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Coming Home to Vim

stevelosh.com

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Re: Coming Home to Vim

#41

Post by stevelosh »

steve19 wrote: post #38
kevincolyar wrote: post #13

If you're a vim user on a mac, try ViKing. It lets you use vi-like navigation throughout OSX. It's still in beta and I would love some feedback. http://vikingapp.com @vikingapp

The kevincolyar account does nothing but spam HN with links to his application. I am sick of seeing him post spam each time a VIM article hits the homepage.

I'm the author and submitter of the post and for what it's worth I don't mind his comment at all.

It's relevant because OS X Vim users would probably like to use Vim movement everywhere. I know I would.

It's certainly more relevant than the "use emacs lol" comments that inevitably show up.

Re: Coming Home to Vim

#42

Post by jjcm »

boskone wrote: post #21

Don't lose another four years before blogging about how you finally switched to emacs from vim and bite the bullet now. Emacs is to vim as vim is to textmate IF you are a hard core software developer. Vim is best for sysadmins, simple, quick non-complex editing. I know, I know... But when you were newly in "love" with textmate I'm sure if I said you need to switch to vim you'd say no way. Skip vim and go right to the…

From the HN Guidelines: "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

You have nothing new here, nor do you have any evidence to back up your claim that emacs is superior to vim for development purposes. I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with you here - I don't have the authority to as I don't have enough experience with Emacs to make that call. Emacs is a great piece of software, and I think that we can all agree upon that here even if we aren't a user of it (such as myself), but that doesn't mean we can make un-cited statements about it.

Re: Coming Home to Vim

#43

Post by stevelosh »

[deleted] wrote: post #40
silentbicycle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and once your fingers are raw, bloody stumps from typing with three modifier keys held down, then you can write about coming home to vim again! Bonus! Seriously, can we not start yet another Emacs vs. vi argument? Neither is perfect, they both have ardent fans, pick either, get really proficient with it, and don't look back. (Emacs user who loves Emacs's extensibility and multi-buffer design but prefers vi's modal…

[deleted]

Please elaborate on why modal vs. chord is specious. The Vim people and E authors don't seem to think it's wrong, so the explanation isn't obvious.

I'm not being sarcastic -- I'd love to hear an argument that modal editing doesn't matter, because it's one of the core features of Vim (probably the core feature) that draws me to the editor.

Re: Coming Home to Vim

#44

Post by kevincolyar »

steve19 wrote: post #38
kevincolyar wrote: post #13

If you're a vim user on a mac, try ViKing. It lets you use vi-like navigation throughout OSX. It's still in beta and I would love some feedback. http://vikingapp.com @vikingapp

The kevincolyar account does nothing but spam HN with links to his application. I am sick of seeing him post spam each time a VIM article hits the homepage.

I'm just trying to get what I think is a useful application into the hands of the people who would find it useful. If you find that irritating, just keep scrolling by.

Re: Coming Home to Vim

#45

Post by kevincolyar »

stevelosh wrote: post #24
kevincolyar wrote: post #13

If you're a vim user on a mac, try ViKing. It lets you use vi-like navigation throughout OSX. It's still in beta and I would love some feedback. http://vikingapp.com @vikingapp

I've given you feedback before, but will repost it here for other HN readers. The main reason I don't use ViKing is that the hotkeys all end up shadowing something useful or being very awkward. If I choose Ctrl I shadow Ctrl+H. If I choose Cmd I shadow lots of stuff, like Cmd+L in a browser. If I choose Alt (ViKing doesn't do that right now, but I'll assume it could be added) it's quite awkward (unless I remap capslo…

Sorry I haven't fixed this yet. I've been swamped with other projects.

I was thinking about it tonight... what do you think of some kind of double-tap combo that would enable/disable ViKing functionality, like ctrl-ctrl?

Re: Coming Home to Vim

#47

Post by astrofinch »

stevelosh wrote: post #35
astrofinch wrote: post #31

After a few months of vim use, I did part of the vim tutorial using both vim and a click-and-type editor (gedit) and timed myself. Gedit was significantly faster. Can't say I understand you vim fanatics.

If you say why Gedit was faster perhaps us vim fanatics can help you understand us.

Let's say I need to change a word. With Gedit, I double-click the word and retype it the right way. With Vim, I press j until I'm on the line where the word is, then I press w until I'm at the beginning of the word, then I press cw to change the word, retype it the right way, and press escape to go back to command mode.

Triple-clicking in Gedit highlights a line. Triple-clicking and dragging highlights a contiguous group of lines. In Vim, I'd need to move to the line I want to begin my selection on ([number]G or jjj), then press V, then press jjj until everything is selected. And I don't have to deal with the fact that the default way of deleting things overwrites the default clipboard either.

I do use Vim when I need to process lines in a text document (with macros), when I'm editing files on a server, or when I'm writing a git commit message. I suppose I could use Vim in much the same way as Gedit through its mouse capability, but I dislike the lack of interface between my system clipboard and Vim's, and the fact that when I paste code in to a Vim document, the indentation gets all screwed up.

Re: Coming Home to Vim

#49

Post by Symmetry »

astrofinch wrote: post #47
stevelosh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you say why Gedit was faster perhaps us vim fanatics can help you understand us.

Let's say I need to change a word. With Gedit, I double-click the word and retype it the right way. With Vim, I press j until I'm on the line where the word is, then I press w until I'm at the beginning of the word, then I press cw to change the word, retype it the right way, and press escape to go back to command mode. Triple-clicking in Gedit highlights a line. Triple-clicking and dragging highlights a contiguous g…

Generally, if you know where you're going its a lot faster to just start typing a search until you get to the word you want than to mess around with j and w (why incremental search isn't default eludes me). I won't claim that will always be faster than a mouse, but it should narrow the difference a lot.

I totally agree with you about the clipboard issues though.

Re: Coming Home to Vim

#50

Post by [deleted] »

stevelosh wrote: post #43
[deleted] wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Please elaborate on why modal vs. chord is specious. The Vim people and E authors don't seem to think it's wrong, so the explanation isn't obvious. I'm not being sarcastic -- I'd love to hear an argument that modal editing doesn't matter, because it's one of the core features of Vim (probably the core feature) that draws me to the editor.

[deleted]
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