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How Did Vim Become So Popular?

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Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#281

Post by RMPR »

imtringued wrote: post #263
RMPR wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll argue that the IDE is Unix, not vim, I recently started and endeavour to vanilla Vim and I was baffled by what is possible even without plugins, granted I mostly work with C and a bit of Python, but one thing to consider is that most people using Vim come from an IDE background, so horse for course I guess. https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/unix-as-ide/ Edit: Link

Unix is not an IDE. The I stands for integrated. Unix is just a good old development environment...

Fair enough

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#282

Post by RMPR »

cyberdrunk wrote: post #266
RMPR wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll argue that the IDE is Unix, not vim, I recently started and endeavour to vanilla Vim and I was baffled by what is possible even without plugins, granted I mostly work with C and a bit of Python, but one thing to consider is that most people using Vim come from an IDE background, so horse for course I guess. https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/unix-as-ide/ Edit: Link

IDE has syntactic understanding of your code, which allows you to navigate your whole codebase as if it's one big hypertext document (invalueable especially when learning new code). Also, the syntactic understanding allows you to do one-click fairly complex refactorings with guarantees that nothing will get broken (at least it works for sane languages, like Java. I don't know how well it works for C/C++, where prepro…

> at least it works for sane languages, like Java.

You lost me here.

> I don't see how "UNIX as an IDE" delivers this.

Have you read the linked series of articles? The author explains and provide examples with C and Perl, Iirc there's a book about working with Makefiles in Java, so it's totally doable, painful, but doable.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#283

Post by urxvtcd »

cyberdrunk wrote: post #266
RMPR wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll argue that the IDE is Unix, not vim, I recently started and endeavour to vanilla Vim and I was baffled by what is possible even without plugins, granted I mostly work with C and a bit of Python, but one thing to consider is that most people using Vim come from an IDE background, so horse for course I guess. https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/unix-as-ide/ Edit: Link

IDE has syntactic understanding of your code, which allows you to navigate your whole codebase as if it's one big hypertext document (invalueable especially when learning new code). Also, the syntactic understanding allows you to do one-click fairly complex refactorings with guarantees that nothing will get broken (at least it works for sane languages, like Java. I don't know how well it works for C/C++, where prepro…

Yeah, UNIX doesn't do that on its own. You can grep, or run find and do a bash loop and so on, which is cool. But it's language servers that give semantic understanding of your code. You can easily refactor, or go to definition from vim. So UNIX is a development environment, very flexible, yes, just not that integrated.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#284

Post by mmkos »

cyberdrunk wrote: post #266
RMPR wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll argue that the IDE is Unix, not vim, I recently started and endeavour to vanilla Vim and I was baffled by what is possible even without plugins, granted I mostly work with C and a bit of Python, but one thing to consider is that most people using Vim come from an IDE background, so horse for course I guess. https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/unix-as-ide/ Edit: Link

IDE has syntactic understanding of your code, which allows you to navigate your whole codebase as if it's one big hypertext document (invalueable especially when learning new code). Also, the syntactic understanding allows you to do one-click fairly complex refactorings with guarantees that nothing will get broken (at least it works for sane languages, like Java. I don't know how well it works for C/C++, where prepro…

I have mainly used vim for development and I can navigate my codebase just as seamlessly with ctags-generated indexes.

I'd agree on vim being of limited utility when it comes to automated refactoring (it's a text editor after all), but beyond changing the names or extracting functions what can an IDE do for you in this respect?

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#285

Post by dima55 »

alpaca128 wrote: post #250
generalk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Emacs for many years, and recently switched to Spacemacs, a set of configs that kind of takes over Emacs and puts a great platform on top of it. I frequently describe Spacemacs as a better vim than vim. Don't get me wrong, I've used vim for ages; I'll never stop editing server config with vi, nor will I stop getting mad when vi is actually vi and not vim. But for a day to day code editor? Spacemacs is aston…

The problem with Emacs and all its modifications is that it cannot match Vim's flexible system for custom keybindings. And because of that Evil mode has the same limitation, beside its insistence to prefer using builtin Emacs functionality over emulating Vim behaviour correctly. And the other thing that I could never get used to is that Emacs' terminals can't handle ncurses applications. I usually like to run Vim in…

M-x ansi-term

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#286

Post by RMPR »

ricksharp wrote: post #167
cat199 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

copy 10 lines from the current position into buffer q, go to the start of function jnk, copy 5 lines into buffer w, jump to line 10, paste contents of q, contents of w, and contents of q sequentially one after the other: "q10yy /jnk "w5yy 10G "qp "wp "qp now, go to the start of the document and indent the next 20 lines by 10 spaces: 0G .,+20s:^: : ok great, now find JUNK and replace 'a1' with 'A1' in the 15 lines tha…

Ok, also am curious about multi-insertion with cntr-left/right that vscode does: For example, let’s say I have a json object with variety of field names, one per line and I want to remove the quotes. With vscode, I can alt select all lines, Home Ctrl+right del cntl+right del. The trick is the field names are different length, does vim have multi-edit with the ability to navigate relative to each insertion point? Edit…

For your use case there are a lot of ways to do that in Vim without using the multi cursor, here[0] is one thing I just recorded to show you a glimpse of what's possible with just a search and replace: I just find a pattern and replace it with a part of the same pattern.

> Here is a good video example (https://youtu.be/iomWEDMBlcE)

Again, you can do everything here without using multicursors, just record a macro for one line and repeat with a count and you're set.

Now if you absolutely want the multicursor feature, there are more than one plugin[1][2] for that, but I never felt the urge to use multiple cursors in Vim.

0: https://youtu.be/YR7rRC-vwj4

1: https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors

2: https://github.com/paradigm/vim-multicursor

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#287

Post by arcturus17 »

Lio wrote: post #222
reactchain wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% concur with this. I learnt Vim many years ago and I genuinely don't know what I'd do without it. It's always just there when I ssh into a new server. And the JetBrains suite has an awesome vim mode meaning I can use most (but not all) vim shortcuts with an actual IDE. I don't think vim itself works well as an IDE substitute, and wouldn't use it for hardcore web dev for example - but for quickly editing random fi…

I’m always interested in this opinion. What IDE features do you think vim is missing that aren’t available via LSP plugins?

I tried getting vim to match my favorite features in VSCode / Jetbrains IDEs and almost went crazy. Rather simple things like code completion or syntax highlighting were already moderately complex to set up. The command palette present in both Jetbrains and VSCode also has thousands of actions easily searchable in plain language, the most simple of which can be replicated with vim (ex: open file) but many of which would likely require some heavy extra configuration. I never even got into replicating things like live templates which are a massive productivity booster for me - I simply gave up.

For me it’s much easier to install the vim plugin in my IDE or editor of choice. I get the modal editing goodness of vim with a supercharged layer of utilities that work out of the box.

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#288

Post by alwillis »

cyberbanjo wrote: post #62
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've always assumed the opposite with how people say emacs is a nice OS and poor editor... What does Vim over emacs?

It’s composability is Vim’s killer feature.

This post is what got me started on Vim: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-mos...

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#289

Post by zoid_ »

macromaniac wrote: post #214
ricksharp wrote: post #92

Does anyone have a good video comparing vim speed coding vs vscode using built in editor features? I’ve been using vscode for years and the YouTube videos that demo vim features are shallow (like how to enter a blank line - really?). I can do the same thing I have seen in vim videos without memorizing a bunch of strange key bindings all while being able to edit code instantly without changing modes. I would love to s…

Here's a video of some more advanced vim features I threw together. I'd be surprised if you can do this using e.g. vanilla vscode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGG3hK4Bg8 Its a simplified version of a problem from work a while ago where we had to generate ui from lots of csv files. The last dev on it was taking weeks, but with vim I was able to come in and finish the boilerplate instantly. (We were commited to non…

Nice vim demo on youtube, how does the sequenced numbering work? Can vim increment a number without any plugins?

Re: How Did Vim Become So Popular?

#290

Post by alwillis »

dastx wrote: post #253
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…

This is really interesting. I'm quite the opposite. I keep trying to make vim my main devtool but I just can't stay away from a fully fledged ide. At the same time, having heard from literally everyone that once you do get used to it, vim is way faster to do everything in. What advice do you have for someone like me to proper get used it once and for all? Are there any good resources you used to learn all the vim sho…

You don’t learn Vim that way. Once you get the Vim grammar, you just flow. Verb-adverb-noun.

This helped me back in the day: http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim-Progressiv...

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