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Why I teach vim

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Re: Why I teach vim

#71

Post by goatinaboat »

swaranga wrote: post #62
goatinaboat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to reiterate that I'm merely pursuing an intellectually curious line of inquiry into whether modal editing enthusiasts are brainworm-infested cultists, not engaging in base mudwrestling about editors, which the guidelines forbid. Absolutely. I am not wedded to my editor, I happen to prefer Emacs, if it’s not installed I shrug and use cat and sed. The older more experienced people at my company tend to use vi o…

This is personal experience of course but I have not seen that to be the case in my company, irrespective of editors people have mostly the same type of questions. Out of curiosity, what kind of questions do the non Vim/Emacs folks keep asking?

Out of curiosity, what kind of questions do the non Vim/Emacs folks keep asking?

The most frequent questions are things like "how do I edit files remotely" or "how do I make it work with Git" or "how do I make this function a keyboard shortcut" and so on. Basic stuff. The rest is about which of a dozen competing plugins is better for something.

They can't help each other because they are all using something different, but they would be incredibly indignant like their human rights had been infringed if they were ordered to use a company standard editor.

Re: Why I teach vim

#72

Post by pritovido »

pvg wrote: post #25
rgoulter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's mostly about accepting the (evidence-free) premise that modal editing is actually a good thing. Kakoune's development has started fairly recently. The oldest tags on its GitHub repo are for 2018. I think this defies "people want to continue the legacy of actually-not-that-great thing because I had do suffer, so other people should too". I think you'd only put into making/promoting Kakoune if you genuinely thou…

Oh once you've suffered, there's a huge, inexorable incentive to believe you haven't suffered in vain! Completely agree with you that the belief is genuine and sincere. I just don't happen to think it has much basis beyond its authenticity and sincerity.

You simply don't understand.

Do you suffer for thinking on English? Do you suffer for driving your car and changing gears? Do you suffer for using a pen for writing?

You can try to write with the hand you don't usually write with. You would suffer if you try to write the same things you write with the other hand but if you improve a little every day over time you will be capable of writing with it well.

Re: Why I teach vim

#73

Post by afarviral »

I wish there was a dedicated, light text editor that could be comfortably used as a typical vim config but was fully compatible with a windows/mac paradigm for discovering shortcuts or standards (e.g. with the mouse or using standard keybindings). Gvim isn't quite there but close. This fictional editor should still be usable by anyone in a terminal but should be used like vscode as a standalone tool and yet very, very low resource, low fuss. There just isnt such an editor. Vim itself is just too hard for a beginner. It took me far too many years to know it and Im still learning years later...but I'm hooked now and struggle to edit text using the mouse, end, home, delete, enter, tab and ctrl-chords. I'd recommend it to anyone but more as a fun learning project; an esoteric plaything with real-world applications that give you a bit of an edge oftentimes.

Re: Why I teach vim

#74

Post by cutler »

beny23 wrote: post #65

The ability to efficiently navigate and edit files while SSH’d into an instance is a very useful skill. You just wouldn’t have the permissions to install your favourite editor and vi is almost everywhere. I had to learn vi when working on green screen terminals logged into HP/UX and there was no alternative but am very glad I did as I find that nothing as ubiquitous allows me to efficiently change files. Does that me…

Why the dichotomy? IDEA Vim is an excellent IntelliJ plugin. For XCode there's XVim2 and Visual Studio has VisualVim. In fact the pervasiveness of good Vim plugins for ide's is one of the factors in Vim's lead over Emacs.

Re: Why I teach vim

#75

Post by cutler »

Geminidog wrote: post #3

I really wish there was a batteries included vim-like console editor with all the power of the jet brains suite of IDEs and convenience and lightness of vim. As it stands right now I end up using both an IDE and vim. Maybe emacs is the answer but honestly if I look past all the yak-shaving to get emacs to the power level of an IDE does it really get to the point where it has everything that say CLion has?

IDEA Vim?

Re: Why I teach vim

#76

Post by mettamage »

fergie wrote: post #8

"I wish I could say I agonized over all the options at the time and decided vim was the best pedagogical solution, but the reality of the situation was that vi was what I used in college because my father taught me vi" We dont talk about this much, but many of us hardcore Vi/Emacs users have had this knowledge imparted to us from a mentor. Thats probably why the use of Vi/Emacs is much higher in established tech envi…

> but many of us hardcore Vi/Emacs users have had this knowledge imparted to us from a mentor. Thats probably why the use of Vi/Emacs is much higher in established tech environments (universities, big dotcoms), where there tends to be a tradition of mentorship than it is elsewhere

My mentor was vimtutor.

Seriously, learning basic vim takes 30 to 60 minutes with vimtutor.

Re: Why I teach vim

#77

Post by [deleted] »

afarviral wrote: post #73

I wish there was a dedicated, light text editor that could be comfortably used as a typical vim config but was fully compatible with a windows/mac paradigm for discovering shortcuts or standards (e.g. with the mouse or using standard keybindings). Gvim isn't quite there but close. This fictional editor should still be usable by anyone in a terminal but should be used like vscode as a standalone tool and yet very, ver…

[deleted]

Re: Why I teach vim

#78

Post by mettamage »

Here's why I taught vim to students (at a coding bootcamp, in 2017).

- vimtutor does all the work for you.

- Like the author says starting up and editing with vim "just works".

When I "teach" vim, what I'm really doing is grading their homework. After their vimtutor hour, no student asked me how to edit git commits.

I know it might seem lazy (it is), but when there's a teacher better than you, don't teach it yourself, delegate. I happily delegate to vimtutor. Miss or mister vimtutor, you're a better teacher at vim than I will ever be.

Re: Why I teach vim

#79

Post by cutler »

sbergot wrote: post #21
tikhonj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the specifics, but providing something a lot more "batteries-included" seems to be the idea behind Emacs distributions like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs. One difficulty is that language-specific tools (language servers, linters... etc) are standalone pieces of software with their own dependencies, requirements... etc. It's hard to bundle together a fully "batteries-included" Emacs without figuring out…

This was indeed the promise of spacemacs. I tried it a few times and roughly 30% of the advertised features were broken out of the box.

I've used Spacemacs for Clojure development for many years without issue though it looks like it isn't being maintained much now.

Re: Why I teach vim

#80

Post by monkeycantype »

apocolyps6 wrote: post #32
dan00 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It continues to surprise me why people have such strong opinions about someone else's editor choice. I think because people identify themselves too much with their editor, programming language or whatever else choice. Everyone wants to think of themselves as the smart ones, only making objective rational choices, so everyone else making other choices has to be stupid. If now someone criticises their choice or argue…

Yeah, I guess that is it. The existence of the vegan is a moral judgement of everyone else's food choices, so they get hate. The existence of the vim user reminds you of that one time you gave it a shot and it didn't stick, so it makes you feel attacked the same way.

I want to say one thing in defence of vegans, you only know about the vegans who tell you they are vegans. These people are actually the people-who-like-to-tell-you-they-are-vegans.

There a lot of vegans who don't eat animal products and just leave it at that. Like my partner who just cooked me an anchovy pizza.

You never hear about the just-a-vegan-and-god-knows-why-you'd-want-to-tell-everyone, because they creep through the world, in absolute dread of being discovered by the like-to-tell-people-they-are-a-vegan people.

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