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Why I Still Use Vim

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Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#181

Post by melling »

icebraining wrote: post #178
melling wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, it’s time to reread this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/hardware-is-cheap-programmers-...

The whole point is that many programmers, even in Western Europe, are not that expensive. When one makes less than $20k/year, those "mere" $4k suddenly pay for a full trimester of work, rather than less than a month.

How about providing some facts instead of making it up as you go? Who's making less than $20k/year? Who can't afford to buy 16GB of RAM? It's $130 on Amazon.

I think I had this same conversation when someone told me that the average developer can't afford the $70 for Sublime Text.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#182

Post by icebraining »

melling wrote: post #181
icebraining wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is that many programmers, even in Western Europe, are not that expensive. When one makes less than $20k/year, those "mere" $4k suddenly pay for a full trimester of work, rather than less than a month.

How about providing some facts instead of making it up as you go? Who's making less than $20k/year? Who can't afford to buy 16GB of RAM? It's $130 on Amazon. I think I had this same conversation when someone told me that the average developer can't afford the $70 for Sublime Text.

Who's making less than $20k/year?

I did, for the past five years, working as a Python dev in my country of origin (Portugal). And I occasionally went to interviews, and the offers were not better than what I already made, nor did most of my college friends make more than that.

You can imagine how much some developer from an actual poor country makes.

Who can't afford to buy 16GB of RAM? It's $130 on Amazon.

Prices are higher here, but in any case, that's the wrong question. Those $130 are worth much more to a person making $20k/m, or to a company paying that much, especially since many costs (not just hardware) don't drop with the salary levels (and in some cases are quite higher, e.g. gas prices), and so even the share of disposable income, not just the absolute value, is much lower. So it'd be absurd to waste that meager margin on RAM just to use a fancier editor.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#183

Post by saghm »

(Meta comment on the dicussion here) I find it mind-boggling why so many people have such strong emotions about other people's preferences for things that don't affect them. While I have preferences for what editors I like to use, I don't understand why various strangers on the internet having different preferences would be so upsetting to people. Once you extend this to other areas of life, it becomes even more obviously silly; I personally find the smell and taste of bacon rather repugnant, but there are a lot of people who really enjoy it, and I don't feel the need to criticize them for it. Why should it be any different with text editors?

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#184

Post by melling »

icebraining wrote: post #182
melling wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about providing some facts instead of making it up as you go? Who's making less than $20k/year? Who can't afford to buy 16GB of RAM? It's $130 on Amazon. I think I had this same conversation when someone told me that the average developer can't afford the $70 for Sublime Text.

Who's making less than $20k/year? I did, for the past five years, working as a Python dev in my country of origin (Portugal). And I occasionally went to interviews, and the offers were not better than what I already made, nor did most of my college friends make more than that. You can imagine how much some developer from an actual poor country makes. Who can't afford to buy 16GB of RAM? It's $130 on Amazon. Prices ar…

If it's just a fancier editor then it's not worth investing any money into upgrading for anyone.

If you save 20 hours a year then it pays for itself. Everyone's economics are different, and the amount of time saved may be different. In the United States, you only need to save a few hours of work to make the upgrade worthwhile.

Fortunately, Atom is free so we can evaluate it to determine if it's worth the hardware upgrade.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#186

Post by thedonkeycometh »

I don't think Atom is meant to open huge files, its meant for web development work where files are relatively short, and work is split up.

So, i guess they don't have a test plan for large files, so they don't deliver something that can handle them, basically because its not meant to. And i'm ok with that. It gives me more than Vim.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#187

Post by sebastianconcpt »

maccard wrote: post #142
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #88

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.

Why ridiculous? I have the outcome you mention and more or less that metric. I have many methods that are one liners. As secondary benefit, it makes the code extraordinarily testable, reusable and flexible. When you code what's the prevailing paradigm you're using?

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#188

Post by jimktrains2 »

tombh wrote: post #102
jimktrains2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried emacs?

Yes, but it doesn't exactly have 'conventional' shortcuts either, right? It's a little more heavyweight over Vim as well. So in the light-but-powerful editor universe, I think Vim just pips it to the post. Which is why I use it, albeit with 'normal' shortcuts.

Depends on what you mean by conventional. It's the default key binding style in most terminals.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#190

Post by pjmlp »

melling wrote: post #144
icebraining wrote: post #133

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.

Around here the most lucky ones have 8 GB, while some still have machines with 4GB.
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