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20 Years of Vim

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Re: 20 Years of Vim

#61

Post by bee_rider »

Eddygandr wrote: post #50
bee_rider wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you really think people younger than 30 won’t be using Windows in school or at home?

I mean, there exist and have always existed people who’ve never used it at home. And there exist and (ever since it came out) have existed people who have.

What I’ve tried to express is that there’s a small band where not having used it is unusual and surprising, and that isn’t the case anymore. I still think the majority of people have used Windows at least a handful of times but hearing that somebody hasn’t no longer produces a “how could anyone” sort of response.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#62

Post by berkes »

mekster wrote: post #17
mpereira wrote: post #2

I used data from the Vim git repository to create an annotated chart of some of the main moments in the last 20 years of Vim development. Vim was the first text editor I've ever used (back in 2008), and it shaped the way I interact with computers forever. I'm grateful to all maintainers, and to Bram for creating it and shepherding it through all these decades. The annotations are interactive, so if you hover them you…

> 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?

I was thrown into vi, back in 1996, learning Linux. It was the default (or at least available) and the SuSE manual that came with the CD-ROM box had a chapter on vi/vim.

For me it was my first editor on Linux. Didn't stick until I rediscovered it some 20 years ago when I got fed up with the netbeans nonsense and gedit and Kate kept breaking on me.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#63

Post by [deleted] »

Eddygandr wrote: post #50
bee_rider wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you really think people younger than 30 won’t be using Windows in school or at home?

[deleted]

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#64

Post by pydave »

zabzonk wrote: post #22

for me, it is more like "40+ years of vi". vim is simply the best version of all of the vi-based editors that i have used, across many platforms. vim is brilliant (and i am very sad to hear of the author's death), but i think we really owe it all to bill joy.

Vim's addition of .vimrc and .vim allowing you to store editor programs to further accelerate your editing makes stand vim far beyond vi.

Credit Bill Joy for the modal editing paradigm, but vim is so much more than that. Most editors have a vi mode, but they don't compare to vim because they are awkward to script and don't have powerful regular expressions so readily available (both introduced in vim).

We could thank Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for enabling vi, but I thank Bram for keeping vi viable, portable, and well-supported across languages.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#65

Post by smackeyacky »

amelius wrote: post #39
JNRowe wrote: 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 :)

So am I. Not all terminals actually had cursor keys.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#66

Post by jes5199 »

that’s fascinating and to me, because as a vim user since 1998, I haven’t really consciously noticed it changing much.

If I tried running a version from 20+ years ago, today, would it still work on a modern O/S ? Are there modern vim features that I would miss?

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#67

Post by mpereira »

mekster wrote: post #17
mpereira wrote: post #2

I used data from the Vim git repository to create an annotated chart of some of the main moments in the last 20 years of Vim development. Vim was the first text editor I've ever used (back in 2008), and it shaped the way I interact with computers forever. I'm grateful to all maintainers, and to Bram for creating it and shepherding it through all these decades. The annotations are interactive, so if you hover them you…

> 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?

I'm weird, I started using computers with Arch Linux and Vim :P

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#68

Post by zabzonk »

bluenose69 wrote: post #56
zabzonk wrote: post #22

for me, it is more like "40+ years of vi". vim is simply the best version of all of the vi-based editors that i have used, across many platforms. vim is brilliant (and i am very sad to hear of the author's death), but i think we really owe it all to bill joy.

Same for me: vi (later vim, later neovim) since the late 1970s. I used ed in the early days, too, and that may be why I love the fact that vi* lets me type ":" to do powerful things.

i had to teach a C programming course that used ed as the editor because i could not at the time get vi/ex to work because of terminfo/termcaps and other problems (which i later fixed). also bourne shell. students, who were on a basically business oriented IT course in about 1985 (?) never complained.

try inflicting something like that on people now, though it might be good for them.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#69

Post by zabzonk »

pydave wrote: post #64
zabzonk wrote: post #22

for me, it is more like "40+ years of vi". vim is simply the best version of all of the vi-based editors that i have used, across many platforms. vim is brilliant (and i am very sad to hear of the author's death), but i think we really owe it all to bill joy.

Vim's addition of .vimrc and .vim allowing you to store editor programs to further accelerate your editing makes stand vim far beyond vi. Credit Bill Joy for the modal editing paradigm, but vim is so much more than that. Most editors have a vi mode, but they don't compare to vim because they are awkward to script and don't have powerful regular expressions so readily available (both introduced in vim). We could thank…

not sure thompson or ritchie ever used vi, or really enabled it. it is quite similar to the text editors on vax.

Re: 20 Years of Vim

#70

Post by IAmYourDensity »

rob74 wrote: post #47
rangerelf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You might be surprised to learn that the original version of Vim (on the Amiga: https://www.reddit.com/r/amiga/comments/l5j53m/the_text_edit... ) was a GUI based application! Ok, it didn't have much in the way of an actual GUI, but it ran in a window which wasn't the shell/CLI window. I guess the actual reason why Vim is a console application on Linux is the lack of a "standard" GUI framework.

And was called "Vi IMitation" not "Vi IMproved"? Interesting.
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