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How Did Vim Become So Popular?

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Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#81

Post by licebmi__at__ »

duckfruit wrote: post #36

Speaking personally, I've been a professional developer for almost decade and even in my relatively short career I've seen a lot of technologies come and go. I was reluctantly roped into it by my first boss, an enthusiastic Vim advocate. And since, almost nothing else (save for maybe git) beat learning vim from a return on investment perspective. From the default mac OS installation to some old Fedora box that has no…

Definitely, even now as I use emacs, I'm a 100% evil. It's just so natural (once you get it), that I don't know how other bindings (like ctrl-[whatever]) are prevalent in most other software, it's not like they are more memorable or intuitive.

Fun story: I was into Free/Libre software as a teen, when I learnt how to move around in vi(m) and in my first tech gig (as a sysadmin), I was interviewed by some greybeard who wanted me to do some maintenance and configuration tasks. I knew the basics of command line environments, but I had never setup LDAP, mail or DNS. So anyway he asked me to setup some repository on yum, and well, at least I knew how to do that. When he saw me using vi commands to quickly edit the file, he stopped the interview, arguing that anybody who was fluent on vi, was obviously a seasoned admin and I got the postion. I never had the guts to tell him otherwise.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#82

Post by unoti »

the_jeremy wrote: post #69
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, the emacs install base is fraction of vi/vim.

I am also surprised by this. What are you basing it on? For arbitrarily comparable online communities, it looks like emacs.stackexchange.com is twice as active as vi.stackexchange.com

> ...the emacs install base is fraction of vi/vim.

> What are you basing it on? ... it looks like emacs.stackexchange.com is twice as active as vi.stackexchange.com

A couple of things about this. For myself and many others, the reason I started vi in the first place is it's been installed by default on many kinds of machines. On SCO Unix and AIX from my youth, for example, this was the editor you used on a vanilla install of a machine to get things going. So this is part of why the install base is larger.

Another part of why the emacs community is more active is that Vi is just an editor, while emacs is more of a programming language and I daresay nearly an operating system in its own right. Because of the amazing power and flexibility of emacs there's a lot more stuff to discuss for Emacs than Vi.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#84

Post by pugworthy »

halotrope wrote: post #20

For me it is being able to efficiently navigate a file without leaving the home row (Gotta learn touch typing first). Once you understand the commands follow a composable grammar it is really like a superpower for dancing around text. „Go down 5 lines, move right two word, replace the contents of the brackets“. I don‘t use the actual editor all that often but have vim mode enabled in all my „real“ editors like VSCode…

I have been using VI(M) since the 80's and it's amazing how fast you can navigate in it when it's just deep muscle/neural memory. In fact if you asked me how to do some navigation in there, I actually could not tell you - but I could just do it.

I'm also someone who immediately installs a VI plugin into any IDE I use, as otherwise I'm lost.

IDEs and their editor key/control systems come and go, but VI(M) remains constant, and has done so (for me) for 35 years.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#85

Post by jrockway »

the_jeremy wrote: post #72
dannycastonguay wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Helpful tip) map caps lock to escape: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

Or if you're on a locked-down computer because your office hates people, ctrl+[ works as well (and is portable to other people's computers)

You can also do the remapping in hardware. Programmable keyboards are quite popular these days (I built one out of a $3 stm32f103), and they don't rely on the OS to help you do what you want to do.

(This is a blessing and a curse. You never have to worry about OS-level hacks to make caps lock a control key, but on the other hand, there is no way in the USB HID protocol to say "send an !". Rather, the keyboard has to synthesize a shift + 1. And what character that actually maps to depends on your OS, because of course it does.)

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#87

Post by avbanks »

chongli wrote: post #37
BlackFingolfin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK it still tries to stay mostly compatible with regards to how it is controlled, doesn't it? So while the internals are perhaps new, the frontend is not. But I think Kakoune https://kakoune.org would fit the bill

Kakoune is definitely an attempt at redoing the vim concept from scratch. I spent a few weeks trying it out and attempting to get used to it. Ultimately, I came away from it feeling disappointed. I think the basic premise of multiple cursors editing as a preferred model (which is what Kakoune does) is flawed. Why? Because large-scale scale changes are the exception, not the rule. By emphasizing multiple cursors, Kako…

If you stuck with it long enough do you think the multiple cursors would have given you an increase in productivity over vim? Like maybe it has a high learning curve (like vim).

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#88

Post by jrumbut »

dannycastonguay wrote: post #68
blinding-streak wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hated Vi at first. Absolutely loathed it. I was all about emacs. But I gave vi another shot, and I'm so glad I did. The learning curve can be steep, and it's really unintuitive at first (or it was for me). But once it clicks a little bit, and you settle in.. Wow. I felt way more productive using it than any other editor.

(Helpful tip) map caps lock to escape: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

I still get some mileage out of my caps lock key and use "jj" and use paste mode if I have to insert an uncommon string with "jj" in it. Usually pasting it anyway.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#89

Post by war1025 »

blinding-streak wrote: post #57
duckfruit wrote: post #36

Speaking personally, I've been a professional developer for almost decade and even in my relatively short career I've seen a lot of technologies come and go. I was reluctantly roped into it by my first boss, an enthusiastic Vim advocate. And since, almost nothing else (save for maybe git) beat learning vim from a return on investment perspective. From the default mac OS installation to some old Fedora box that has no…

Hated Vi at first. Absolutely loathed it. I was all about emacs. But I gave vi another shot, and I'm so glad I did. The learning curve can be steep, and it's really unintuitive at first (or it was for me). But once it clicks a little bit, and you settle in.. Wow. I felt way more productive using it than any other editor.

I've been using vim for ~8 years now as my editor at work. I don't even use the "fancy" movements that everyone always brags about. It's still way more convenient to move around in than any other editor I've used.

I don't know where I saw it, but the idea that "Code exists to be read" really resonates with me. I don't care how fast I can crank out code. I care about how efficiently I can hop around from place to place to grok what is going on and how it needs to change.

The killer feature of vim that I feel like very few people know about is it's remote editor feature.

Launch a long lived instance of vim with a `servername` set, for example I do: `vim --servername EDITOR`

Then set up a application shortcut that will open the file using the prefix `vim --servername EDITOR --remote `

When you open a file, it gets opened in your single vim instance.

From there you can navigate between all your open files using `:b `

It's really a joy to use. You don't have the mess of tabs where you run out of space super fast, you just have a bunch of open files that you can switch between super easily by name.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#90

Post by busterarm »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #81
duckfruit wrote: post #36

Speaking personally, I've been a professional developer for almost decade and even in my relatively short career I've seen a lot of technologies come and go. I was reluctantly roped into it by my first boss, an enthusiastic Vim advocate. And since, almost nothing else (save for maybe git) beat learning vim from a return on investment perspective. From the default mac OS installation to some old Fedora box that has no…

Definitely, even now as I use emacs, I'm a 100% evil. It's just so natural (once you get it), that I don't know how other bindings (like ctrl-[whatever]) are prevalent in most other software, it's not like they are more memorable or intuitive. Fun story: I was into Free/Libre software as a teen, when I learnt how to move around in vi(m) and in my first tech gig (as a sysadmin), I was interviewed by some greybeard who…

It's proof enough that you'll figure it out.

Years of interviewing people for my own teams has shown me that understanding your tools (especially to the point of being opinionated about them) is probably the #1 indicator of success.

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