Why I teach vim

I started coding only during my undergrad (computer engineer), so first editor/IDE was Eclipse, and then moved to Atom -> Sublime -> CLion. By the time I reached my 3rd year, I was writing C/C++, and took this course on Operating Systems. The course taught on the OS/161 teaching OS [1], which (at the time) used BSD Make and other magic, and I had no idea how to configure my CLion IDE to handle it. The course professor was a Vim evangelist, and actually dedicated a weekend to teach Vim for anyone who wanted to learn. Since, then I have been hooked. (Point being: I haven't existed for 40 years, let alone used Vim for that long, nor have I just been told. I think there is some comment in this post that compares learning Emacs/Vim to learning foreign languages, which I definitely relate to.)

Why I like Vim:

1. I can separate my text typing with text manipulation (if that makes any sense). 2. Cliche, but I love that I don't have to use my mouse. I don't necessarily care about the speed of it (I have RSI from using my keyboard too much, so I am actively slow) but having to switch to a mouse and then search for the button I want to click, etc. is a significant mental strain/distraction for me. 3. Command mode is not the same as keybindings in IDEs: I have used several IDEs (outside the ones I mentioned above) and I always found keybindings to not be intuitive and also involves having to press a bunch of unrelated keys. I think the reason why Sublime/Atom/VSCode have a Command Pallette is exactly for this reason, and IMHO, Vim does it better. 4. And, finally, the most important reason: I don't have to leave the terminal. I have a setup that uses Neovim and Tmux, through various high-quality plugins written by some really awesome people. It is seamless. I have latex compiling in the background, I can edit command line arguments to Clang without having to hop through multiple dialog boxes, and so on.

[1]: http://os161.eecs.harvard.edu/

Edit: Forgot to put link to OS/161

Edit: Found out that the original website for the course I took is still up at https://ops-class.org/courses/buffalo/CSE421_Spring2017/

I hunted down all the readily available open-source Vi implementations, downloaded them and compiled them all. I tried Elvis, Nvi, Xvi, Vim and a couple of others I don't remember.

Vim was the best, by a long stretch, so I continued with that. I found the built-in tutorial very handy; I went through that, and within a week I was proficient.

A couple years later, I started seeing Vim in GNU/Linux distros as the default Vi implementation.

My thesis, which is a borderline polemic, is that if Vim doesn't suit your needs you are doing it wrong. If your program/language/environment needs a smart editor, you've built or chosen a program/language/environment that is too complex, and an IDE won't ever solve that fundamental problem. I get we don't always get to choose these things (wh o hasn't had to learn React, Typescript, or the general JavaScript ecosystem) but my cultural stance is the people who made those things should have used Vim, realized it was hard to manage w/ Vim, and questioned their priors.

That might sound nuts or the ravings of someone who's completely drank the kool-aid; who got good at one difficult thing and now like, jams it in everywhere to ladder pull or whatever. And so I should say that I'm super amazed by the capabilities of IDEs like PyCharm or even Eclipse (or, honestly, even Code::Blocks). The sheer engineering effort alone is awesome, but some of the stuff you can do with them is incredible. I can't imagine developing the source code of Eclipse with Vim. But does using an IDE to develop Eclipse make Eclipse great, or does it simply make Eclipse _possible_?

I contend Eclipse shouldn't exist, at least not in its current form. It's too complex for humans, and its design necessitated so many engineering hours it was a net loss for humanity. If the complexity of your program/language/environment rises to the level you need an IDE to manage it, the only thing to do is start over.