Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
1–10 of 135 posts
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#2"not being compatible with nvi (keith bostic) all the time"
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#3The article isn't really antipatterns, more just some advice on how you might want to get started. Different people like to approach things in different ways, and tend to do things however they want anyways. I'd just suggest not to give up on Vim too early, and maybe look for an easier introduction if necessary. If you are using another editor/ide, just use vim mode in that ( most have it ).
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#4> I found myself going very deep down that rabbit hole of plugins and tweaks on multiple occasions. Of course, every time I did it for the sake of “productivity” until I snapped out of it.
I’m guilty of this, although I typically don’t snap out of it so much as blow away my vimrc or start fresh.
> Usually after taking a step back, asking myself “do I really need this?” - it turned out I can do just fine without devicons and the latest plugins
Agreed, however the latest neovim + native lsp/lua offerings are pretty amazing. It’s a rabbit hole that I find it hard to stay out of. It’s still early days, but it seems to me that there’s a significant amount of functionality that this combo unlocks while side stepping some classic vim/vimscript pain.
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#5I just don't buy the premise that I will profit from spending a lot of time optimally customizing a text editor to my supposedly very unique and special needs.
Seems more like a weird para-work hobby than an actual productivity hack.
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#6I just don't buy the premise that I will profit from spending a lot of time optimally customizing a text editor to my supposedly very unique and special needs. Seems more like a weird para-work hobby than an actual productivity hack.
The set of unique and special needs follows a power law: you are going to get most of the benefits from a small set of very common commands. The long tail will be rarely used.
Under a reasonable assumption that 'brain space' is finite, not filling it up with editor commands that may be used at most once a month will leave room for something more valuable instead. This applies for many other aspects in the life of an engineer: indiscriminately memorizing the options of ps/ls, specific APIs, etc.
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#7I came to vim via https://www.spacemacs.org/
I recommend https://vimvalley.com/ highly.
Devoting resources to getting into modal editing was a helpful investment for doing headless work in the cloud over SSH.
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#8I used to dislike vim because of its steep learning curve - my brain would say "I'll always forget it and it won't be worth it". After learning vim (only the very basics), it continues to put a smile on my face now and then. It's like someone has given me 8 to 10 lego pieces and what I can do can be imagined on the spot. Stack the lego pieces and voila, yet another smile on a rather dim morning. Vim is great, but I totally understand my old self that was put off by the elite/snob culture and their ways to scare you away.
All said, if you don't know vim and don't want to learn it, you're not missing out on an occasional smile and a kick in discovering ysa2t or whatever the command. It's not as hyped up as it is treated by the elites. It's good.
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#9I just don't buy the premise that I will profit from spending a lot of time optimally customizing a text editor to my supposedly very unique and special needs. Seems more like a weird para-work hobby than an actual productivity hack.
Then don't. Just learn the basics. Learn how to use insert mode, edit some files, ignore anything not directly relevant. Eventually you'll come across a particular use case where opening a full blown IDE doesn't feel worth the effort, so you'll open vim.
You'll learn a few shortcuts, because it would be nice to delete an entire line, or just look at the end of the file. What do you know `dd`, and `G` respectively do that for you.
Eventually things will become easier in vim, and you'll just have another tool at your disposal.
It took me years to begin to appreciate vim. I don't have a .vimrc, I use all the base settings. However, now that I know how to use vim it's become invaluable.
The thing about vim is that it doesn't have to be complicated. It can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be.
Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit
#10vim anti-pattern number one: not switching to emacs