Vim plugins I use • Hacker News Board

Re: Vim plugins I use

#21

Post by snarfy » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

I gave up trying to make Vim into an IDE. It's a text editor. It's an excellent one, but that's what it does. The plugins just aren't very good. NerdTree is not a good file browser. None of the autocomplete/intellisense works very well. It does work, but requires a lot of setup, and let's be honest, a TUI isn't the best way to interact with autocomplete dropdowns.

Most of the IDEs have vim like features or plugins. It works a lot better the other way - make your IDE into Vim.

Re: Vim plugins I use

#22

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

farresito wrote: post #16

wrboyce wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate your comment, we can already guess that you believe the packages you have chosen to be “the best” at their job. Without further narration (and I’ve only singled you out due to being the topmost comment), comment sections like this have a tendency to become a dumping ground for vimrc snippets. Could you expand on why? Personally I’d be particularly interested on your thoughts about vim-plug, as I us…

- You can update all the plugins with PlugUpdate; furthermore, they are updated in parallel. - You can lazy load plugins - You can execute commands after a plugin update (e.g. building the new binary for youcompleteme) Those are the major points I think.

Lots of people like plugin managers. I prefer to use "git clone" and "stow". Much less magical, and I feel I have a better understanding of what's going on with my configuration.

Re: Vim plugins I use

#23

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #10

How is the plugin management in vim? I use emacs and it’s a pain to setup. You need to modify a config file (.emacs) in order to add plugin lists (melpa). You then browse the list through a shortcut (M-x list-packages) and you only see names, no description or ways to look for something specific. Once you installed your plugins there are no real way to access a manual or learn them. Often you will need to modify conf…

[deleted]

Re: Vim plugins I use

#24

Post by steeef » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

nerdwaller wrote: post #20

SebNag_ wrote: post #9

Missing the most important one: https://valloric.github.io/YouCompleteMe/ :)

I’ve moved from YouCompleteMe to Deoplete. While YCM is good, the plugin support for deoplete seems a bit more extended and easier to set up (ymmv). Maybe I just messed something up every time I tried to rework my vimrc with YCM though, it’s probably likely :D

+1 for Deoplete. As long as you're using NeoVim or a more recent version of Vim (8.0+) with a few plugins, it just works.

Re: Vim plugins I use

#25

Post by nsomaru » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

clircle wrote: post #7

As an Emacs user, I'm so curious about vim packages. Does vim have packages that are akin to adding a major mode in Emacs? Some of the packages on this list look like the vim version of minor modes or little helper functions.

Vim has a limited number of "modes" -- insert, normal, command and visual. These are not analogous to Emacs modes AFAICT. A vim package/plugin typically modifies/enhances behaviour in these modes. Where they can, useful operations are bound to a key combination.

You spend most of your time in Vim (when editing) in normal mode, executing deft movements and register usage to behave as a surgeon upon the text, as it were. Vim's noun/verb with multipliers make this an effective editing paradigm. Enlightened users have reported "thinking in Vim."

Vanilla Emacs to a vim user feels like you're always in "insert" mode. Chording everything felt a little weird, and I gave up on evil-mode because it wasn't vim enough for me.

Re: Vim plugins I use

#26

Post by xur17 » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #21

I gave up trying to make Vim into an IDE. It's a text editor. It's an excellent one, but that's what it does. The plugins just aren't very good. NerdTree is not a good file browser. None of the autocomplete/intellisense works very well. It does work, but requires a lot of setup, and let's be honest, a TUI isn't the best way to interact with autocomplete dropdowns. Most of the IDEs have vim like features or plugins. I…

I've tried using vim plugins with different editors before, but they're always missing a few of the shortcuts that are in my muscle memory and drive me crazy.

Also, being able to ssh into any machine and remotely edit code is pretty awesome.

Re: Vim plugins I use

#27

Post by h43z » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

The build in vim alternatives for

nerdtree :E

fuzzy finding :e /index (index being part of filename)

autocompletion while in insert mode and typing word

Re: Vim plugins I use

#28

Post by ddevault » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

This list is far from conservative. Vim isn't an IDE and shouldn't be made into one - effective vim users ^z out of vim and use Unix as their IDE.

Here's my more conservative plugin list:

https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/.vimrc

fugitive: I use this for the sole purpose of :Gblame because the command line blame tool that ships with git is frustrating to use.

ctrlp is there for opening files quickly in large codebases. It's better than NerdTree and fits more nicely into my workflow.

surround should be built into vim.

editorconfig is useful because I work on a large variety of projects.

The rest of the plugins are syntax highlighting related. ctrlp and surround are the only ones which meaningfully change the experience of using vim.

Re: Vim plugins I use

#29

Post by JackCh » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #21

I gave up trying to make Vim into an IDE. It's a text editor. It's an excellent one, but that's what it does. The plugins just aren't very good. NerdTree is not a good file browser. None of the autocomplete/intellisense works very well. It does work, but requires a lot of setup, and let's be honest, a TUI isn't the best way to interact with autocomplete dropdowns. Most of the IDEs have vim like features or plugins. I…

I've never liked nerdtree, everybody seems to suggest it but I never saw any utility in what it does. Why would I want a filebrowser taking up an entire window in vim when I have wildmenu command line completion for :e and, for deeper directory trees, fzf (although I only started using that recently, nerdtree never made sense to be before then either)?

I do wonder what your gripe with the autocomplete dropdown is though, vim's built in TUI completion dropdown (this isn't something plugins invented, it's in Vim by default) seems to work just fine for me. The only completion plugin I use is supertab, which I understand to be dated and out of vogue these days, but it gives me continuity with command line completion being triggered by my tab key. The dropdown works exactly like I'd expect it to; tab and shift-tab to cycle up and down, and enter to select a completion. If I continue typing with it open, it refines the suggestions on the fly. I'm not sure what else I should ask for.

Re: Vim plugins I use

#30

Post by nicodjimenez » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #21

I gave up trying to make Vim into an IDE. It's a text editor. It's an excellent one, but that's what it does. The plugins just aren't very good. NerdTree is not a good file browser. None of the autocomplete/intellisense works very well. It does work, but requires a lot of setup, and let's be honest, a TUI isn't the best way to interact with autocomplete dropdowns. Most of the IDEs have vim like features or plugins. I…

I totally agree that the plugins aren't great.

I never was able to leave VIM though. The reason is that it works so well over SSH and I don't like the context switching from VIM to IDE.

Also IDE's always end up crashing or lagging at some point. When you're in the coding mindset this can really upset me greatly.

What IDE do you use?