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Good Tools Are Invisible

gingerbill.org

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Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#301

Post by rrvsh »

jt2190 wrote: post #213
rrvsh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wholly does not. It in no way qualifies the statement that people who use tools with "more friction" (the unsound assumption under attack) because they view it as a puzzle game as a subset of the total users of that tool, and devotes zero time to discussing any alternative interpretetations of why someone would do so.

> If people find vim, emacs, or whatever genuinely good and productive, I’m not going to criticize them for using it. People are most comfortable with what they know. But for the people I am discussing, that same familiarity blinds them to their tools’ flaws, and leads them to celebrate those flaws, flaunting them as games.

This reinforces my point. Even where they "qualify" their statement, they still reduce their mindset to a homogeneous "I like Puzzle "

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#302

Post by bccdee »

zahlman wrote: post #293
bccdee wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think this is all coming from someone who never got good at vim. Multi-cursors can be nice, but a sufficiently powerful implementation of that looks like helix or kakoune, and those are at least as complex as vim, if not more. When you're good at vim, it is invisible. Once you're good at writing macros, you can do stuff which is impossible with Sublime-style multi cursors. I assume those are situations where t…

> but vim macros are an interactive scripting language specifically designed to tersely express text transformations Yes, I think this is important here. Although it's still hard for me to imagine a level of mastery where one deliberately "writes" macros (what, directly in the vimrc?) as opposed to recording them. Perhaps it's within my grasp to optimize them later, but. All that said, there are quite a few things I…

> a level of mastery where one deliberately "writes" macros (what, directly in the vimrc?)

Oh it's so simple you'll kick yourself. If you save the macro to the q register, just paste from the q register and it'll print out the corresponding inputs. Copy the inputs into the w register and now you have that macro saved in a second place.

Some people probably do save macros in their vimrc this way, but I use it to correct typos I made when recording the macro. BIG help.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#303

Post by jibal »

jibal wrote: post #274
sph wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be less of a coward and reply to my comment, since you are talking about me personally, rather than mentioning me by name elsewhere. gingerBill and I were disagreeing, sure, but at least we were arguing on topic. I fail to see what is insightful about your comment than just pointing and saying 'get a load of this guy.' Thanks for your input, you can take a seat now.

I wasn't talking to you. Flagged.

The pompous response from zahlman is at least as bad ... accusing me of "casting aspersions" and then saying that I was "called out" by a comment that calls me a coward and tells me to "take a seat"? Can one possibly be more lacking in evenhandedness?

I forget that my HN frontend has a mute feature ... applying it to both of these.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#304

Post by zahlman »

bccdee wrote: post #302
zahlman wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but vim macros are an interactive scripting language specifically designed to tersely express text transformations Yes, I think this is important here. Although it's still hard for me to imagine a level of mastery where one deliberately "writes" macros (what, directly in the vimrc?) as opposed to recording them. Perhaps it's within my grasp to optimize them later, but. All that said, there are quite a few things I…

> a level of mastery where one deliberately "writes" macros (what, directly in the vimrc?) Oh it's so simple you'll kick yourself. If you save the macro to the q register, just paste from the q register and it'll print out the corresponding inputs. Copy the inputs into the w register and now you have that macro saved in a second place. Some people probably do save macros in their vimrc this way, but I use it to corre…

> but I use it to correct typos I made when recording the macro.

Oh you mean like, now that you have the keystrokes inserted into the current document temporarily, edit and move back to a register?

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#305

Post by bccdee »

zahlman wrote: post #304
bccdee wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a level of mastery where one deliberately "writes" macros (what, directly in the vimrc?) Oh it's so simple you'll kick yourself. If you save the macro to the q register, just paste from the q register and it'll print out the corresponding inputs. Copy the inputs into the w register and now you have that macro saved in a second place. Some people probably do save macros in their vimrc this way, but I use it to corre…

> but I use it to correct typos I made when recording the macro. Oh you mean like, now that you have the keystrokes inserted into the current document temporarily, edit and move back to a register?

Exactly. Modifier sequences and escape presses show up as special characters and can be inserted with `C-v Esc` or whathaveyou. It works seamlessly.
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