Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Exit Vim

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 409 posts

Re: How to Exit Vim

#271

Post by Grimm665 »

chupasaurus wrote: post #237
Grimm665 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a sysadmin, not a programmer, what I found helpful for learning Vim was not to try something new each day, but to find one or two commands that were valuable enough that I would at least open Vim somewhat regularly. The two that did it for me are delete line (dd), and change inner word (ciw), both extremely helpful for config file editing, especially when combined with repeat command (.) After learning these first…

As a fellow sysadmin, I would advise to learn vi properly then switch to Vim because the former is pretty much everywhere, and for example you could mess the file with cursor keys in Insert mode instead of using hjkl in it.

That's good advice, but in all practical situations I have been able to use Vim directly or know enough vi to get by, though I am much less comfortable with it.

I don't touch type, so hjkl, even though I understand the benefits, has never been my preference. Perhaps it's the gamer in me, I've never had trouble using the arrow keys :)

Re: How to Exit Vim

#272

Post by Diederich »

I first gained access to a UNIXish system in the fall of 1988, which was some SunOS4.x variant I believe. The shell was csh, the editor was vi, and I had no idea what I was doing, nor was there any help in my immediate area to be found. And no, I didn't know about 'man' yet.

Somehow I discovered that 'vi' was the way to edit things, but I didn't know how to exit, so trial and error led me to pressing control and z at the same time. Bingo! The shell is back.

After some days of building up background suspended vi instances, the system administrator came in and gave me a few pointers.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#273

Post by kick »

Diederich wrote: post #272

I first gained access to a UNIXish system in the fall of 1988, which was some SunOS4.x variant I believe. The shell was csh, the editor was vi, and I had no idea what I was doing, nor was there any help in my immediate area to be found. And no, I didn't know about 'man' yet. Somehow I discovered that 'vi' was the way to edit things, but I didn't know how to exit, so trial and error led me to pressing control and z at…

Did you save any?

Re: How to Exit Vim

#274

Post by iamaelephant »

joeraut wrote: post #122

One of my Computer Science lecturers had a rule: use Vim for all development for his class whilst on campus, and if caught using any other editor/IDE – or committing any artifacts showing evidence of such – we would lose several percentage points from our final mark for his class. Harsh? Perhaps. But I can’t thank that lecturer enough for that rule. He converted a mostly IDE-wielding class into one that actually appr…

Love to trap my students in the 90s and pretend no progress has been made on editors since.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#275

Post by kick »

barkingcat wrote: post #252
joeraut wrote: post #122

One of my Computer Science lecturers had a rule: use Vim for all development for his class whilst on campus, and if caught using any other editor/IDE – or committing any artifacts showing evidence of such – we would lose several percentage points from our final mark for his class. Harsh? Perhaps. But I can’t thank that lecturer enough for that rule. He converted a mostly IDE-wielding class into one that actually appr…

In 2018 - this is so bad that it deserves some kind of disciplinary measure from administration. This is absolutely unacceptable for students needing different accessibility enabled tools other than vi /vim. For example, if using an alternative screenreader or a vocally/sound enabled ide or if needing to interact with a text editor via a brail enabled tool that doesn't work with vi, does the student just get failed o…

ex, something that comes with every installation of vi, is completely accessible.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#276

Post by filmgirlcw »

gbacon wrote: post #247
ChrisRR wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's stupid and elitist. There's no reason to force students to go against IDEs that they're already used to, but also the general method of navigating around a computer which they're probably used to from MS Word etc.

I’ve seen Java developers completely lost with no idea where to start debugging an installation in a lab environment because they had no IDE, JDK only. Sure, you might argue that it’s an unlikely scenario, but never say never. CS is one of many fields where having a basic understanding of how things work at least a couple of layers of abstraction down is a good thing, and at least could save potential embarrassment.

You're not wrong, but I don't see how forcing people to use vim solves this problem. If anything, you risk having a whole class of students who can only do things the vim way. I'll grant you that you're much more likely in a lab environment to have access to a POSIX system so you can use vi or whatever, but you could also wind up in a shop that dictates its devs use a specific IDE.

I'm in full-agreement that it's a good thing to have a basic understanding of how stuff works, but I'm not sure how enforcing vim over VSCode or Sublime or [insert your favorite editor] necessarily teaches that. It teaches adherence to vim.

I'm of the opinion that programming tools are very personal -- that's why there are so many debates and that's why we'll never have universal agreement. I know my way around the command line and I'll suffer through vim if I have to (it's fine. It's just not my editor of choice), but if I don't have my dotfiles or configurations, I'm not going to be very productive either.

I'm fine with saying, "don't use an IDE in my class, use a text editor" -- but I find it draconian and ridiculous to insist upon a specific text editor.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#277

Post by dragonwriter »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #261
ChrisRR wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's stupid and elitist. There's no reason to force students to go against IDEs that they're already used to, but also the general method of navigating around a computer which they're probably used to from MS Word etc.

It’s a college class in which students are supposed to learn something new, that seems like a perfect example of a situation where you should be forced to do something outside your comfort zone. I don’t interpret that as the college professor saying this is actually the best way to code, just that forcing students to struggle through it is a learning experience.

> It’s a college class in which students are supposed to learn something new

Unless the central thrust of the course is supposed to be the mechanics of a particular dated editor, the restriction described seems to be a distraction from rather than an aid to what the students are supposed to be learning.

It doesn't make any more sense than a social science course where the deliverables for most assignments are essays mandating WordPerfect for DOS. Sure, you'll learn something you might not otherwise, but it's a distraction from what you came to the course to learn.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#278

Post by jethro_tell »

Nacraile wrote: post #195
shawnlower2 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the logic there. In what non-contrived scenario would you run both simultaneously, such that they would conflict? C-a does annoyingly conflict with readline's "move to start of line", though.

1. Outer tmux on local/primary machine, for your usual daily use-case (i.e. managing multiple terminal sessions). 2. In outer tmux, ssh to some other machine you need to administrate. 3. screen because you need multiple terminal sessions on that machine, or need detachability/reconnectability for some long-running process.

Also, many older production machines don't have tmux, so nesting a screen session happens. This is starting to not be a thing, but it was a thing for the trailing 10 years.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#279

Post by kburman »

Grimm665 wrote: post #271
chupasaurus wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow sysadmin, I would advise to learn vi properly then switch to Vim because the former is pretty much everywhere, and for example you could mess the file with cursor keys in Insert mode instead of using hjkl in it.

That's good advice, but in all practical situations I have been able to use Vim directly or know enough vi to get by, though I am much less comfortable with it. I don't touch type, so hjkl, even though I understand the benefits, has never been my preference. Perhaps it's the gamer in me, I've never had trouble using the arrow keys :)

As far as I know, hjkl was first introduced in games and later used in vim because we don't have to move our hands far away from the keys.

Feel free to correct me If I'm wrong.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#280

Post by downerending »

Diederich wrote: post #272

I first gained access to a UNIXish system in the fall of 1988, which was some SunOS4.x variant I believe. The shell was csh, the editor was vi, and I had no idea what I was doing, nor was there any help in my immediate area to be found. And no, I didn't know about 'man' yet. Somehow I discovered that 'vi' was the way to edit things, but I didn't know how to exit, so trial and error led me to pressing control and z at…

Similar experience, except a ATT 3B2 (and thus no job control). I would have read the man page, but there were none, nor were any books available.

I finally just pulled the plug out of the wall.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that I became a lifelong emacs user because the start screen even back then explained how to exit.

Post reply on HN