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20 Years of Vim

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31–40 of 81 posts

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When do most people use text editors? I think wouldn’t be that surprised if somebody fist used a text editor when they first got into Linux or programming.

I’d imagine most people’s first impression would be Notepad on windows- I wouldn’t count Word or even WordPad.

I bet you are right.

But, I also think there’s enough leeway in the idea of “using a tool” to not be surprised that somebody doesn’t count a one-off use of notepad. And I think there must exist at least some people who really never used notepad.

Nowadays I only assume someone between, like, 30 and 50 will inherently have to have used Windows at some point. Outside that range, you might get graybeards who were around before Windows, or younger folks who only ever used smartphones.

Anyway, all that rambling is to say, I’d put it in the “most but not shocking to hear otherwise” category.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#34
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vim was the first text editor I've ever used (back in 2008) How could anyone skip any other more "normal" editors and jump right into Vim?

What was a "normal" editor in '08? After trying out finger-twister with Emacs, vim was a breath of fresh air, and had better features than plain "vi", like it was improved or something. Now, how do I save and exit?

Notepad++ (Windows, 2003) / gedit (GNOME, 1998) / kwrite/kate (KDE, 2001) all existed in 2008 and are totally fine basic text editors for source code. I remember editing PHP in a more obscure editor (SciTE, 1999) on Windows in the early 2000s.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#35
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vim was the first text editor I've ever used (back in 2008) How could anyone skip any other more "normal" editors and jump right into Vim?

What was a "normal" editor in '08? After trying out finger-twister with Emacs, vim was a breath of fresh air, and had better features than plain "vi", like it was improved or something. Now, how do I save and exit?

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

Sort by creation date, notepad, kedit, kwrite, notepad++, Scite, and plenty more.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#36
post #3

Cool tool! I had to double check because I thought Vim was much older. Indeed, Vim goes back to 1991 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(text_editor) ). This is a great view of the last 20 years of Vim.

Right, this is just the history after moving to git. Hence starting with Vim 6.x and 0 git commits.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#37

Would like to see this with the #lines/changes per commit. Its obvious that there are more commits post neovim, but i wonder if they're more substantial or just a change in work flow (eg: previously 1 commit with 3 lines, later 3 commits with 1 line each).

After neovim was released, I could feel the pace pick up, subjectively

Neovim allowed innovation that vim initially stifled, and its success motivated Vim to catch up. I think the fork has been good for Vim.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was a "normal" editor in '08? After trying out finger-twister with Emacs, vim was a breath of fresh air, and had better features than plain "vi", like it was improved or something. Now, how do I save and exit?

Notepad++ (Windows, 2003) / gedit (GNOME, 1998) / kwrite/kate (KDE, 2001) all existed in 2008 and are totally fine basic text editors for source code. I remember editing PHP in a more obscure editor (SciTE, 1999) on Windows in the early 2000s.

Most of all those are gui based, when running a small Slackware setup without X none of those are available.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#39
post #27
post #19

Is anyone keeping track of what the most popular Vim commands are? Personally, I've been using Vim for years, but I must confess that I use almost the same commands as I did in the beginning. Is there any good website that teaches useful tricks, maybe on a daily basis?

I really can't recommend Drew Neil's resources enough. The vimcasts¹ series are great if you're the sort of person who likes videos to learn with, and both his books are excellent²³. [The books may appear to be getting a little long in the tooth, but their contents are still very applicable to today's usage.] My own "trick" for improving my vim usage was to start mapping things to that have better replacements, it is…

Thanks! Now I'm curious what is bad about hjkl movements :)

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#40
post #39
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't recommend Drew Neil's resources enough. The vimcasts¹ series are great if you're the sort of person who likes videos to learn with, and both his books are excellent²³. [The books may appear to be getting a little long in the tooth, but their contents are still very applicable to today's usage.] My own "trick" for improving my vim usage was to start mapping things to that have better replacements, it is…

Thanks! Now I'm curious what is bad about hjkl movements :)

You tend to overuse arrow key-like navigation instead of developing chords of movements.

I got stuck in that suboptimal mode and had to break myself of it.

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