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

371–380 of 489 posts

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#371

Post by rebootthesystem »

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…

Most people have no idea why vi made sense way back when (and, in my opinion, does not today).

I used VT100 terminals for years on both mainframe and CP/M systems. Keyboards were not very standardized before then, the mouse did not exist and most text editors had to use all sorts of convoluted commands to allow you to do anything.

http://www.vintagecomputer.net/digital/VT100/DEC_VT100_SYSBO...

I ran the first version of AutoCAD back then on a CP/M system with 64K of RAM, an S-100 RAMDISK card, an 8087 math co-processor on yet another S-100 card, another card with a graphics co-processor and a 1K x 1K CRT-based analog display. This is the reason AutoCAD has the console. You would type the commands on your VT-100 terminal and the graphics would happen on the stand-alone display. You had to load and unload modules based on what you were doing in order to control memory consumption. AutoLISP, the version of LISP included with AutoCAD, was invaluable.

Oh, yeah, 8 inch floppies and no hard drives.

Everything worked.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#372

Post by appleiigs »

ecshafer wrote: post #370
Houshalter wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried it and typing q does not seem to exit the program. Nothing I tried worked and I had to exit the whole terminal.

You have to type :q to quit. : Is the command mode.

Missing one step. :q

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#373

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#374

Post by linkmotif »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #371
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…

Most people have no idea why vi made sense way back when (and, in my opinion, does not today). I used VT100 terminals for years on both mainframe and CP/M systems. Keyboards were not very standardized before then, the mouse did not exist and most text editors had to use all sorts of convoluted commands to allow you to do anything. http://www.vintagecomputer.net/digital/VT100/DEC_VT100_SYSBO... I ran the first version…

Why doesn't it make sense today?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#375

Post by monochromatic »

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…

I wooed my wife by being able to solve a computer problem as well. Her laptop wouldn't boot, and she had a paper on the hard drive that needed to be submitted that day. "I have just the thing," I said, and I ran home to get my drive-to-USB adapter. Pulled her hard drive, recovered the paper, and printed it from my own laptop. The rest is history.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#376

Post by yohui »

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…

> I'm on chrome right now, and copy and paste is hidden away in a menu. And the keyboard shortcut for it isn't mentioned. How do you think people learned the keyboard shortcut in the first place?

Copy and paste are also in the right-click menu, and the keyboard shortcuts are shown there.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#377

Post by djrogers »

nevatiaritika wrote: post #351

> 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…

How is the conclusion wrong? If there is a cohort of developers in Japan that do use SO, then the statistics are still valid even if all developers in Japan don't use it.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#378

Post by wruza »

Houshalter wrote: post #360
boxfire wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^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.

Don't worry, in few years new bindings will be familiar to new people straight from their birth date. Then they will complain about changes and you'll tell them that changes were made long before.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#380

Post by dllthomas »

appleiigs wrote: post #372
ecshafer wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to type :q to quit. : Is the command mode.

Missing one step. :q

Actually, the missing step is the at the end.

The at the beginning is only necessary if you've already got into insert mode. That said, it'll not do any harm.

Post reply on HN