361–370 of 507 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Helpful tip) map caps lock to escape: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key
Still wasteful. Map Capslock to both Escape and Ctrl and never look back https://github.com/alols/xcape (for linux) https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/132564/how-can-i-r... (for macOS) https://github.com/ililim/dual-key-remap (for windows)
I know I'm going against the popular opinion here, but I have never observed anyone using either Vim or Emacs to outperform a competent IDE user, especially Visual Studio or IntelliJ. I mean sure, if you think IDEs are just slow, expensive text editors with fewer keyboard shortcuts, then you'll be disappointed, but features like "navigate to any symbol by prefix", "find all usages", and "Ctrl-click to navigate to def…
And another unpopular opinion: can we stop talking about hjkl cursor movement like the pinnacle of ergonomics? I get that people are used to that, but the only reason why that keys are chosen is because of that particular terminal used for making ed/vi. If moving the finger to reach movement left is so superior than anything else, default movement keys in games would be asdf, not wasd. hjkl is better than reaching for the arrow keys, but hardly ideal (I remapped arrows to caps lock + ijkl and to me it's way better)
Controversial comment here, but I would say Vim isn't popular at all. I would say instead, Vim advocates are incredibly vocal (a bit like Vegans and Crossfitters) and won't hesitate to talk about it at all times. I've been engineering now since 2002 so approaching 20 years and sure, every office has one guy who's the "hardcore" Vim guy. Everyone else in the office uses Visual Studio or VSCode, Atom, Sublime, IntelliJ…
Today if I'm conducting an interview and the someone tries to convince me he/she is a good programmer and just use vi/vim, I need to rethink my decision because it can compromise the whole project. I'm not saying they are not good, but having the capability of fast debugging and solving problems fast is crucial sometimes and is part of the whole package.
I was that kind of person someday and I understand the feeling.
But for devops, vim or emacs are the all-in-hands tool and everyday editor, just because they are available in everywhere and work very well on terminal mode.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's too many little things to mention, they do all add up to be quite significant in the course of programming. Here's a tiny sample of some stuff I use constantly: Move cursor forward word at a time: w ignoring punctuation: W reverse: b B Move cursor to next occurrence of character Z: fZ reverse: FZ Delete forward to next occurrence of character Z: dfZ reverse: dFZ Change forward to next occurrence of character…
Honestly, I can do almost all of these things with any standard editor as well, with standard shortcuts. The ones I can't do directly, I can do via Search/Replace functionality that is also standard in most modern editors. Your example about refactoring a function by using text editing capabilities is actually pretty bad unless you mean Vim can actually parse your programming language and perform the refactoring over…
I think the popularity of learning vim might be similar to what jiggawatts mentions as the 'perception of speed', especially for tools in the UNIX world, as well as being 'the hard way' like you mention. But I think there is value in learning how to use vim. I see the advantages of learning vim are programming language agnostic. Vim is focused around words and text, treating them as objects, and creating a mental map of keystrokes to modify those objects. I think it's somewhat analogous to typists that hunt-and-peck vs touch typists. Opens up a lot of productivity, but it's definitely not needed to be a writer.
I agree vim has many limitations. It has a not so great language for scripting, no out of the box setup for stuff like refactoring or renaming symbols in your codebase, GUI feels like a second class citizen (IMO, compared to the terminal version). In a lot of ways, it might not hold a candle to the likes of VSCode, Atom, Visual Studio, XCode, IntelliJ, Eclipse, etc.
The nice thing is that you could add a vim-like plugin to any of those IDEs/editors to match the spirit of vim, at least in terms of navigation. It's not like you need to stay in vim to reap the benefits of the mental model.
I think that's where a lot of the power and appeal of vim is. Vim is still drawing a new generation of programmers, artists, and hobbyists to learn this strange text editor, with its unique but powerful way of interacting with text.
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…
I've used vi for 25 years now, starting on a m68k based BSD machine. It's an adequate editor, handy in remote shell sessions and good to know how to use, but I'd MUCH rather use an IDE or a windowed editor with menus and mouse and hotkeys like Sublime. I mean real hotkeys, not emacs. At the end of the day, it takes a certain kind of mind to like vi, and if you're not of that mind, you probably never will be.
This is coming from someone who lives in vim for his daily work, likes it, but always finds annoying sharp edges that are hard to reason about and script away.
Disappointed the article went straight from punch cards to video terminals without mentioning teletypes. > Having that thing show up on computers in those days was pretty tricky, and some considered it a resource hog. Well in the 60's and 70's, you didn't necessarily even have a display, you might be using a physical teletype. `ed` is built for that. Even when you had a display, it could be slow. The VT05 from 1970,…
Perhaps my favorite video on YouTube is this glorious footage of someone hooking a 1930s teletype up to a computer running Linux: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE Watching it for the first time is what finally made ed click for me. And yes, I was disappointed that the author clearly didn't understand why ed has the UI it does. It's about the teletype, not the computational cost of having a WYSIWIG UI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps my favorite video on YouTube is this glorious footage of someone hooking a 1930s teletype up to a computer running Linux: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE Watching it for the first time is what finally made ed click for me. And yes, I was disappointed that the author clearly didn't understand why ed has the UI it does. It's about the teletype, not the computational cost of having a WYSIWIG UI.
I desperately want to set up a teletype on my modern desktop - there’s just something so awesome about electromechanical interfaces with a lot more mechanical than electro.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the real question - So you are convinced you don't need Vim, right? Why are you on this thread? No one's saying vim is superior. However, you need to have an open mind to understand the alternatives. It's not like Vim is a paid product and by you not using it, Vim is going to die out soon or anything. If you dont' like it, great? You are happy with the alternative, great. You seem like you just want to deliber…
I am in this thread because this is not a thread about how Vim is great, it's a thread about how Vim became popular, which I honestly don't understand in a day and age where modes are completely unnecessary. I see lots of happy Vim users telling the rest of us how they are so happy with Vim and they can't understand how anyone can do anything without it... so I thought I should point out I feel extremely productive o…
I can't speak for other vim users but I think it's pretty obvious to us how other users work without vim and we know you can be productive without it.
Personally I make a point of not telling people to learn vim but equally I think, for example, not having a shortcut to repeat a complex visual selection is a pain.
I never feel the need to enter a thread about IDEs and point out this missing feature (especially if it's a program I don't actually know well and that might not be the case).
However I often see people that don't know vim well make statements like "vim can't do x" without actually checking if that's true.
Then we look "superior" when we point out how to do it in vim.
It's hard to win because your argument sounds like an emotional one.
Controversial comment here, but I would say Vim isn't popular at all. I would say instead, Vim advocates are incredibly vocal (a bit like Vegans and Crossfitters) and won't hesitate to talk about it at all times. I've been engineering now since 2002 so approaching 20 years and sure, every office has one guy who's the "hardcore" Vim guy. Everyone else in the office uses Visual Studio or VSCode, Atom, Sublime, IntelliJ…
A few of my colleagues are vim users, and fortunately for the others we are not as vocal as you describe. I already accepted of being the weirdo that uses vim, because my programming skills make up for it ;).
I do have a shortcut to disable it, when we do some pair programming.