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How to Exit Vim

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Re: How to Exit Vim

#281

Post by kburman »

Grimm665 wrote: post #232
kburman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried to start using vim so many times and failed. Even this year I thought to start using vim. Daily I open vim once try to do something new with it. Although I don't have much of hope that I will start using it an soon.

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…

The idea behind trying something new every day is just that I know what are the thing that are possible not to learn it by heart.

For example, Now I know if I need to go to the next instance of the word under the cursror. There's a command for it.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#282

Post by kburman »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #257
kburman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried to start using vim so many times and failed. Even this year I thought to start using vim. Daily I open vim once try to do something new with it. Although I don't have much of hope that I will start using it an soon.

I've made quasi-regular attempts to get truly comfortable with both Emacs and Vim at various points over the... last two decades, honestly. Strangely, I was always a little more comfortable in Vim, even though the other editors I've been comfortable with through the years have been modeless. Last year, though, Vim actually took for me, and I think there were three reasons: (1) Buying the book Practical Vim from the P…

Thanks for the book suggestion. I will definitely check it out.

I learned the 2nd point the hard. The first time I tried vim, I added as much plugin as I can end. In the end, it was a giant mess.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#284

Post by Diederich »

kick wrote: post #273
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?

Yes, I was able to save the file using ZZ rather than :w

It's been a long time, but I was probably hung up on not being able to experimentally figure out : commands, where I was able to figure out control-z and ZZ.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#285

Post by filmgirlcw »

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…

I'm glad you had a good experience with this, but I can tell you right now that if I had a professor insist I couldn't use my own tools for his class out of what appears to be nothing more than "you will use what I force you to use because I believe only REAL programmers use vim," I would be the type of student who would take great pleasure in using my text editor of choice discretely and doing whatever I could to ensure there was no proof that I was using my tools of choice.

I'm fine if a professor wants to say "we're not using IDEs, we're using text editors in this class and this is why" -- but to dictate the editor would be akin to being told what type of pencil or pen I could use to take hand-written notes.

It reminds me of one of my writing professors who insisted that all papers presented to him be formatted in Arial. Arial is a bad font, so I asked if I could use the metrically identical Helvetica, and he refused. I still submitted my papers in Helvetica anyway and he never noticed.

(I'm not claiming this is a mature response, FWIW, but a core part of my personality naturally pushes back on anyone telling me I can't use something for a wholly arbitrary reason or because they want to enact a ridiculous level of control.)

Re: How to Exit Vim

#286

Post by bradstewart »

na85 wrote: post #209
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 disagree completely. When I took CS036 in first year engineering, it was a C++ course that used Visual Studio and while I received a good grade on that course, at the end of it I did not know how to invoke the compiler from the command line. I only knew how to build software from the drop down menu in VS2004 or whatever version it was. IDEs are a crutch.

Sure, but invoking a compiler from a command line is something you can easily pick up from a coworker or an internet tutorial.

The primary focus of an intro engineering course is (usually) about the theory and structure of computing, along with general techniques for writing code.

Learning about various build tools distracts from that focus.

EDIT: Also, you seem to be implying (apologies if I'm wrong) that invoking a compiler from a command line is somehow "better" than using IDE. Why?

Re: How to Exit Vim

#287

Post by Diederich »

downerending wrote: post #280
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.

Holy shit, ATT 3B2, I haven't heard any mention of those in a long time.

So, six years later, in 1994, I found myself as the UNIX system administrator for a large (at the time) datacenter at Keesler Regional Medical Center, Keesler AFB, Biloxi Mississippi, where we had quite a number of 3B2s. They were, in fact, the only machines we had that were rated for classified data.

If memory serves, they ran AT&T System V release 3 UNIX.

We also had, among others, DGUX, SCO, AOS/VS, Sun and Vax/VMS servers. Of course each of AOS/VS and VMS had their own, non-UNIX operating systems.

Funny story: we put word out to AETC (Air Education and Training Command) that we needed more 3B2s, and a few months later, some pallets arrived from Homestead Air Force Base, which had been destroyed by hurricane Andrew a couple of years prior. These servers had green and brown smears on them. Clearly they had been submerged by hurricane flooding for some period of time. So we ran a long extension cord out to the parking lot, plugged them in and stepped back. Much to our surprise, several of them actually worked, and later ended up racked in our datacenter.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#288

Post by SilasX »

Very clever, but I wish they would put the real way, which, for the record, is

    :q
at the top so that this doesn't annoy people who legitimately google it and have to wade through this.

Re: How to Exit Vim

#289

Post by artursapek »

SilasX wrote: post #288

Very clever, but I wish they would put the real way, which, for the record, is :q at the top so that this doesn't annoy people who legitimately google it and have to wade through this.

But any of the other methods work just as well

Re: How to Exit Vim

#290

Post by yebyen »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #285
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…

I'm glad you had a good experience with this, but I can tell you right now that if I had a professor insist I couldn't use my own tools for his class out of what appears to be nothing more than "you will use what I force you to use because I believe only REAL programmers use vim," I would be the type of student who would take great pleasure in using my text editor of choice discretely and doing whatever I could to en…

I am a Vim user, and if I had a group leader tell me that I had to use some different editor because we are all learning how to do this job together, and that learning how to use the editor properly was part of learning how to do the job, I would do what he says. At least for as long as he stays in the room...

On the other hand, we had an architect who has since retired that said, if it was up to him, all developers across the campus would use the same programming language, editor, and configuration. Thankfully it was not up to him, and we still have this lovely diversity of opinions and tools that signals it is encouraged for specializations to develop, thus making sure that we are not all replaceable cogs in an exceedingly boring machine.

But the memory of this man's twisted vision remains with me, and it strikes me that the leadership still would seem to prefer if we were in fact fungible units of work-capacity, without any distinctive features or unique characteristics differentiating us from other developers.

IMO if you learned to ensure there was no proof of different tools, you learned an equally valuable lesson; I would mark you down for example if I opened your file and found a bunch of CRLF line endings, or some other similar obvious linting violation that was prevented by an editor configuration you were supposed to have installed during the class. But if you applied enough attention to detail to make sure this was not possible, in a way you got the point (and also for the purposes of the grade, you definitely got the point!)

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