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Why I Still Use Vim

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Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much simpler: If Atom is so resource hungry, and I have alternatives which are not = IMHO the editor is a bad editor. Use whatever you like, but it looks like the most important thing is that you like it, not that it's resource hungry. > Not to mention that a 6MB file is pretty fucking big for something like atom. This it the most funny part of your comment. I want my editor to open my files as they are. Some pe…

I'm not blaming the file, i'm saying that using a hammer as a drill is silly, and that it's not the screw nor the hammer's fault, it's the user's. Atom was designed as an editor for web developers. They took some trade offs when building it, and because of that opening large files is difficult for it. When I need to open large files, I use tail, or ed, or notepad++, or just grep or something else. It's not that the A…

> I'm not blaming the file, i'm saying that using a hammer as a drill is silly, and that it's not the screw nor the hammer's fault, it's the user's.

Except in this case, we're comparing two hammers - just different brands. If we were trying to use Microsoft Word to code, you'd have a point.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#142

I see large files as data to process instead of editing. Those sizes are unmanageable for editing. Doing an exceptional hack is fine, but normal workflow? If a file has more than 200 lines isn't time to think refactoring some component to aother file, and so on? Said that, I find Atom to be a good toot but also scandalous as pointed by the article. For me becomes a non-issue because I never find myself needing to edi…

200 lines? That's ridiculous. We have methods longer than 200 lines in our code. Splitting it into smaller methods would be a waste of time, and would make th code more complex. None of the logic is reusable, the intention is well documented and the code is all in one place, rather than having to jump around to 5 diffeeent files and step in to 1 line methods.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#143
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Atom is a more capable "IDE" than any other IDE i've ever used That says more about you than it does about atom. You should check out the IDEA line of IDEs sometimes.

I can literally hear when my coworkers have IntelliJ open. People are here griping about Atom's memory use, but using 1GB of memory is an order of magnitude better than obliterating my battery by pegging my CPUs. No thanks.

To be fair, Atom isn't to friendly to the CPU either, especially when it's loaded to the brim with plugins!

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have similar complaints about Idea. So your complaint is only different because Atom happens to eat a bit more memory. Do you know that Emacs means "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping"? See, it's wasn't different 30 years ago. One can easily build a workstation with 128 GB memory if he's making money with it, it's not very expensive, so 1 GB of RAM would be less than 1%. I don't see much issues,…

One can easily build a workstation with 128 GB memory if he's making money with it That's a very narrow perception of the profession. There are developers making money all over the world, and hardware prices don't scale down according to national salary levels. Even in Western Europe, that's more than a month's salary for a medium-level developer in some countries.

How much RAM does the average developer have?

I’ve got 16GB in both my 7 year old iMac and 4 year old MacBook Pro. I’ll probably get a new computer next year with 32GB of RAM. I don’t think an editor using 1G-2G matters to me.

I don’t currently use Atom but if they innovate faster and eventually build a better editor, many devs will choose it.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#145
post #6

These kinds of comparisons always seemed a bit silly to me. It's like complaining that opening a 6MB file in windows took over 3GB on my system! (ignoring that most of that is the OS getting ready to do other things, and enabling the OS to do things other than opening and reading a 6MB file). Yes, Atom isn't the most resource friendly editor out there, and nobody is claiming it is. But it is one of the more capable e…

This is ridiculous. I just should not complain that some program is useless and terribly resource hungry? What will be next? "Stop complaining that the browser uses 10GB of ram to show a page, as it is bigger than standard page"? This is just ridiculous. For showing the html I just use multiple browsers. My page must look good in multiple browsers, not in my editor. For the whole environment I just consoles with full…

> Should I be just a brainless monkey, and be happy that it's fine? Well, my machine has lots of ram, but I need it to some other things as well.

To do what ? Open another terminal ? /s

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#146
post #6

These kinds of comparisons always seemed a bit silly to me. It's like complaining that opening a 6MB file in windows took over 3GB on my system! (ignoring that most of that is the OS getting ready to do other things, and enabling the OS to do things other than opening and reading a 6MB file). Yes, Atom isn't the most resource friendly editor out there, and nobody is claiming it is. But it is one of the more capable e…

Aren't all that bells and whistles with Atom that people say boost productivity making the app feel slugish and actually slow the user down when waiting or destracting him with stuff he doesn't need?

I'm probably repeating what everyone else says in response to this post but I wanted to question OP's basic point against the article, which is resource consumption vs gained productivity.

After all it is supposed to be a text editor and I'm not sure it really fits in the text editor category. It is best compared to IDEs imo.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can easily build a workstation with 128 GB memory if he's making money with it That's a very narrow perception of the profession. There are developers making money all over the world, and hardware prices don't scale down according to national salary levels. Even in Western Europe, that's more than a month's salary for a medium-level developer in some countries.

How much RAM does the average developer have? I’ve got 16GB in both my 7 year old iMac and 4 year old MacBook Pro. I’ll probably get a new computer next year with 32GB of RAM. I don’t think an editor using 1G-2G matters to me. I don’t currently use Atom but if they innovate faster and eventually build a better editor, many devs will choose it.

The average is 8g still running windows 7.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#148
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to like Atom, but to claim it's a "bad editor" for everyone is silly. You can use multiple browsers to preview, I prefer to have it in the editor which makes it easier to switch between (same argument for code tabs vs windows). I still test and work in multiple browsers to ensure compatibility, but being able to get the rough parts laid out in the editor itself and fix/develop on things that are the sa…

> I don't need a car that goes 200MPH but that doesn't mean every F1 car is entirely useless, just that it's designed for a different purpose. Those cars use huge resources for extreme performance. I don't think Atom provides extreme performance even after using extreme resources.

Page polution - most mid-tier desktop software developers today don't even know what it is

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#149
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't need a car that goes 200MPH but that doesn't mean every F1 car is entirely useless, just that it's designed for a different purpose. Those cars use huge resources for extreme performance. I don't think Atom provides extreme performance even after using extreme resources.

It depends on what you consider "performance". An F1 car is going to be the worst tow truck in existence. It's "towing performance" is basically a 0/100. Atom's "extreme performance" for me is in my productivity. the 2GB of ram that my atom windows are currently using is a very very small price to pay for better productivity. Even if Atom were so resource hungry that I needed to buy a new laptop every other year for…

> Atom's "extreme performance" for me is in my productivity.

Thats fair. I also find Nissan sentra lot more productive than high perf cars. But if I claim it is extreme performance car in a room full of people, I do not know people will be polite or laugh me out of room.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#150
post #135

I didn't realize why I hated some of the concepts behind vim until I saw a recent article that explained the creator of vi was using the older style keyboard with esc and control keys in more convenient places as well as arrow graphics where movement keys are in vi. I know I would have loved it back then but I also know that if it were created today decisions would be very different and could be better right from the…

Yeah, vim with a standard querty layout is just painful. I have a few configs floating about that swap esc & tilde, turn caps into another control. Using Vim with anything else is a quick way to destroying my pinky.

A few years ago I started rebinding my window controls to be more Vim like (alt-j/k instead of cmd-tab and the like) and noticed less strain. Eventually installed Vimium in Chrome so I could browse using my keyboard and noticed similar reduction of strain. Did you know you can enable vi-editing in your shell with `set -o vi`? Oh god now I've installed Xmonad and the vi bindings are everywhere. Four shells on a desktop, devtools over there alt-HL for monitor control, flick the J to swap windows, build scripts singing along the bottom.

It's fucking horrible and I love it. Vim is love, Vim is life.

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