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Vim is hard, I just want to click around

jeffkreeftmeijer.com

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Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#41

Post by shadowfiend »

gbog wrote: post #12
lordlarm wrote: post #2

I too wanted to click around the first month (+/-) after switching to vim, I think we all did. However, it seems like the author learned the basics of vim, but stopped before he learned about powerful navigation keys, visual mode etc. I think the moral is: if you feel you don't get the hang of vim/nerdtree etc., don't give up - keep going, there is a reason why so many people use it.

> don't give up Yes. All the tutos I have read recently insist on using hjkl, which is a matter of taste, but do not emphasize what I believe is the most important (for terminal use): cut and paste. - Easy cut and paste in Vim is done with yy and p, avoid mouse and ctrl-c/v or any other trick that is not "inside" Vim. - Good trick are to first select a block with . - Don't forget P, which is pasting above current lin…

Also worth remembering is that every command that deletes really cuts. Which is to say, deletion commands like x and dd store the deleted content in the register that will be used when you hit p or P. This is important to know both because it can be very useful sometimes and because it can get in your way other times (e.g., if you're trying to repeat an action and keep replacing a line with another line, you'll have to paste before you delete so you don't override your register).

Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#42

Post by shadowfiend »

I've been playing around with vico for a couple of days (http://vicoapp.com/) and it seems pretty nifty in terms of solving some of these from-textmate-to-vim "problems". It uses TextMate bundles and supports them reasonably well as far as I can see. It also has Cmd-T and is very much a native app rather than a wrapper around a terminal app, which is more what MacVim tends to look like (it's what I've been using for the couple of years since I switched to Mac).

There are some holes in the vi commands that I use; some of them can be filled in (I'm working on some of the ones I'm missing), some of them will probably have to wait for official work, but either way I'll probably keep using it for a few days and see how things feel at the end.

Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#43

Post by jrockway »

edanm wrote: post #40
wahnfrieden wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (admittedly not as good) equivalent to ido-mode in vim is FuzzyFinder.

One of the biggest shortcomings of vim is the lack of a good ido-mode style file-opener. People seem to rave about command-t, although getting it set up on Windows proved too annoying for me. FuzzyFinder is nice, but graphically it's a mess. Like everything else in vim, really.

This is the biggest meta-shortcoming of vim: the fact that it doesn't come with a built-in programming language. This forces extension authors to bring their own, with the expected consequences.

Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#44

Post by to3m »

daleharvey wrote: post #15

I have a hard time watching people traditionally navigate filetrees and tabs with emacs and ido-mode enabled I press Ctrl+X B to open a buffer, Ctrl+X F to open a file, I typically type 2 or 3 characters from the filename and emacs gives me a list of matches (with autocomplete), usually the first suggestion is correct and I press return to open the file. I barely need to think while I do this, there is no visual clut…

In an ideal world, ido-mode would be the standard for any kind of selecting from a list. Drives me nuts that there are still people out there writing programs that only search by prefix, or that make you actually click the mouse!

Users of Visual Studio can get something similar using the Visual Assist plugin. Works across files in the project, interesting symbols in the project, or interesting symbols in the current file. Works as well as you'd expect - or, if you don't like Visual Studio, better.

Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#45

Post by eropple »

superalloy wrote: post #17
lordlarm wrote: post #2

I too wanted to click around the first month (+/-) after switching to vim, I think we all did. However, it seems like the author learned the basics of vim, but stopped before he learned about powerful navigation keys, visual mode etc. I think the moral is: if you feel you don't get the hang of vim/nerdtree etc., don't give up - keep going, there is a reason why so many people use it.

The reason that people use (mac)vim is not necessarily the ‘powerful navigation keys’ etc. For me it’s the ability to deal with large files and the crazy indentation rules people use and I know it’s the same for quite some other users. The way people work differs from person to person, the idea that someone should always just keep on trying, even if something doesn't feel right, is in my opinion useless. The real mor…

Agreed - this is pretty much the only reason MacVim lives on my machines. It handles huge files way better than anything else I've tried.

I can use vim. I know it pretty well. But the inescapable fact is that, for me, it's clunky and requires more thinking than just using a mouse and pointing at something, then typing what I want to type. I use it because I haven't found something better (and I'm sure it exists, I just haven't seen it).

Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#47

Post by Hoff »

andrewvc wrote: post #35
thristian wrote: post #13

I've always been a little puzzled by people who use a file-drawer or file-list or similar addon with Vim, and I now I think I know why: I'm guessing most of these people have Vim open as their One Tool, much like another programmer might have Xcode or Visual Studio open as their One Tool, and they want to get everything done in it. At work, I usually have at least two windows open at all times: Vim full-screen on one…

Or even alias vimtab="gvim -f --remote-tab-silent" in your .bashrc, .zshrc or equivalent

The Mac OS X command open allows this directly:

  $ open -a macvim filename.ext
which permits:

  $ alias mvim="open -a macvim"
as a shortcut.

Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#48

Post by damienfir »

gbog wrote: post #12
lordlarm wrote: post #2

I too wanted to click around the first month (+/-) after switching to vim, I think we all did. However, it seems like the author learned the basics of vim, but stopped before he learned about powerful navigation keys, visual mode etc. I think the moral is: if you feel you don't get the hang of vim/nerdtree etc., don't give up - keep going, there is a reason why so many people use it.

> don't give up Yes. All the tutos I have read recently insist on using hjkl, which is a matter of taste, but do not emphasize what I believe is the most important (for terminal use): cut and paste. - Easy cut and paste in Vim is done with yy and p, avoid mouse and ctrl-c/v or any other trick that is not "inside" Vim. - Good trick are to first select a block with . - Don't forget P, which is pasting above current lin…

Thanks, I didn't know about the paste mode.

Re: Vim is hard, I just want to click around

#50

Post by JoshTriplett »

thristian wrote: post #13

I've always been a little puzzled by people who use a file-drawer or file-list or similar addon with Vim, and I now I think I know why: I'm guessing most of these people have Vim open as their One Tool, much like another programmer might have Xcode or Visual Studio open as their One Tool, and they want to get everything done in it. At work, I usually have at least two windows open at all times: Vim full-screen on one…

Unfortunately, the remote features require a GUI version of vim. Personally, I prefer to run vim in a tab of my terminal.
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