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What Is Vim?

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Re: What Is Vim?

#161

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

liontwist wrote: post #156
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend maybe 90-95% of my time thinking, looking up existing code, reading documentation, solutions, and code exemplars online, and trying to engineer a solution either in my head or on paper. I spend at most 10% actually typing. It's just not something that I've really ever felt has slowed me down.

Did you look at the article?

I did. I disagree with the premises, the (rather exaggerated) examples given, and furthermore the author's situation appears very different compared to mine. I am a very junior developer. The codebase I work on is established and if I ever make edits, it's confined to a handful of lines. It takes a long time for me to understand and parse an existing code base. I am unlikely to ever do the sort of text-slinging that Vim users tend to demonstrate on YouTube. I move between work and home, and I type on different keyboards with different physical layouts.

At the end of work I am so physically and mentally exhausted that I couldn't give two hoots whether I used Vim, VS Code, or the trendy modal AI-augmented editor written in Rust. I just want to get dinner, flop onto my bed, text some friends and get sleep. I have a couple of blog-posts that I've been sitting on for months because I haven't had the time nor energy to sit and write them, even at weekends.

Given all this, learning to use Vim is just another drag. Oh, and I should mention—I am exceptionally lazy. I'm not the so-called 'smart lazy' type of person. I'm lazier than that. I simply don't do stuff if I can afford not to.

The author suggests I now profile my own typing to speed it up? I frankly couldn't be bothered. I type reasonably fast anyway and Vim isn't going to speed things up at all.

Re: What Is Vim?

#162

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

nouveaux wrote: post #146
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend maybe 90-95% of my time thinking, looking up existing code, reading documentation, solutions, and code exemplars online, and trying to engineer a solution either in my head or on paper. I spend at most 10% actually typing. It's just not something that I've really ever felt has slowed me down.

As a modern day tech person, you only spend 4 hours a week on your keyboard across browsers, email, messaging, command line, etc? What about your personal life? Even then, learning Vim could improve your computer interactions easily by 10%. That's 40 min a week or ~34 hours in a year. https://xkcd.com/1205/

I mean during my work hours I spend the majority of my time reading and thinking rather than programming.

In my personal life I try not to program. I do other things.

Re: What Is Vim?

#163

Post by adamnemecek »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #157
adamnemecek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, if Vim is supposed to be an improvement, may god have mercy on us all.

Every time I try to use vscode I start losing time because within a few months I become involved in some kind of diplomacy between the maintainers of vscode and some adjacent component over a bug that neither wants to own. Stuff just works in vim. So uh yeah, definitely an improvement. And re: may god have mercy on us all... Yeah it's not looking good. I'd really like it if we could get our shit together, but ever si…

That's because vim does very little.

Re: What Is Vim?

#164

Post by nunez »

hexomancer wrote: post #50
nunez wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Region select. Custom keybindings. Macros.

All of those are available in the vscode plugin.

last time i used it, the keybindings were really buggy and I found myself falling back on my mouse much more often than I expected to.

Re: What Is Vim?

#165

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

adamnemecek wrote: post #163
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I try to use vscode I start losing time because within a few months I become involved in some kind of diplomacy between the maintainers of vscode and some adjacent component over a bug that neither wants to own. Stuff just works in vim. So uh yeah, definitely an improvement. And re: may god have mercy on us all... Yeah it's not looking good. I'd really like it if we could get our shit together, but ever si…

That's because vim does very little.

Agreed, it doesn't suck because it has only one job to do. One master. Me.

Re: What Is Vim?

#166

Post by hmeh »

sourcepluck wrote: post #155
hmeh wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

evil on Emacs has been great for me. I’ve been using vim for 20 years (vim, visual studio, vim again, now Emacs) and Emacs/evil for at least 5 years or so. I’ve heard someone say that Emacs with Evil is a better vim than vim. I’m inclined to agree.

Ok, it's settled then! OP should have said: "And they - vim implementations - are always frustratingly incomplete and/or buggy... Except perhaps Emacs' evil-mode, with some users going so far as to claim that it's an even better implementation of vim-bindings than vim!" :=D P.S., off the back of your comment, I downloaded and started playing with Doom Emacs last night, as this thread reminded me of how great some peo…

Hah. Yes, --init-directory is very useful.

I think Doom is a fantastic way to get started and know what's out there. I do suggest folks to eventually dive into building their own config. Having that much control over your work surface is where Emacs and its users can really shine, I think. It's a commitment though.

Re: What Is Vim?

#167

Post by kazinator »

II2II wrote: post #105
melezhik wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. There is nano as well

In the Linux world, sure. The only reason why I've seen nano (rather, pico) on many non-Linux systems was because pine was installed, and that was only on multi-user systems.

I used Pine, but with Vim as an external editor. Pico was not suitable for composing and replying to e-mails.

Re: What Is Vim?

#168

Post by cassepipe »

brewmarche wrote: post #115
cassepipe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

set incsearch Now use / (+ n or N) + Enter to move around Done

Incremental search in vim is great, you can also cycle through results with CTRL-G/T while typing. This even works as a motion (e.g. d / foo, then ctrl G until you hit the right foo, then enter to delete until there).

That is great! Thanks

Re: What Is Vim?

#169

Post by cassepipe »

marliechiller wrote: post #112
cassepipe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep talking about :wq when :x has been a thing for so long now

I dont understand why people even do that when ZZ is easier xD

I disagree that's two combos (Shift + z) on awkward key whereas you should be used to : by now

Re: What Is Vim?

#170

Post by cassepipe »

Lio wrote: post #137
cassepipe wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then you should mention it when talking about vim to non-vimmers as not to leave them in the dark with the defaults. The question is not what solution you found to avoid the Escape key but that you did. And even though you are probably used to your solution having the most important key in your program be a weird combo is not great imho. And you are missing out on bash/zsh/gdb and other command line vim modes.

> And you are missing out on bash/zsh/gdb and other command line vim modes. I'm not at all, ctrl-[ is a terminal thing. It's available everywhere as are the the other ctrl shortcuts I mentioned.

Funny I had tried it in wezterm before writing my comment and I get ^] ...
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