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Switching from Vim to Intellij

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Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#241
I work at a Java shop, amongst thorough-bred IntelliJ users. But I comfortably get by with using Vim/tmux/ctags alone. I do write simple utilities that'd help me be productive. Sure, I could have relaxed in an armchair had I used an IDE, but I feel most at-home with text-speaking utlities, Vim being my go-to editor. Besides, I learned a thing or two while writing those utilities. Masochism? Maybe.

What matters to me is simple, composable, stand-alone utilities. I don't hesitate using GUI or IDE-like tools when it's appropriate to do so. What worries me, though, is that the continued investment and excitement in monolithic tools may mean that newer languages and technologies will be serving those users alone. Simplicity and minimalism may be a thing of past.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#242

My IntelliJ tips: - exclude folders from indexing - disable unused plugins - install a theme like Nord - setup debugging - make sure you can run unit tests from the IDE - add JSdoc tags so that IntelliJ can detect type mismatches. - setup scopes in your project view to show only the files that you are working on. And these are my personal preferences: - Disable smooth scrolling - Disable animations - Disable code fol…

> - add JSdoc tags so that IntelliJ can detect type mismatches.

Yes, it's so awesome when colleagues writing lots of useless stuff into the code so they IDE can show some fancy popups here and there.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#243
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, an IDE comes with all the tools and features right out of the box. But not everyone needs all of them. I don't see a problem with combining tools, which is really easy with Vim as it already runs in the terminal. I installed a couple plugins in Vim. But those all provide features I actually use and they barely affect performance. But more importantly I just prefer the Vim approach: start out with a minimal UI a…

I've tried for years to find the right combination of plugins and configs to make vim (and now neovim) as comfortable as IntelliJ for "large" languages (like Java & Scala), and I still can't do it. I actually very much agree with you that IntelliJ's all-batteries-included bits can be distracting and frustrating at times, and it's annoying to track down and disable the stuff you don't want. The memory usage makes me c…

Yes, Java projects are the reason why I still sometimes use an IDE as well. I agree that there still are some gaps when using normal editors and when you really rely on those features it sucks.

I like how those two choices are starting to converge from both sides, thanks to language servers offering a more standardised way to make editors a bit smarter, as well as other programs getting plugins for using NeoVim as backend for text editing. I just don't feel like any of those two solutions is mature yet.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#244
post #165

Most important problem missed with fancy IDE: Tiny monitor. Its like looking at your source code thru a paper towel tube instead of in VR. Even if you can get a bigger monitor and give up on laptops, you'd STILL get to see more code at once using VIM. Its "nice" and "interesting" I can see my build system innards on the left and with effort I can click them in and out but in practice people are lazy and just don't ge…

You'd like IDEA's distraction free mode then. > In Distraction-free mode, the editor occupies the entire main window with the source code centered. All other elements of the UI are hidden (tool windows, toolbars, and editor tabs) to help you focus on the source code of the current file. You can still use shortcuts to open tool windows, navigate, and perform other actions. https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/ide-viewi…

AKA Zen Mode in VSCode (F10)

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#245
I can't get on with IDEs, I find them too heavy and difficult to customise. I used vscode for a while in vim-mode but it's not as ergonomic as my neovim configuration.

I can get documentation for a function by pressing K and jump to the definition or do a global rename using some other key combination. I work on a few tens of languages but have language servers integrated for them all and have installed syntax highlighting for everything in existence.

Overall it's easy to manage and modify, and performs well.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#246
post #214
post #173

>Everything is pre-configured: You don’t have to worry about setting up tags, or YouCompleteMe, or NERDTree. I can’t tell you how many times I open a new project, perhaps in a different language, and everything works great out of the box. It’s a total sigh of relief. I agree 100% here, if you value these types of IDE tools I don't recommend going to Vim. It frankly sucks at this stuff, it wasn't meant for it and it's…

How do you hook vim up to email and HN comments?

For email mutt is obvious, but I also recommend aerc, though it's still beta and does crash sometimes. And I'm writing this from w3m, in which you can just navigate to a textarea and write to it in your $EDITOR. For general browsing it's not that great due to its lack of js/css support, but I find it great for commenting on forums which usually still work with html forms. Interestingly, w3m used to work with gmail as well, but sadly you can no longer log in without javascript.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#247

Switching from a bicycle to a truck. Vim is NOT an IDE. Yes a lot of people try to make it one, but Vim is not very good at it. You need a lot of additional small tools to even come close to a full-blown IDE in functionality. It's a text editor.

IDE by what standard? IDE only means integration of tools, not neccessarily that the integration is state of the art. Go back 10, 20 years, and what IDEs could do back then, Vim can now too. On some parts, it's even touching the realm of modern IDEs (mostly because of LSP and VS Code's effort to make it possible for editors).

There are also now "distributions" of vim-configurations, which are taking care of delivering the IDE-experience out of the box and maintained by someone else. Also, don't forget that vi(m) by design is meant to be integrated as the editor-component in the environment of the unix-shell. So it always was part of an IDE from the beginning.

Though, it's true that there is an limit on how much it can do with it's momentary ability and architecture. It's textual, so it' can't copy the GUI-Components of modern IDEs or the assistants. Meaning it will likely always stay a second rate-IDE. But I guess that's ok. You don't need to be the best at every aspect of the workflow. At the end the final results are what matter.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#248
post #173

>Everything is pre-configured: You don’t have to worry about setting up tags, or YouCompleteMe, or NERDTree. I can’t tell you how many times I open a new project, perhaps in a different language, and everything works great out of the box. It’s a total sigh of relief. I agree 100% here, if you value these types of IDE tools I don't recommend going to Vim. It frankly sucks at this stuff, it wasn't meant for it and it's…

VI (or VIM) the text-editing language is terrific. VIM the text editor is just a basic editor like notepad, that just happens to speak VI[M?] the language.

IDEs exist that also speak most of the language. IdeaVIM is an extension to IntelliJ that speaks 90% of VIM the language (and also gets some things wrong). I live in IdeaVIM almost all day.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#249
post #214
post #173

>Everything is pre-configured: You don’t have to worry about setting up tags, or YouCompleteMe, or NERDTree. I can’t tell you how many times I open a new project, perhaps in a different language, and everything works great out of the box. It’s a total sigh of relief. I agree 100% here, if you value these types of IDE tools I don't recommend going to Vim. It frankly sucks at this stuff, it wasn't meant for it and it's…

How do you hook vim up to email and HN comments?

I use qutebrowser, and one keystroke opens vim. When I close the editor the contents of the Vim buffer appear in the browser text-entry input.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently been picking up Emacs for org-mode. Evil does not support settings such as `:set nu` or a thousand other settings that I use once in a blue moon but expect to just work. Even `:wq` attempts to close all buffers, `:e` doesn't open files as expected, I could go on. IdeaVIM get 90% of VIM right, and some things wrong (such as `u` for undo also undoing movements). Evil gets 95% of VIM right. But I have high…

Can you expand on that? For me, :wq closes the current buffer. For me, :e works as expected. There might be a built in alternative to :set nu. How do you expect that to work?

For me, `:wq` saves the current file and attempts to close all buffers, though thankfully asks if other unsaved buffers should be saved before closing.

I was wrong about `:e`, it does work.

Instead of `:set nu` I'm using Alt-X UpArrow+ to find `display-line-numbers-mode`, which does what it says. But there are other settings which I have on muscle memory macro that do not work, such as `:set wrap!` which I use often with my portrait monitor.

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