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Why I Still Use Vim

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Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#91
post #84
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely - electron developers are going to understand how to use browsers, but fixing the browser itself is the way to make it use less RAM. Maybe if they switch to Servo it might use a little less RAM, but inherently it's always going to be pretty heavy.

> electron developers are going to understand how to use browsers, but fixing the browser itself is the way to make it use less RAM. This to me is the crux of the issue. Github has a lot of great engineers but they're less likely to be versed in C/C++/whatever else is required to make this kind of thing truly succeed. It really begs the question of what Microsoft were thinking the day they decided to build Code on it…

Microsoft is thinking of portability as a primary. Also VS Code is a way better experience than Atom after having given Atom many chances. Microsoft wants to build tools anyone can use to enhance usage of their cloud platform offerings from any OS.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#92

As far as I can see from this article, Sublime text is faster than vim. That's astonishing considering that Sublime uses GUI and vim is a console editor. I also like vim, but Sublime + vintage ( vim-mode ) works good and you have the benefits of both worlds.

Sublime is only faster in startup time. It’s slower than vim on all others charts.

True, slower than Vim, but:

1) Replacing 10000 words took Sublime 6 seconds instead of Vim 4 seconds. Both very quick compared to the competition.

2) It is nowhere near as bloated as VSCode or Atom. More comparisons here [1].

3) In the "Rehighlight test" at [1], Vim is slower than Sublime as well. Vim fails with "Time to load 3 GB file, insert character at start and exit" [1] while Sublime loads in 75 seconds. Many editors choked on that. Some refused to try, other tried and failed/died.

4) Performance is going to differ per plugin and dotfile which is often a unique setup for pro users.

5) Arguably these don't compete with each other as Sublime is a GUI application while Vim is CLI. They don't necessarily attempt to cater to the same type of user. You could say the same about IDEs though.

Sublime has the reputation of being a closed source (proprietary), portable (running on all 3 major GUI OSes), GUI text-editor which is very quick [2] and great for development, particularly because it can be extended via plugins, and being JSON under the hood (config files). Its even free to use for non-commercial use, and doesn't nag the user about a software license except for mentioning UNREGISTERED at the bottom right. I prefer open source software, but in closed source software this is about as honest, kind, friendly as it gets.

[1] https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/editor-p...

[2] Quick as being perceived, as well as proven by these benchmarks.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#93

Hm, is medium experimenting with subscriptions? Getting a message saying that this is my first of 3 free articles (which they didnt even write themselv), 5$ after that per month

They have been doing that for some time. Not sure how effective this is.

Is “members-only” something writers can opt in to? That’s the impression I’m getting on this, but it’s difficult to find definite confirmation, though I finally find what I think is confirmation in the “Become a member to unlock a new layer of Medium:” section of https://medium.com/membership.

Alas, this evasive approach to disclosing precise information seems so often to be the case once money is involved; just yesterday I had to delve deep (as far as the T&Cs) to confirm that Zoos Victoria’s advertised “$9/month” membership actually means “$108/year, but you can pay in monthly instalments if you like”.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we'll see a Mozilla engine based Electron (or simply not the latest Chromium engine, which gets bigger and slower with every passing day)

xulrunner was effectively that a long time ago, and many apps shipped using it, but it got shot in the head. There are a couple apps still out there using forks of it, I think.

One is TomTom's Home Route Planner, I'm pretty sure it's based on Xulrunner, I need it to update my car's navigator system. Unfortunately it works only on Windos and Mac...

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#96

People can mount whatever defense they like of Electron, but the bottom line is, I think twice before I adopt any new Electron app. My daily drivers are a desktop replacement with 8gb of ram and an ultra-portable machine with 4gb. On 4gb it only takes a couple of Electron apps to eat half of my ram or more. Factor in the OS and a browser or two and it's already swapping. These are often just chat apps or something, t…

I wonder if we'll see a Mozilla engine based Electron (or simply not the latest Chromium engine, which gets bigger and slower with every passing day)

> the latest Chromium engine, which gets bigger and slower with every passing day

what?!?

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#97
> What about the amount of time necessary to open that same XML file, then move your cursor to the end of it? […] Vim takes around 4 seconds.

This will be a matter of syntax highlighting configuration. I’m presuming this means “open the file and press G”, in which case it’ll come down to the :syn-sync value; this defaults to 100 lines, which should be basically instantaneous, but my guess is that he’s got it going fromstart, or else possibly enabled g:xml_syntax_folding, because that’s really the only reason I can imagine why it would not be blazingly fast.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#98
The memory and start time complaints are a bit of a red herring. It's not like anybody is firing up a copy of VS.NET from scratch every time they want to edit a file.

In an IDE world, you fire up your environment once when you power on. For the next week or so until you reboot, opening a file is instant.

Granted, it uses memory in the background. But you have 32gb of it on your laptop. Keeping a couple of those in reserve to never have to edit code as though it were text seems like a fine trade off for those who choose to make it.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#99
post #84
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely - electron developers are going to understand how to use browsers, but fixing the browser itself is the way to make it use less RAM. Maybe if they switch to Servo it might use a little less RAM, but inherently it's always going to be pretty heavy.

> electron developers are going to understand how to use browsers, but fixing the browser itself is the way to make it use less RAM. This to me is the crux of the issue. Github has a lot of great engineers but they're less likely to be versed in C/C++/whatever else is required to make this kind of thing truly succeed. It really begs the question of what Microsoft were thinking the day they decided to build Code on it…

They’d already built a web based editor for cloud dev and ported it to electron as a desktop app afaik. They didn’t set out to make an electron editor.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#100

I really wanted to like Atom, but it always felt unfinished and clunky with crashes/freezing/locking becoming more of a regular occurrence with the more plugins or extensions you use. It's one saving grace is that I thought Sublime was a bit bulky/memory hungry, but Atom gave me a new found appreciation for Sublime which I'm now back in love with!

I used to love atom, but I started using it for Go recently and it crashes all the time. Every hour or so it crashes at least once, oftentimes more than once.
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