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Ten Years of Vim

matthias-endler.de

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Re: Ten Years of Vim

#11

Post by linsomniac »

One thing google can do that blows most peoples mind when I show them: Did you know vim supports time travel undo?

Sometimes you do some things then undo and redo trying to get back to a certain point in time. In vim you can step forward and back through all this by doing "g-" or "g+" to travel backwards or forwards in time. Or you can say ":earlier 50s" to go back to where you were 50 seconds ago.

Most editors treat undo as a linear thing, you undo and you redo. But once you undo and then do some things, it starts looking more like a tree than a line. It's not frequent, but sometimes I just need to say "I know what I had was what I wanted 5 minutes ago."

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#12

Post by Theodores »

One current problem I have with Vim is those linux distributions where someone - maybe the VPS vendor/hosting company - put in some mystery .vimrc file somewhere that makes the editor apparently more friendly for new users. So you copy and paste a line to your mysql config file, to restart the database service and find that nothing has changed. So then you edit the file again and discover that the mystery .vimrc file has added a '#' at the start of the line.

Another one that gets commonly messed with is the search. If you use '/' then you should expect the search to begin when you press the enter key, with the usual 'n' to go to the next match. But no, some mystery .vimrc file has made this more newbie friendly, so the search happens before pressing enter. Which is not what you want if standard, expected behaviour is expected.

For reasons of teamworking I have moved away from vim plugins in the IDE, for this I have had to buy a new keyboard. Normally I do not use a full keyboard as that number block on the right hand side has no value whatsoever to me. If I was right handed and did accounts then sure, that would be a handy feature, but the number pad is really just not helping for me, most of the time, particularly on a laptop where the numpad skews the keyboard off to the left hand side. I want the spacebar in the centre, not an inch or so off skewed to one side.

So my new discovery - the gaming keyboards that have the home/end and arrow keys but no number block - I think they are called 87 key keyboards. These are great if 'moving away from vim' as the 'home/end' keys make it easy to get to a start/end of a line. Under normal circumstances with vim there is no need for these extra keys, to add to the end of a line or the start is just a matter of using the right keystroke, just 'o' or 'a' is all that is needed with the magic that is vim.

Moving away from vim is quite dangerous, for a while you find programs breaking because there is a block of 'kkjjj' or an 'i' embedded in there somewhere!

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#13

Post by roylez »

pault wrote: post #8
archi42 wrote: post #4

Regarding tabs: I bound F2 to previous tab, F3 to next tab and F4 to new tab. Besides highlighting the current line, I think this is my most important customisation.

Isn't `gt` and `gT` faster? You don't have to move your hands!

It isn't. I use F11/F12 for previous/next tab, in tmux and browser, and I can confirm it.

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#14

Post by s_m_t »

linsomniac wrote: post #11

One thing google can do that blows most peoples mind when I show them: Did you know vim supports time travel undo? Sometimes you do some things then undo and redo trying to get back to a certain point in time. In vim you can step forward and back through all this by doing "g-" or "g+" to travel backwards or forwards in time. Or you can say ":earlier 50s" to go back to where you were 50 seconds ago. Most editors treat…

Very cool. Do you know if you can "mark" spaces in time to jump back to like you can spatially in vim? Sometimes I change a bunch of random stuff at once to try and get something to work, and perhaps this use case would be better suited to an actual git commit but I feel like a mark in time might be a good inbetween measure.

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#15

Post by ropeadopepope »

archi42 wrote: post #4

Regarding tabs: I bound F2 to previous tab, F3 to next tab and F4 to new tab. Besides highlighting the current line, I think this is my most important customisation.

I went a slightly different direction. CTRL+N is next buffer (ie: tab), CTRL+P prev buffer, LEADER+W for close buffer. I don't make new buffers a lot, so I just type out :new when I need to. Opening an existing file is LEADER+F, which opens fzy via vim-picker.

I reserve the F keys for toggles. F2 is set to pastetoggle. F3 turns numbers on and off. F4 turns special characters on and off.

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#16

Post by hzhou321 »

JepZ wrote: post #10

After using vim for a few years now, I noticed how I changed from thinking about text as characters to thinking about text as lines, which lets me create much cleaner code (independently from pretty printers). When I selected code via mouse in the past, I selected it from character to character. In vim I tend to think line-wise so I can yank, paste, delete code per line which makes sense in many scenarios.

I have been noticing this effect as well, and I was thinking that there needs to be a change in how we design programming languages. The old programming languages are treating characters or words as atomic units, but human mind does not really work at words. We work at sentences or lines. Each line can have its own context and can host more flexible syntax. On one hand, the programming languages can be more expressive when designed toward line units -- lines naturally can host more vocabulary than isolated words; on the other hand, the compilers and parsers can actually be simpler or smarter, as lines pose boundary of syntax and errors may be confined and easy to recover.

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#17

Post by rjkennedy98 »

Surprised to see that he's gone back to an empty vimrc after years with high customization. To me customization is such a great part of vim that I can't imagine being without it. For instance, I have shortcuts to find and replace on visual selection. I also have at least 5 plugins in my vimrc that are absolutely necessary for my workflow. Pure vim is nice if you need to occasionally edit files, but if you use it as your prime editor its not enough without customization.

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#18

Post by earenndil »

hzhou321 wrote: post #16
JepZ wrote: post #10

After using vim for a few years now, I noticed how I changed from thinking about text as characters to thinking about text as lines, which lets me create much cleaner code (independently from pretty printers). When I selected code via mouse in the past, I selected it from character to character. In vim I tend to think line-wise so I can yank, paste, delete code per line which makes sense in many scenarios.

I have been noticing this effect as well, and I was thinking that there needs to be a change in how we design programming languages. The old programming languages are treating characters or words as atomic units, but human mind does not really work at words. We work at sentences or lines. Each line can have its own context and can host more flexible syntax. On one hand, the programming languages can be more expressiv…

Lisp?

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#19

Post by markrian »

s_m_t wrote: post #14
linsomniac wrote: post #11

One thing google can do that blows most peoples mind when I show them: Did you know vim supports time travel undo? Sometimes you do some things then undo and redo trying to get back to a certain point in time. In vim you can step forward and back through all this by doing "g-" or "g+" to travel backwards or forwards in time. Or you can say ":earlier 50s" to go back to where you were 50 seconds ago. Most editors treat…

Very cool. Do you know if you can "mark" spaces in time to jump back to like you can spatially in vim? Sometimes I change a bunch of random stuff at once to try and get something to work, and perhaps this use case would be better suited to an actual git commit but I feel like a mark in time might be a good inbetween measure.

The closest thing I'm aware of is ":earlier {N}f", which "[Goes] to older text state {N} file writes before.".

So once you're somewhat happy with what you've got, write the file, and then continue editing, repeat, and you can revert back to any previous saved file state.

Re: Ten Years of Vim

#20

Post by crispinb »

JepZ wrote: post #10

After using vim for a few years now, I noticed how I changed from thinking about text as characters to thinking about text as lines, which lets me create much cleaner code (independently from pretty printers). When I selected code via mouse in the past, I selected it from character to character. In vim I tend to think line-wise so I can yank, paste, delete code per line which makes sense in many scenarios.

For mutating programs (as opposed to general text-editing), this text-centrism seems to me like a limitation. I use a combination of IntelliJ & emacs, and the former's deeper model of the programming language syntax definitely leads me to me thinking in terms of a syntax tree units rather than 'text', such that programming in emacs feels like going down a cognitive-abstraction step. The gap can probably be bridged with language servers (I haven't spent the time to look into what's available for the languages I use).
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