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Vim After 15 Years (2017)

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Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#21

Post by pmoriarty »

Trufa wrote: post #9

It's alway pretty fascinating to me that people can actually be productive without an IDE. I've tried several times Vim and I just don't get it how you can live without certain functionalities, I'm sure that with enough tinkering you can get pretty close but, for example, search seems to always be kind of a pain in the ass for the complex queries with regex through many files and stuff like that, specially the presen…

I feel pretty much the opposite. IDE's seem incredibly limiting and feature-poor compared to editors like vim and emacs, which can do just about anything.

Regarding your specific examples, both vim and emacs have file histories and if your files are under version control it's easy to get diffs.

Searches are super powerful in both vim and emacs, and it's easy to search across multiple files as well using various scripts/plugins.

The main downside to using editors like vim and emacs is that you have to be a pretty advanced user of them and spend a lot of time configuring them to really feel their power. If you've just dipped your toes in they're not going to look very impressive and you'll likely be disappointed.. but invest the time and they're very hard if not impossible to beat.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#22

Post by aidos »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #19
Trufa wrote: post #9

It's alway pretty fascinating to me that people can actually be productive without an IDE. I've tried several times Vim and I just don't get it how you can live without certain functionalities, I'm sure that with enough tinkering you can get pretty close but, for example, search seems to always be kind of a pain in the ass for the complex queries with regex through many files and stuff like that, specially the presen…

I've used vim for a while now and using it isn't a point of pride, it's more that whenever I try an IDE I wonder how anybody could be productive using it. I've rarely had a problem with search, I can type `:grep [some regex]` and I'm quickly shown all matches for that regex in the entire project. I admit I'm not sure how I would do a more complicated query, but this is almost always enough, what kinds of queries do y…

I don’t use debuggers myself, but I think they’re pretty well supported within vim (neovim at least) these days https://github.com/mfussenegger/nvim-dap

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#23

Post by kioleanu »

Trufa wrote: post #9

It's alway pretty fascinating to me that people can actually be productive without an IDE. I've tried several times Vim and I just don't get it how you can live without certain functionalities, I'm sure that with enough tinkering you can get pretty close but, for example, search seems to always be kind of a pain in the ass for the complex queries with regex through many files and stuff like that, specially the presen…

I was contemplating the same thing today as I was knee deep in refactoring a piece of code - I use IntelliJ and ideavim, which I find great because it also implements (emulates?) a small subset of vim plugins. I was able to finish the fairly complex refactoring in half an hour, without taking my hands off the keyboard by using a fairly strong combination of vim and IDE features. This is what works for me.

I use an IntelliJ plugin that notifies me when I could’ve used a shortcut but I clicked with the mouse instead. It also counts the times I missed a shortcut. I keep a pretty low count but I was watching a colleague that had the same plugin and he had missed a certain shortcut 22k times. He is as productive as I am, so to each his own

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#24

Post by aidos »

ar_lan wrote: post #15
Trufa wrote: post #9

It's alway pretty fascinating to me that people can actually be productive without an IDE. I've tried several times Vim and I just don't get it how you can live without certain functionalities, I'm sure that with enough tinkering you can get pretty close but, for example, search seems to always be kind of a pain in the ass for the complex queries with regex through many files and stuff like that, specially the presen…

Neovim user, so a little different. I used to regularly use GoLand for ~3 years before I made the full switch over, and am a bit of an evangelist of it. I'm simply faster in it. I'd probably say the initial main attractor was modal editing (vim-mode plugins in Jetbrains are not my favorite - usually not a full implementation of the real features vim offers). * For syntax highlighting: tree-sitter is as good, if not b…

Treesitter is amazing. We have a bunch of sql strings in python and I was able to drop a couple of lines into my injections.scm to isolate them and get perfect sql highlighting within my python code.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#25

Post by kazinator »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #19
Trufa wrote: post #9

It's alway pretty fascinating to me that people can actually be productive without an IDE. I've tried several times Vim and I just don't get it how you can live without certain functionalities, I'm sure that with enough tinkering you can get pretty close but, for example, search seems to always be kind of a pain in the ass for the complex queries with regex through many files and stuff like that, specially the presen…

I've used vim for a while now and using it isn't a point of pride, it's more that whenever I try an IDE I wonder how anybody could be productive using it. I've rarely had a problem with search, I can type `:grep [some regex]` and I'm quickly shown all matches for that regex in the entire project. I admit I'm not sure how I would do a more complicated query, but this is almost always enough, what kinds of queries do y…

About :grep, try integrating GNU id-utils with Vim.

GNU id-utils provides a mkid command which scans a directory of files to build a binary index file called ID. The lid tool is used to query this and provides a grep-compatible mode.

lid sometimes puts out things in a funny order, so I sort the output.

  :set grepprg=lid\ --word\ --result=grep\ '$*'\ \\\|\ sort\ -n\ -t\ :\ -k\ 2
This is basically instant even on huge file trees.

Or, if you'd like :grep to use git grep:

  :set grepprg=git\ grep\ -n\ '$*'

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#26

Post by kioleanu »

pmoriarty wrote: post #21
Trufa wrote: post #9

It's alway pretty fascinating to me that people can actually be productive without an IDE. I've tried several times Vim and I just don't get it how you can live without certain functionalities, I'm sure that with enough tinkering you can get pretty close but, for example, search seems to always be kind of a pain in the ass for the complex queries with regex through many files and stuff like that, specially the presen…

I feel pretty much the opposite. IDE's seem incredibly limiting and feature-poor compared to editors like vim and emacs, which can do just about anything. Regarding your specific examples, both vim and emacs have file histories and if your files are under version control it's easy to get diffs. Searches are super powerful in both vim and emacs, and it's easy to search across multiple files as well using various scrip…

Can vim and/or emacs do refactoring? That is a feature that I use daily and couldn’t live without

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#27

Post by kstrauser »

kioleanu wrote: post #26
pmoriarty wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel pretty much the opposite. IDE's seem incredibly limiting and feature-poor compared to editors like vim and emacs, which can do just about anything. Regarding your specific examples, both vim and emacs have file histories and if your files are under version control it's easy to get diffs. Searches are super powerful in both vim and emacs, and it's easy to search across multiple files as well using various scrip…

Can vim and/or emacs do refactoring? That is a feature that I use daily and couldn’t live without

Yes. Well, Emacs definitely can, and I have no doubt Vim can with the same tooling. For example, Emacs has excellent support for LSP. If a language server exists for your favorite language, and it supports refactoring, then so does Emacs.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#28

Post by dogmatism »

I wish there were a vim equivalent for electronic medical records

Or at least the ecosystem that you could choose your tools to help do your job, rather than be victim of the world of shit that is the (pick any) EMR

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#29

Post by statico »

Author here. Many will be disappointed to know that I've been using VS Code almost exclusively since 2019 (with the Vim plugin of course).

I've been meaning to write a follow-up article, but unfortunately writing is low on the priority list. The main reason is that these days, when I _am_ coding, I mostly write TypeScript and React on my local machine (not much SSH these days), and VS Code Just Works™. I tried twice to get neovim and LSP stuff working but never could, and I can't justify spending time twiddling my editor these days. And as much as I love the terminal, using multiple font sizes lets me fit more information on the screen.

My dotfiles are always available: https://statico.link/dotfiles

(Also, I lost all the great comments on my blog somehow, so sorry to those who left them. I had Commento running for a while but it appears to be abandoned. Disqus has them but I refuse to use Disqus anymore because it's awful.)

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#30

Post by mikebenfield »

Trufa wrote: post #9

It's alway pretty fascinating to me that people can actually be productive without an IDE. I've tried several times Vim and I just don't get it how you can live without certain functionalities, I'm sure that with enough tinkering you can get pretty close but, for example, search seems to always be kind of a pain in the ass for the complex queries with regex through many files and stuff like that, specially the presen…

Although I recognize that theoretically there are features in an IDE that could be useful, every time I've tried to use one I find it intrusive and slow and frustrating and confusing. I inevitably close it in a rage within 15 minutes because of some design decision that I find infuriatingly stupid.

neovim plus a couple extensions plus some Unix command line tools are just so simple and convenient.

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