Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit • Hacker News Board

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#111

Post by stnmtn » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

theonemind wrote: post #21

civilized wrote: post #5

I 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.

I used vim as my primary editor for about 2 years. It was definitely the fastest way to edit text. However, editing text is pretty minor compared to time spent thinking. For me personally, I just find moded editing slightly grating. It would also be faster if I moved around at a break-neck sprint all of the time, but slightly tiresome and unpleasant. I had the same experience with vim. It was fast, tiresome, and unpl…

After 2 years you still felt that way? I've been using it for ~5 years and felt that after a year or so having to think about vim melted away and it just feels like the natural way to edit text, I barely think about the modes I'm in anymore

It's that line in the Matrix where he goes "Eventually you don't see the numbers. You just see blonde, redhead, brunette"

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#112

Post by xwolfi » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

drekipus wrote: post #17

There's been a number of "anti-vim, use a real ide(TM)" posts coming into my feed lately and I don't get why. Do people really get buttmad about this? I switched from vscode to vim as I found it to be largely much faster in getting around when I started my new job, some people find the opposite. A ok. Why do people try to force us into these largely closed solutions? ( Mainly it's vscode, which has a real EEE threat)

It's the time wasted. Look at a guy merging 30 conflicts in text mode for an hour :D

I think there can be clever specialized vim gurus, but god the ones I work with just struggle so much while idiot me click 3 buttons in an IDE and move on.

We're not paid to be clever, we're paid to make money.

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#113

Post by licebmi__at__ » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #107

infinitezest wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, based on the complaints outlined in your comment above it kind of sounds like vim _is_ a tool of your trade (albeit one that you don't use very often). The basics are probably worth learning just so you don't have to care when you run into vim (opening files, inserting text, save and exit). Learn it once and you're good to go. Or you can keep resetting the default editor to nano. You do you, friend.

Sorry if I was not clear, most of the time when you edit a config file you decide what editor you use, so you would run nano /etc/congig.cfg my only issue was with crontab, since it was using nano but someone changed it to vim so I was surprised by it, I really had to google how to exit it. Since I edit cronjobs once a year and for config files I can use nano it would be a waste to learn vim, I would just forget all…

In most the distributions, the default editor is vi, I believe the only (mainstream) distribution which has nano as default is ubuntu. In fact, being a sysadmin, the reason most of us learnt vim is because it's always the default and it's installed everywhere.

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#114

Post by kedean » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

plainnoodles wrote: post #80

drekipus wrote: post #17

There's been a number of "anti-vim, use a real ide(TM)" posts coming into my feed lately and I don't get why. Do people really get buttmad about this? I switched from vscode to vim as I found it to be largely much faster in getting around when I started my new job, some people find the opposite. A ok. Why do people try to force us into these largely closed solutions? ( Mainly it's vscode, which has a real EEE threat)

IME, it's because when you view vim as just another element in a list of "things that let me write code into files", where sibling elements are "IntelliJ", "vscode(ium)", etc, then vim comes off as looking like "gedit but with keyboard shortcuts and no discoverability, oh but you can research and install and configure a million plugins with no overarching design cohesion and you also have to maintain and update them"…

I hate to admit it, but I've been wondering for literally years how to pipe stdin to vim properly. You've changed my life.

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#115

Post by ziml77 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

Jach wrote: post #106

blacktriangle wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for Emacs, nobody points you to the Info system, which is absolutely amazing. Perhaps this is because both vimtutor and the Emacs tutor do refer to their respective help systems, but given the sad state of most help systems beginners are familiar with I think they can be forgiven for not taking the recomendation seriously. Its worth really emphasizing to beginners that there is a follow up to the simple vim…

In the age of google everything, it seems like people don't even consider that built-in help could be a thing. And people just don't seem to read. vim's startup message contains: VIM - Vi IMproved version whatever by Bram Moolenaar et al. Vim is open source and freely distributable Become a registered Vim user! type :help register for information type :q to exit type :help or for on-line help type :help version8 for…

how often are people opening vim with no buffers? Even if I'm creating a file, I know what name I want to give it so I'll invoke vim with that as the argument

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#116

Post by wutbrodo » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #76

vintermann wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never gone for vi(m), even after roughly 25 years of using Linux now. I'm not trying to force you into anything, certainly not anything closed. I used NEdit until its lack of utf-8 and ancient GUI library started causing trouble. Then I used Slava Pestov's JEdit, which was wonderfully extensible and portable. Now I use vscode, which is just so outrageously well made that even electron and Microsoft can't scare m…

> But modal editing is just a bad idea. We've known since the 70s. My understanding was that the UX studies around modal editing showed it was hard for new users, which isn't quite the same thing as "bad". Personally I think what really works about vim for me is the composition of action and motion in a sort of language.

Yea, it's a little difficult to describe, but it's more than just pure speed, it's mental load. Vim let's me integrate the entire development process into a single flow. This is true fractally: from typing all the way to being able to comfortably live inside my screen sessions.

It's difficult for me articulate how valuable it is to maintaining flow to almost _never_ feel like I'm switching muscle-memory contexts, where my text editing and screen switching and file-handling and model-training and everything else all feel like I'm in the same app.

I've never come close to achieving this using a graphical IDE, including with vim keybindings.

It obviously requires up-front investment in a way that more newb-friendly GUI tools don't, but I was lucky enough to make that commitment in college, when the initial hit to my productivity was practically costless.

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#117

Post by Koshkin » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

While I enjoy using vi*, in today's practical terms it itself seems like an anti-pattern, unfortunately: as soon as I leave my closet and reenter the big world, I always have trouble readjusting to the "normal people's" keybindings...

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#118

Post by grumbel » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

mstade wrote: post #89

vintermann wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never gone for vi(m), even after roughly 25 years of using Linux now. I'm not trying to force you into anything, certainly not anything closed. I used NEdit until its lack of utf-8 and ancient GUI library started causing trouble. Then I used Slava Pestov's JEdit, which was wonderfully extensible and portable. Now I use vscode, which is just so outrageously well made that even electron and Microsoft can't scare m…

> But modal editing is just a bad idea. Citation please? I mean, from a personal point of view I'm mostly in agreement with you, but your post reads like a straw man argument with a non apology affixed. "Not trying to force you into anything" followed by "modal editing is just a bad idea" just reads like judgmental noise to me – can it can be backed up with actual research? Meanwhile vim (and variants) exists and are…

> Citation please?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#119

Post by vram22 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:07 PM UTC

May not be relevant for all beginners to vim, but this StackOverflow answer is really like (for lack of a better term) the Zen of vim (for beginners):

"Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi.":

It is the top answer to this question:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-mos...

Also check out the "A sobering thought paragraph" at the end.

Related to that, a plug by yours truly, for my own vi quickstart tutorial (including why it was written), is linked from this tweet:

"Why I teach vim" (the "I" there is someone else):

https://mobile.twitter.com/vasudevram/status/132791223088143...

Re: Vim Anti-Patterns That Cause Beginners To:Quit

#120

Post by BossingAround » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

dummy_physicist wrote: post #103

wruza wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stick shift That is an unfair comparison on the edge of a strawman. In vim, you see your mode right at the cursor shape (bar in insert, block in normal, selection in visual). It’s like saying that DEs are bad because switching active windows is modal. Why not send input to the first window in the taskbar by holding ctrl and to the second by holding ctrl-shift then? Does that sound absurd? Even when you make a modal m…

I agree on the graphics part. I've tried doom emacs for the graphics, but it's not quite the same thing. On Mac, though, vimr[0] had a nice UI for neovim. On linux I'm yet to find a neovim GUI I'm happy with. [0]: https://github.com/qvacua/vimr

I vaguely remember Onivim looked quite nice on Linux. Have you tried that?

Vimr looks excellent on macOS though, I'll definitely give it a go.