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Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

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Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#471

Post by kccqzy »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #441
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rarely do I encounter a nix machine without it on there. Isn't it posix mandated?

yjftsjthsd-h, I'm curious so I looked it up but couldn't find anything. AFAIK POSIX only specifies operating system behavior and doesn't specify any actual apps but I could be wrong there. In any case, the rise of containerization has brought many nano Linux distributions that often have even fewer packages than even the most minimal distributions of years past.

No, actually POSIX does mandate awk to be present:

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/aw...

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#472

Post by michaelwsherman »

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…

A bit late to the convo here, but one of the things that really impressed me about the Bloomberg (my employer) Terminal is how they manage this old user vs. new user problem well.

The terminal looks like this now: https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/economics/images/bloomberg...

You can still do everything with the same keyboard shortcuts that have worked for 30+ years (pretty much everything with a number in front of it), and the layout of the screens generally don't change. But now everything on the mostly text-based view is clickable as well--everywhere you see a number you can click with a mouse.

Additional shortcuts are hidden behind menus, like "Settings" in the photo. But if you know the shortcut, no need to look at "Settings" first (which itself can be opened by typing 97 or clicking it).

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#473

Post by bobwaycott »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #460
bobwaycott wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone always makes fun of my thumb-operated trackball.

It's kind of funny watching people who've never used one try to adjust to it. My kids grew up with them and wouldn't use anything else. They have them on their laptops too. I hate laptop touch pads, the single worst UI ever put on computers.

Yeah, I mean, I try to explain the appeal, and nobody is even willing to give it a shot. I can't help but laugh when someone tells me how their Magic Trackpad thing is so much better. The precision is terrible, it doesn't improve on all the standard mouse type of constant wrist movements, and so on. Sometimes I joke that trackpads were meant for species that haven't evolved thumbs, or haven't learned how to use them. :)

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#474

Post by alvin0 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #419
cryptonector wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the only editing system that makes sense to me. That's because modal editing means fewer modifier-key combinations are needed, and no mouse is needed. Compare with.. any other editor, where the only thing that might save you from RSI is enabling sticky keys, and even then, if it isn't emacs you still have to heavily use a mouse. For a great number of tasks, being a vim or emacs pro means doing things faster tha…

To me, using "no mouse is needed" as a positive is like building a car that uses extra pedals to steer and saying "no steering wheel is needed". Mice are great. I want to use mice.

http://www.edkeyes.org/blog/050728.html Somewhat ironically, the inventor of the computer mouse, Douglas Engelbart, is still a bit critical of modern graphical user interfaces compared to the fuller vocabulary of, say, the command line. "Here's the language they're proposing: You point to something and grunt," he says.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#475

Post by JdeBP »

waldir wrote: post #131
bandrami wrote: post #66

(Attribution is questionable, but as a geezer I feel the need to make sure the younger generations at least are familiar with this:) ed is the standard text editor Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed: golem> ed ? help ? ? ? quit ? exit ? bye ? hello? ? eat flaming death ? ^C ? ^C ? ^D ? --- Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet pruden…

After reading lots of similar anecdotes about Ed (Steven Levy's "Hackers" dedicates quite a few words to it), I was quite sure it was pretty much unusable for today's UI patterns, but also morbidly curious about how it might eventually work. Then I came across "Actually using ed"[1], which did such a great job at explaining how to use the tool that I decided to throw in my 2 cents by submitting an entry to the tldr-p…

... and discussed on Hacker News recently at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113556 .

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#477

Post by JdeBP »

icc97 wrote: post #285
kevhito wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in (my) vim you don't. You get: > E37: No write since last change (add ! to override)

Yeah - I figured that was as close as Vim came to a prompt It is prompting you to add a !

It has closer things to prompts. Try editing a file when the last time around you terminated vim without giving it a chance to clean up its .*.swp file. (-:

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#479

Post by JdeBP »

fishywang wrote: post #109
ashark wrote: 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.

What are your thoughts on $VISUAL?

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#480

Post by JdeBP »

cryptonector wrote: post #384
colordrops wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VIM works in a certain way. Once you understand it, the mechanism for exiting fits in just with the rest of the patterns. Why should they create a special case for exiting versus other operations? "Why is it so hard to search? Use ctrl-f instead of /" "Why is it so hard to cut and paste?" "why is it so hard to move the cursor?" You'd have a different editor if you changed the keybindings. Vim's defining feature is th…

vi's defining characteristic, which vim inherits, is that it is _modal_. That means that it has modes, like input mode (where what you type is added to the file), and command mode (where what you type are commands to the editor). Modal editing is fantastic : it means you don't need a meta key, or multiple modifier key combinations to do things (for which your wrists will thank you!). It frees up keybindings for diffe…

It is not a characteristic peculiar to vim/vi. There have been several modal text editors over the years. TEDIT, for just one example.

* http://www.texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?T

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