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Vim 8.1

vim8.org

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Re: Vim 8.1

#21

Post by supermdguy »

kenneth wrote: post #12
ssijak wrote: post #2

I want to learn Vim and tried several times (with vim modes form Intellij mainly) but failed under pressure to get actual things done. I see great potential and I know I have to sacrifice 1-2 month of productivity to get up to speed but I fail every time.

Use real vim, not emulators. Emulators all suck, and won't teach you the right habits. Vim is also extremely powerful when customized to your needs. Build your own setup over time. Start with vanilla vim and add to it over time. If anything annoys you and requires too much manual repetition, it can probably be automated and streamlined. Force yourself to use Vim for everything, and soon enough it'll be second nature.…

What, specifically, is the problem with emulators that make them not teach the right habits? I get that emulators are likely more bloated and have less features than real vim/neovim. But, to me, that's not a dealbreaker, especially since it can be really convenient to use an emulator in an IDE.

Re: Vim 8.1

#22

Post by notheguyouthink »

Man I wish I could switch back to Vim. GUI frontends for Neovim has made me want Vim so bad, but I just can't get away from Kakoune. The model of select first, action after (reverse of vim) is so so much better for me. Kakoune just gives me so much clarity over I'm doing at any one time. I guessed too frequently in vim :/.

Re: Vim 8.1

#23

Post by notheguyouthink »

supermdguy wrote: post #21
kenneth wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use real vim, not emulators. Emulators all suck, and won't teach you the right habits. Vim is also extremely powerful when customized to your needs. Build your own setup over time. Start with vanilla vim and add to it over time. If anything annoys you and requires too much manual repetition, it can probably be automated and streamlined. Force yourself to use Vim for everything, and soon enough it'll be second nature.…

What, specifically, is the problem with emulators that make them not teach the right habits? I get that emulators are likely more bloated and have less features than real vim/neovim. But, to me, that's not a dealbreaker, especially since it can be really convenient to use an emulator in an IDE.

As an aside, there are GUIs coming out for Neovim that give you features of IDEs with 100% real backing of Vim/Neovim. Ie, it's actually Neovim, but the GUI is just a frontend with IDE bells and whistles.

Most are pretty young I believe, so maybe not ready for you. I'm sure it's coming though :)

Re: Vim 8.1

#24

Post by ben174 »

ssijak wrote: post #2

I want to learn Vim and tried several times (with vim modes form Intellij mainly) but failed under pressure to get actual things done. I see great potential and I know I have to sacrifice 1-2 month of productivity to get up to speed but I fail every time.

You're absolutely right that you have to sacrifice some productivity to get it done. I was lucky enough to have been working a graveyard NOC job for a few months and had nothing but time (when fires weren't burning). This gave me the opportunity to just immerse myself in VIM. It's easily been one of the best things I've ever done for my productivity.

Re: Vim 8.1

#25

Post by ivanche »

SeoxyS wrote: post #19
mdaniel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with vim modes form Intellij mainly Definitely don't do that. A well-written IDE should never make one express movement in terms of text because source code is only serialized as text, but the unit of movement should always be symbols. I love vim dearly, and it is an outstanding text editor , but no one should be programming in it when a more intelligent editor exists for the language. I have seen people trying to fi…

I'd love to see you swap the implementation two methods efficiently without vim. For me, just a few keystrokes: dim]mvimp2[mP and about 3 seconds. For you: a bunch of clicking and selecting, I imagine. This is just one example of many I could come up with. Code is text, and vim can easily be made to understand that text well.

Please try harder. Ctrl+Shift+Up (or Ctrl+Shift+Down), about 0.3 seconds.

Re: Vim 8.1

#26

Post by WorldMaker »

ssijak wrote: post #2

I want to learn Vim and tried several times (with vim modes form Intellij mainly) but failed under pressure to get actual things done. I see great potential and I know I have to sacrifice 1-2 month of productivity to get up to speed but I fail every time.

Have you tried to switch for a while to a laptop with no mouse, a terrible trackpad that hardly ever works, and painful to use and/or broken Home/End/Page Up/Page Down and Arrow keys?

It's partly a joke, but it is the "rip off the bandaid" style way to learn Vim. On a system like that you pretty much either learn Vim or perish. I had a Dell laptop like that in grad school which is where I probably used Vim the most consistently I'll ever use it in my life (and used all sorts of other fun key-focused things like xmonad and Vimperator then as well).

Re: Vim 8.1

#27

Post by yodsanklai »

jmcphers wrote: post #9
ssijak wrote: post #2

I want to learn Vim and tried several times (with vim modes form Intellij mainly) but failed under pressure to get actual things done. I see great potential and I know I have to sacrifice 1-2 month of productivity to get up to speed but I fail every time.

I've been a heavy Vim user for 20 years, and I hear people say this all the time. Recent converts especially love to write breathless blog posts exalting Vim's editing model as the One True Way, but the truth is that if your editing speed is the bottleneck for your productivity, you must surely be some kind of software engineering deity. There's absolutely no shame in sticking with a model that works for you if you'r…

Same here, I've been using Vim for a long time. The main reason is that I touch type and I really don't like to use the arrow keys. However, I really wonder if I'm really more productive using Vim rather standard shortcuts plus the trackpad.

Re: Vim 8.1

#28

Post by akavel »

ssijak wrote: post #2

I want to learn Vim and tried several times (with vim modes form Intellij mainly) but failed under pressure to get actual things done. I see great potential and I know I have to sacrifice 1-2 month of productivity to get up to speed but I fail every time.

I was in a similar situation, tried a few times but always bounced off. In the end, a job where I had to use vim (because connection to our remote dev machines was abysmally slow) forced me to learn it. I think that even then for some time I used to say that any love for vim is just a symptom of the Stockholm Syndrome. Then at some point I discovered the "quicklist" feature, which with :cex system('...') became my conversion point. Now I'm also fully in the "Stockholm Syndrome" victims† camp, and do love my oppressor, for a few years already... Only sometimes for faster browsing/reading with a mouse I switch to some "classical" IDE with a files pane and quick navigation, like IntelliJ or VSCode.

† "vi-ctims" pun not intended; but then...

Re: Vim 8.1

#29

Post by jsat »

jmcphers wrote: post #9
ssijak wrote: post #2

I want to learn Vim and tried several times (with vim modes form Intellij mainly) but failed under pressure to get actual things done. I see great potential and I know I have to sacrifice 1-2 month of productivity to get up to speed but I fail every time.

I've been a heavy Vim user for 20 years, and I hear people say this all the time. Recent converts especially love to write breathless blog posts exalting Vim's editing model as the One True Way, but the truth is that if your editing speed is the bottleneck for your productivity, you must surely be some kind of software engineering deity. There's absolutely no shame in sticking with a model that works for you if you'r…

I think editing friction can take a toll on your total mental energy. I also think that workspace automation can significantly improve the speed at which you complete a task. Vim macros make repetitive tasks on any size file a breeze.
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