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Where Vim Came From

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Re: Where Vim Came From

#131

Post by cup-of-tea »

raverbashing wrote: post #125
cup-of-tea wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very difficult to do with free software and completely irrelevant really. At some point in your life it's OK to accept that you're the weird one. We're the weird ones. Donald Knuth, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, Rich Hickey et al are the weird ones. I don't know why emacs is such a barrier to everyone else or why vim is so attractive. But I don't understand most other humans about most things.

Ok let me be very honest here, let's look at both editors learning curves - vi/vim You need to learn to open a file, edit it, move around and exit and the edit/view mode. Everybody learns how to do it. At first it sucks but you can learn this in 5 min. Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore. From there you can learn other things - Emacs You try reading anything about it, there'…

> You need to learn to open a file, edit it, move around and exit and the edit/view mode. Everybody learns how to do it. At first it sucks but you can learn this in 5 min.

> Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore.

All of that applies to emacs too. What's the difference?

> Usability problems are never the fault of the user.

That's contrary to the old saying: a bad workman always blames his tools.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#132

Post by kamaal »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #71
j0e1 wrote: post #38

> While Emacs certainly still has a following, some people think that the Editor Wars are over and that Vim won.16 The 2018 Stack Overflow Developer Survey suggests that this is true; only 4.1% of respondents used Emacs. I'm an Emacs user for years now and love the editor. But I'm curious about this claim of its poor popularity. The article refers to a piece from http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Bea…

Very difficult to do with free software and completely irrelevant really. At some point in your life it's OK to accept that you're the weird one. We're the weird ones. Donald Knuth, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, Rich Hickey et al are the weird ones. I don't know why emacs is such a barrier to everyone else or why vim is so attractive. But I don't understand most other humans about most things.

>>I don't know why emacs is such a barrier to everyone else or why vim is so attractive.

Its simple. Its called 'The Rise of Worse is better'.

Mainstream programming tools moved out of the control of power users long back, like decades back. We are now in a phase where every thing has to be 'easy' to use. Editors too are a part of it.

Look at the continuing rise in interest in languages like Python and Go, and decline in interest in languages like Lisp and Perl. People don't want to invest any time in learning and sharpening their skills more than what is minimally necessary. In fact Go's popularity shows people don't need anything at all. Just give people decision statements, and loops. That is all they need. Selling power user tools to this crowd is asking them to spend their meagre 40-hr work week time budget on things they never even want to.

Basically bulk of programming moved to API plumbing work long back, and they are not coming back ever.

When the James Damore memogate episode was playing out in prime here, there were full articles posted on this very forum about the 'problems with nerd culture'- Which basically involved people spending time outside work to learn more things as inherently being anti-diversity, evil-like and a big problem to those people who want to do the 40 hour week happily go through their jobs.

Basically the world is only getting dumber.

Worse is Better.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#133

Post by hyperpallium »

People think seeing more lines at once - biggers displays, multiple monitors - makes them more productive.

Let's compare what the people in this article accomplished and how many lines they could edit at once:

  C, unix - 1 line
  BSD unix - 24 lines
(Not really fair, as a hardcopy has many lines).

> Vim is the most popular text-mode (i.e. terminal emulator) editor

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of programming is done in an IDD, not a terminal.

> good ideas accumulated gradually over time. ... enjoyed contributions from some of the greatest minds in the computing world.

A bigger factor is preseving investment in muscle memory. e.g. The choice of hjkl was not genius (any more than qwerty). But why change once fluent?

Re: Where Vim Came From

#134

Post by JD557 »

zealsham wrote: post #127
raverbashing wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok let me be very honest here, let's look at both editors learning curves - vi/vim You need to learn to open a file, edit it, move around and exit and the edit/view mode. Everybody learns how to do it. At first it sucks but you can learn this in 5 min. Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore. From there you can learn other things - Emacs You try reading anything about it, there'…

Have you tried exiting vim? :D

I know this was intended as a joke, but exiting vim is now much easier than exiting emacs (IMO), assuming that the user has some experience with UNIX and uses `Ctrl+C` to exit most programs.

If I start vim and press `Ctrl+C` I get an helpful message saying "Type :qa and press to abandon all changes and exit Vim".

If I do the same on emacs, first the help screen disappears (which was the one telling me to use `C-x C-c` to exit emacs and then I just get stuck with an unhelpful message about creating new files.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#135

Post by raverbashing »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #131
raverbashing wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok let me be very honest here, let's look at both editors learning curves - vi/vim You need to learn to open a file, edit it, move around and exit and the edit/view mode. Everybody learns how to do it. At first it sucks but you can learn this in 5 min. Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore. From there you can learn other things - Emacs You try reading anything about it, there'…

> You need to learn to open a file, edit it, move around and exit and the edit/view mode. Everybody learns how to do it. At first it sucks but you can learn this in 5 min. > Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore. All of that applies to emacs too. What's the difference? > Usability problems are never the fault of the user. That's contrary to the old saying: a bad workman always…

> All of that applies to emacs too. What's the difference?

It's in the post

> That's contrary to the old saying: a bad workman always blames his tools.

It doesn't go contrary. Some tools are bad, some don't.

That's why I choose the tool that doesn't get in the way and don't blame me for not joining their cult: vim

Re: Where Vim Came From

#136

Post by namibj »

azernik wrote: post #109
copperx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vim is attractive to many because it launches in a fraction of a second. This is especially important to sysadmins, who don't "live in a text editor." It's also quite popular to use vim without customization. I understand that some people have simple needs. I don't. The editor wars are over for me and Emacs has won.

The performance issue isn't about sysadmins wanting fraction-of-a-second launches; it's about Serious Programmers back in the 90s wanting precious memory. "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" was the derogatory nickname, back when eight megs was a lot . (And, secondarily, launch times then were longer; 0.2 seconds vim vs. 2 seconds emacs is a very different comparison than between 2-second vim and 20-second emacs.)

I want my software to be instant, or as close to it as feasible. Vim is fast enough, make sometimes, and gcc not. This is in syntax-only mode for the latter.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#137

Post by rcarmo »

dosy wrote: post #126
TeMPOraL wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, in fact, the story behind Lisp Machines. Unfortunately, humans quickly forgot the lessons from the aliens, and made computing the mess it is today. The history is documented here: http://landoflisp.com/ (scroll down and follow the arrows).

This is really hilarious. I am so glad you showed me that. The endless scroll section with the arrows. Great! :D and the music video...hypnotic.

you apparently missed the comic ;)

Re: Where Vim Came From

#138

Post by scbrg »

JD557 wrote: post #134
zealsham wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried exiting vim? :D

I know this was intended as a joke, but exiting vim is now much easier than exiting emacs (IMO), assuming that the user has some experience with UNIX and uses `Ctrl+C` to exit most programs. If I start vim and press `Ctrl+C` I get an helpful message saying "Type :qa and press to abandon all changes and exit Vim". If I do the same on emacs, first the help screen disappears (which was the one telling me to use `C-x C-c…

You could try opening the File menu and selecting Quit :)

Re: Where Vim Came From

#139

Post by dghf »

fragmede wrote: post #47

Since the article is explicitly about vim (over the original vi) by name, `:x` is a shortcut for `:wq`.

> `:x` is a shortcut for `:wq`

I've been using vim for years, and I'm still learning new things about it. Thank you.

Re: Where Vim Came From

#140

Post by yoz-y »

Lio wrote: post #114
ahoka wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of "vim users" are painful to watch using it solely in visual mode with arrow keys and pressing backspace like crazy when they want to delete something.

That's always funny. I have the same reaction with IDE users who vocally disdain my use of Vim. Usually, I find they're copying and pasting with a mouse in a solitary window in the centre of the screen whilst boasting about syntax highlighting. :D Of course it's great to see someone who actually really does know any piece of software give a demo of how they use it. For Vim newbies I'd point people first to the Vimtut…

Why not both though? Both Qt Creator and Visual Studio code have quite good Vim Integration and their IDE features dwarf Vim with tons of plugins.

I use all three for various purposes, but an IDE is a very useful things when working with languages that can take advantage of it.

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