that F1-F10 were more commonly used across various systems and F11+ were bonus keys.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#357

Post by flukus »

gnaritas wrote: post #229
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…

> My point is that just because something has a steep learning curve, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad design. It does if the app is aimed at companies with high turnover where said learning curve poses a continual problem for users.

If there is high turn over then the length of the learning curve is more important than the shape of it. Let's say there are two apps each with an employee starting, one requires two full days of training to be 90% proficient, the other allows for an instant start with a more gradual learning curve.

After 30 days of employment the first has spent 28 days at 90% efficiency, the other has had 7 days at 60% efficiency, 7, days at 80% efficiency etc.

A gradual learning curve could be much worse for companies with a high turn over.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#358

Post by flukus »

sirfz wrote: post #140
ChuckMcM wrote: post #45

I saw the bumper sticker ":w saves" and thought, to myself I wonder how many people "get" that. I suggested a long time ago that vi/vim bind ^C to exit. It currently is equivalent to 'esc' (it puts you into command mode if you aren't there and types the message "type :quit to exit Vim". I'd much rather it popped up 'exit vim? y/n?' and the next key would determine if you exited or not.

That looks more like emacs behavior though, vim rarely (never?) prompts the user for anything. You enter a command, you get a reaction (either an action like quits vim, or a message indicating something happened) -- which I personally prefer much more than getting annoying prompts.

Ever tried spacemacs? Creating a tab feels like playing 20 questions.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#359

Post by dba7dba »

bluedino wrote: post #48

Hah. Back in the old days, when I didn't have a second computer to look up help online, I just powered my Linux PC off if I accidentally got trapped in vim. Later on, I'd just close my PuTTy session. Then I finally took a little bit of time to learn vim.

Haha. I survived using vim JUST knowing Esc and :ws for years~.

I was in a hurry to learn Linux and knowing vim was you know required. So I just learned the most basic in vim. I don't want to think about how much time of my life I wasted because I didn't know more about vim. Classic lesson about technical debt costing time/money over long term...

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#360

Post by Houshalter »

boxfire wrote: post #334
Houshalter wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

^C as copy is an example of breaking well established patterns that screw new users. Its THE canonical example in fact.

I really don't care who is responsible or which came first. I'm only pointing out the inconsistency and the problems it causes.
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