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Yesterday I spent an hour trying to figure out how to NOT use vi to make a Mercurial commit on macOS. It was one of my most frustrating computer experiences in recent memory.
I agree that VI's default is so different from the modern editor that it's very frustrating to get stuck in it. However, learning vi pays dividends.
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What's the story with NeoVim exactly? I am trying it out on Linux because I got some recommendations that it's better than Vim, but I've run into some problems because for instance with setting up plugins and things, lots of times the documentation seems to be geared toward Vim, and sometimes I've gotten errors it's hard to figure out because of this. It kind of gives me the perception there just aren't that many peo…
Neovim definitely has significant market share, you can compare Github stars as one statistic to consider: https://github.com/vim/vim - 20k https://github.com/neovim/neovim - 36.5k This is in some part due to the fact that neovim has been on Github longer, but it's still a a major indicator. Neovim has many benefits over Vim, and has been applying pressure on Vim for years to improve its own development and codebase.…
Glad to see the project is still alive and moving forward. Seems like most new editors or forks in general die a quick death.
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Vim gives a consistent and quick interface to editing operations based on a set of standard keys with modifiers. But it doesn't try to be everything to everyone. "plugins" for vi, at least in the classic sense, tend to be minimal. The editor relies more on integration with the UNIX ecosystem. This makes vi unlimited in its possibilities, without having to rely on thousands of lines of lisp code, like emacs does.
> rely on thousands of lines of lisp code, like emacs does Millions actually. I'm an emacs user (who does not want to get into an editor war, mmkay). The plugins are so useful. I'm just learning magit and it very much takes most of the evil and hostility out of Git and I really like it. I also have dired (a sophisticated directory editor), and about to learn loads more such as Bookmark+ which allows links and jumps t…
Full disclosure: I'm an "emacs guy" but I don't care about the silly old emacs/vi wars. I would just say as awesome as people find vi to be, it's among the least of Bill's accomplishments. That's how awesome he is!
It's amazing how fast one can edit text with vi once you get all the keys down. There used to be a video game that taught how to use VI. Is it still around?
Some things seem unnecessarily unintuitive to me about the shortcuts. For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. Every video game ever came to the conclusion that the inverse-T layout is ideal for this task.
Yesterday I spent an hour trying to figure out how to NOT use vi to make a Mercurial commit on macOS. It was one of my most frustrating computer experiences in recent memory.
My guess is that you ended up on a machine that has the default editor as vi. TO fix this, set your shell's EDITOR env variable to something like nano. I agree that VI's default is so different from the modern editor that it's very frustrating to get stuck in it. However, learning vi pays dividends.
Setting the editor is really a 3 step process. Add application to PATH. Create an alias. Specify the alias.
VSCode has a command to do steps 1 and 2 for you.
My next weekend project is to learn Vi. (Any tutorial suggestions?) I don’t want to. But I have to. Smartphones are so intuitive toddlers can use them. Vi is so non-intuitive it requires going to external tutorials to learn how to edit text. Sigh. :(
I used Emacs for 5 years before learning vi. What a change! While Emacs tries to put the kitchen sink inside the editor, vi tries simply to be a keyboard interface to the rest of the system. I've never looked back since I learned this way of working.
I've tried several times to get into vim. I feel like it's similar to dvorak though - unless you use it 24/7 you won't develop the muscle memory necessary to use it efficiently.
While I love Vim and I use it most of the time, I don't really buy it when people act like it saved them a whole lot of time. I love the Vim keystrokes and philosophy, but I don't really know if I'm any more productive with Vim than I was with Emacs...I stick with Vim because I find that, once you "get it", it's relatively easy to translate stuff from your brain to the screen.
It's amazing how fast one can edit text with vi once you get all the keys down. There used to be a video game that taught how to use VI. Is it still around?
Some things seem unnecessarily unintuitive to me about the shortcuts. For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. Every video game ever came to the conclusion that the inverse-T layout is ideal for this task.
It's actually awesome because your fingers are all on one row. It feels extremely intuitive after a while.
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> simply to be a keyboard interface to the rest of the system Can you expand more on what you mean by that? It's never really clicked with me what the exact value prop of vim is.
Do you remember the time when every time you wanted to copy or paste something in a word processor you would dutifully hike your mouse up to the Edit button so you could select "Copy" or "Paste", and how when you learned that CTRL+C and CTRL+V was a thing your mind was blown with how much quicker it was? Vim gives you that experience, except times a gajillion because it not only speeds up what you already do in a WYS…
Can you give an example? I have heard this but I have difficulty understanding exactly what I could do in Vim that I couldn't do in Sublime Text for example
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Some things seem unnecessarily unintuitive to me about the shortcuts. For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. Every video game ever came to the conclusion that the inverse-T layout is ideal for this task.
> For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. It's actually awesome because your fingers are all on one row. It feels extremely intuitive after a while.