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Vim After 15 Years (2017)

blog.langworth.com

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Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#81
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that debuggers, which frequently have complex interfaces, are generally much better suited to GUI applications. Having a good debugger integrated with my code editor is basically the reason I use an IDE instead of vim. Stuff like Vimspector exist but are way more work to use vs. a GUI equivalent.

I think the interesting thing with debuggers, though, is that I relied heavily on debuggers back when I was relatively new to programming (maybe the first 10-15 years or so), but once I started to feel like I knew what I was doing--and the stuff I was doing became a lot more complicated--debuggers started to feel a lot less useful and even frustrating or limiting... particularly so given that to actually make a debug…

This but less insultingly.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#82
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my 2 cents on this > I don't quite remember something and having the internal file history with a diff readily available. You're already in a terminal, git is just one command away > Some of the click and find implementation/usages never seems to quite there to me. This really depends on the language you are working in, but generally vim's gd (and plugins that augment it) enough most of the time, otherwise grep/…

> Here's the thing, the best part about it vim is that it is not slow (plus paired with a terminal emulator like kitty/wez/alacritty). When I type the characters actually appear on the screen as I type them. I just noticed that ~/.vimrc adds a small delay, even if it is empty. This is the test case: Create a file with about 10 emtpy lines and type: esc switch to normal mode gg go to the top ctrl + v, G select all lin…

Having a ~/.vimrc, even if empty, sets 'nocompatible'.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#83
post #29

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…

I recently setup neovim with lsp, fzf and like 10 plugins in pure lua. I was surprised that it took me just a few hours. I've spent too much time fighting viml in the past and it kept me from looking at the config for like 3 years. But holy f, things have gotten soo much better. Lua for vim is.. actually good. Like I grok the apis.

I know what its like to be burnt but messing with config, but man I cannot recommend kitty + neovim highly enough. It's absolutely AMAZING.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#84
post #29

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…

I recently setup neovim with lsp, fzf and like 10 plugins in pure lua. I was surprised that it took me just a few hours. I've spent too much time fighting viml in the past and it kept me from looking at the config for like 3 years. But holy f, things have gotten soo much better. Lua for vim is.. actually good. Like I grok the apis. I know what its like to be burnt but messing with config, but man I cannot recommend k…

I also use kitty + neovim. I highly agree.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#85
post #79
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I need an interactive debugger, I alt-tab into a JetBrains product or VS/VSCode. The only time in my career that I wasn't primarily developing inside of vim/neovim and now Emacs was when I was working on a .NET team.

Why did you switch from vim/neovim to emacs?

I wanted magit and org-mode.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#87
post #29

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…

no, i am not disappointed at all. if anything, i sympathise with you. the older i get, the less i care about the nitty gritty detail of how should i set my editor up. i just want to install editor which detects (and installs the ide-like tooling support) the programming i use, churn some shitty code away, and be done with it. nowadays, like you, i just use vscode and vsvim. most of the time, it works and that is what matters.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#88
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…

On search:

IDEA out of the box has:

- fuzzy text search across your entire codebase. Supports regexes, when you need them

- fuzzy text search for symbols only (e.g. when you only need to search for method names etc.). Supports regexes, when you need them

- fuzzy text search for file names

- Ctrl/Cmd + click, or Ctrl/Cmd + B on any symbol, and you'll get a list of all the places where this symbol is used (e.g. a method name that's called from various places in code, including test code)

No extra plugins, or setting up keybindings, needed.

With vim though... Even discussion on search devolves into listing which tools everyone uses, with which options, and a discussion on how circumvent their limitations.

Edit: esp. with search almost every year there's a new tool that you absolutely must use because it's better than the previous tool. ripgrep, ag, telescope, treesitter, semgrep, use them all!

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#89
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.

Why did you spend time to figure out and set up vim, tools, and extensions, but only spend 15 minutes with an IDE?

vim's "design decision" to have extensions and external tools that you need to manually string together somehow is just as infuriating.

Re: Vim After 15 Years (2017)

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently setup neovim with lsp, fzf and like 10 plugins in pure lua. I was surprised that it took me just a few hours. I've spent too much time fighting viml in the past and it kept me from looking at the config for like 3 years. But holy f, things have gotten soo much better. Lua for vim is.. actually good. Like I grok the apis. I know what its like to be burnt but messing with config, but man I cannot recommend k…

I also use kitty + neovim. I highly agree.

I've been a heavy vim user for I don't even know how long. What does neovim get me over vim? Looking at the charter page on the website, the only thing that really stands out to me is Lua.

"Deliver a first-class Lua/LuaJIT scripting alternative to Vimscript." The rest seem fine but not really a reason to switch, and I don't know Lua so I'm not sure that's a reason either.

Is this the main reason? Are there other good reasons?

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