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The vi family

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Re: The vi family

#41

Post by rbits »

opan wrote: post #30
16bitvoid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helix's selection-action feels way more natural to me than vi/vim's action-selection.

Had someone else parrot this line to me the other day, but I remain unconvinced. Especially when vim has visual mode, and you often can make a select before doing something to it. v$ to select from cursor to end of line, then d to cut or y to copy. Is that not the sort of thing you mean? Is visual mode in vim just underused? Recently I was trying to find a good way to delete from the current position backward to anot…

Well that's one extra key press for every action. For example, you have to do `ved` to delete the current word instead of `de`. Whereas in Helix it's just `ed`.

Also visual mode doesn't work the same. If I want to delete up to the next word normally I do `dw`, but if I do `vwd` then I also delete the first letter of the next word. I guess in visual mode you'd have to do `vwhd` or `vawd`? Which is 4 keypresses instead of 2, which isn't great for something that I do all the time.

Re: The vi family

#43

Post by ivanjermakov »

grebc wrote: post #6

Interesting the history is varied for such a simple tool. I am but a lowly mouse/GUI user so rarely have to dwell in a shell, but I learnt the basics of vi in my 1st year of university and never forgotten. Gotten me out of many a pickle being able to reliably edit a file quickly.

Simple tool? Visual text editor is probably the most complicated piece of software in coreutils.

Re: The vi family

#44

Post by jauntywundrkind »

rmunn wrote: post #32
nineteen999 wrote: post #15

I consider my vi/vim skills to be extremely minimalist subset, and probably horribly inefficient, since they were developed to work accross a broad range of UNIX systems (SCO, Solaris, HP-UX, OSF, AIX) and I rarely add anything to my vim configs on top of that other than syntax highlighting. But I'd still rather use it than just about any other text editor, just for the simplicity of that muscle memory alone. I have…

I never edited the default config much. But then I discovered https://www.lazyvim.org/ . Turns your copy of NeoVim into an IDE. I still haven't edited the default config much, actually. But now I'm probably 2x to 3x as productive in vim (nvim, now) as before. P.S. If you decide to check out the LazyVim config, I highly recommend reading https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/ all the way through. There's a lot…

I similarly thank the stars I ran into AstroNVim, which itself is based on LazyVim. Out of the box it has a lot of well integrated/just works pieces. It has a bunch of leader key things setup, and, crucially, a little visual navigator at the bottom of the screen. Going from powerful but invisible to having something I could see was such a help! I'd compare it to moving from tmux to zellij but I'm a pretty happy tmux user. https://astronvim.com/

What really seals the AstroNVim deal for me though is the community packs. People have very thoughtfully integrated support for a huge range of nvim plugins. And it's super easy to install, and they often fit in nicely to the existing out of box experience of nvim. https://github.com/AstroNvim/astrocommunity

Re: The vi family

#45

Post by rbits »

saidnooneever wrote: post #2

cool stuff, for a bunch i didnt realise they were really distinct versions! Use Helix now as the first one that stuck in my fingers though. before that it was always try a lil while and forget it (back to nano...). Helix i think is like 'user friendly vi' or maybe 'no config vi'. dont need any plugins or weird stuff. everything essential works out of the box (for me)

I really want to use Helix, it clicks with me so much more. But I do not want to learn how to use Helix for development. I want to be able to continue using VSCode. And last I checked, the VSCode extension was not very good. I also use Vim keybindings in Obsidian.

The moment VSCode and Obsidian support improves, I am switching immediately.

Re: The vi family

#46

Post by mrweasel »

rmunn wrote: post #32
nineteen999 wrote: post #15

I consider my vi/vim skills to be extremely minimalist subset, and probably horribly inefficient, since they were developed to work accross a broad range of UNIX systems (SCO, Solaris, HP-UX, OSF, AIX) and I rarely add anything to my vim configs on top of that other than syntax highlighting. But I'd still rather use it than just about any other text editor, just for the simplicity of that muscle memory alone. I have…

I never edited the default config much. But then I discovered https://www.lazyvim.org/ . Turns your copy of NeoVim into an IDE. I still haven't edited the default config much, actually. But now I'm probably 2x to 3x as productive in vim (nvim, now) as before. P.S. If you decide to check out the LazyVim config, I highly recommend reading https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/ all the way through. There's a lot…

The demos of LazyVim looks really nice, and people seem to get a benefit/joy out of it. I gave it a try, but it's a little to much for me.

Right now I think my .vimrc is two lines. That's also sort of silly as I benefit very little from all the things Vim can do.

Re: The vi family

#47

Post by ethagnawl »

taejavu wrote: post #13

How does an article like this not mention Bill Joy??

Bram is a glaring omission in the vi family tree, too. Though, they'd have to draw the line somewhere (i.e. include nvim creator?) and maybe it's better leave individual people out.

Re: The vi family

#48

Post by piekvorst »

nineteen999 wrote: post #15

I consider my vi/vim skills to be extremely minimalist subset, and probably horribly inefficient, since they were developed to work accross a broad range of UNIX systems (SCO, Solaris, HP-UX, OSF, AIX) and I rarely add anything to my vim configs on top of that other than syntax highlighting. But I'd still rather use it than just about any other text editor, just for the simplicity of that muscle memory alone. I have…

I think that it's wrong to assume that vi is the only route to deep muscle memory. Heavy mouse users develop blindingly fast Fitts’ Law targeting. And if you need essential simplicity, they have far fewer commands.

Bill Joy, the original author of vi, saw the vi commands as a problem, not a solution [1]:

    The fundamental problem with vi is that it doesn't have a mouse and therefore you've got all these commands. In some sense, its backwards from the kind of thing you'd get from a mouse-oriented thing.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20120210184000/http://web.cecs.p...

Re: The vi family

#49

Post by submeta »

nixass wrote: post #35

Few days ago I watched a video where a guy wrote the code for Linux USB driver from scratch. In frickin' vi! It was a ride

And he doesn’t use any config it seems. No syntax highlighting, no line numbers, plain white text on dark background.

Re: The vi family

#50

Post by ethagnawl »

nineteen999 wrote: post #15

I consider my vi/vim skills to be extremely minimalist subset, and probably horribly inefficient, since they were developed to work accross a broad range of UNIX systems (SCO, Solaris, HP-UX, OSF, AIX) and I rarely add anything to my vim configs on top of that other than syntax highlighting. But I'd still rather use it than just about any other text editor, just for the simplicity of that muscle memory alone. I have…

> that muscle memory

Once in a while I will mistakenly dump a string of keystrokes into insert mode or another application. That literal output always amazes me because the construction of those strings is so far removed from my brain's "main thread".

The inverse is if I try to write a helper function or explain to someone else how I did something they observed and I need to methodically document each action. It's like trying to describe how to walk or something.

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