61–70 of 198 posts
I have learned it back in Xenix heyday, and decided I was better off with Emacs.
Unfortunely not every server has Emacs pre-installed.
On my own devenv I would rather reach out to IDEs, that replicate as much as possible the Xerox PARC / Symbolics / TI experience.
The history and endurance of vi is impressive. I never thought I would be using the same editor today that I started using in the mid 90s because it was more l33t. The comments about LLM contributed code seems like a specific axe to grind that otherwise detracts from a nice history lesson.
> The comments about LLM contributed code seems like a specific axe to grind that otherwise detracts from a nice history lesson. The existence of vim classic would be hard to explain without reference to LLMs.
I have nothing against Vi or Emacs, but since I strongly prefer GUI and mouse over terminal I use GUI editors. When I don't have a GUI available, I use micro, nano, joe.
Granted, the UI is still TUI, so items like panes, tabs, nerdtree, quickfix, :help windows etc are rendered with characters, but you can drag borders, mouse-select text, click files, focus panes by clicking, scroll-wheel, etc.
> If you’re wondering why so many people would choose to use a fifty year old text editor with a notoriously steep initial learning curve, it’s because once you learn it, you can be ruthlessly efficient with your editing. I have learned it back in Xenix heyday, and decided I was better off with Emacs. Unfortunely not every server has Emacs pre-installed. On my own devenv I would rather reach out to IDEs, that replica…
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 have way more stuff to keep in my head than I have room for and I can't afford to expend more than about 0.0001% of context on a text editor. I can't say I agree. To me this is equivalent to saying "I have way more music in my head than I have room for and I can't afford to expend more than about 0.0001% of context on a piano". The tool you use for 8+ hours a day is extremely important and even small gains will p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 should mention what is becoming my favorite thing about LazyVim's default config, which is the "flash" or "seek" command (LazyVim maps it to `s` so I think of it as "seek") from https://github.com/folke/flash.nvim . I didn't like it at first as I was used to typing `s` to quickly replace a single character with a bunch of text (as opposed to `r` which replaces it with just one character). But I soon learned to rema…
BTW: The Vimium extension [1] for Firefox has a similar mode for links called "linkHinting" which I've mapped to s[2] for a similar experience in the browser :)
[1]: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/
[2]: `map s LinkHints.activateMode`
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Ancients did know it better. I sometimes try working without vim keybindings as it's a pain installing them everywhere. I usually give up the 3rd time I have to delete a function argument and can't dt, or select the body of a function and can't vi{. For everyone even somewhat decent at vim, having to hold right arrow until the cursor reaches the target is a humiliation ritual, and I genuinely feel second-hand emb…
allow me to quote the Ancients, the vi creator himself: > What would you do differently? > JOY: I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard. > ... > JOY: 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. > Its like one of those pinatas - things that have candy in…
But of course he was wrong about 1991-2026:
The days of non-raster stuff are numbered, though sheer momentum will carry it to the end of the decade.
And about AT&T as the same year (1984) they introduced BLIT terminal:
The fundamental tension in UNIX that I think AT&T doesn't understand is that everyone is going to have a bitmap.
If anyone wanted to write a minimal vi-style helix clone they should call it 'ix', as it's derived from helix, gives a nod to 'vi' and a wink at the turning of vi syntax on its head, like rotating a six to make a nine. Then a descendent of 'ix' could be called 'six', and we'll have come full circle.
> If you’re wondering why so many people would choose to use a fifty year old text editor with a notoriously steep initial learning curve, it’s because once you learn it, you can be ruthlessly efficient with your editing. I have learned it back in Xenix heyday, and decided I was better off with Emacs. Unfortunely not every server has Emacs pre-installed. On my own devenv I would rather reach out to IDEs, that replica…
I, for one, am happy that every terminal I've ever used still supports Emacs shortcuts. Useful, for instance, to cut a whole line and paste it later on (ctrl+k, ctrl+y).