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Vim users: stop using hjkl

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Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#151

Post by lutusp »

robomartin wrote: post #148
alpatters wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a professional programmer, you use a keyboard all day, so you touch type right? hjkl sits right on the home row, where your fingers sit. It is just a natural place to put movement keys. Nothing to do with the number of keys on the authors keyboard. Like you say when your jumping around a lot then it matters less. When you're typing a lot then it does matter to keep your fingers on the home row.

> You're a professional programmer, you use a keyboard all day, so you touch type right? hjkl sits right on the home row, where your fingers sit. It is just a natural place to put movement keys. Nothing to do with the number of keys on the authors keyboard. And my point is that it does not matter. Use the mouse. Use the arrow keys. Use the function keys. Use a GUI. Use multiple monitors. If we are talking about produ…

> ... the editor is orders of magnitude less significant than a huge list of other things. It does not matter.

The first point is true. The second point is false -- it does matter. Saying that X is less important than Y can't be used to argue that X doesn't matter at all.

> If I am building a business or a product the last thing on my mind is what text editor we will be using. It is so ridiculously insignificant in the grand scheme of things that seeing people focus on it is beyond comprehension.

That's true in general, but there's an exception -- if you can improve the efficiency of editing, you might make a basic change in people's thinking and become a millionaire as a side effect.

Guess how I know this.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#152

Post by robomartin »

lutusp wrote: post #102
roel_v wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if just trolling, but if not it seems you're not very experienced yet in the use of the tools of the trade of the professional programmer. The point of using the vi interface is nowadays (and yes I know about the original reasons of the modal workings of vi...) that moving your fingers off the home row takes too much effort, let alone having to move your hand to the mouse. It's easier to drive an automatic,…

> Not sure if just trolling, but if not it seems you're not very experienced yet in the use of the tools of the trade of the professional programmer. [emphasis added] Guess again -- I wrote Apple Writer in the late 1970s ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer ). One of my goals was to eliminate the modes that plagued contemporary editors and attract people interested in ease of use and efficiency. Apple Writer b…

I am so glad to see someone else with perspective at least make their voice heard. This vim thing is absolute lunacy. I was booting machines from scratch thirty years ago with Forth and writing my own text editors to be able to program the machine. I used crippled keyboards without mice, function keys and cursor buttons. And I gladly said goodbye to that crap years ago.

Then you come to a place like HN and you have "youngsters" forming a cult around a shit editor with a shit interface that ignores all modern peripherals. A shit editor that would have been written in an entirely different way had the authors had access to more than A-Z, 0-9 and a few mode keys. Then they actually make themselves believe that they are being more "efficient" by using this shit editor. I guess that's no different from cults who believe in imaginary things.

As I have said before, show me one company, one project, that has some in on time, budget and without bugs because of their choice of vim over even something like Notepad and I'll eat my words.

Young HN readers need to at least be made to consider that the factors influencing the quality, success or failure of software project or startup have so little to do with your choice of text editors that it is beyond ridiculous to even discuss it.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#153

Post by macalicious »

robomartin wrote: post #148
alpatters wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a professional programmer, you use a keyboard all day, so you touch type right? hjkl sits right on the home row, where your fingers sit. It is just a natural place to put movement keys. Nothing to do with the number of keys on the authors keyboard. Like you say when your jumping around a lot then it matters less. When you're typing a lot then it does matter to keep your fingers on the home row.

> You're a professional programmer, you use a keyboard all day, so you touch type right? hjkl sits right on the home row, where your fingers sit. It is just a natural place to put movement keys. Nothing to do with the number of keys on the authors keyboard. And my point is that it does not matter. Use the mouse. Use the arrow keys. Use the function keys. Use a GUI. Use multiple monitors. If we are talking about produ…

Seriously, I can't stop but think while reading your comments that you have a lot of emotions building up within you.

I see your point in people evangelizing VIM, Emacs, Apple, whatsoever, but... who cares? Let them be. I don't see, why you try so hard to prevent people from being happy and enjoy little things in life. Why does everything have to be insignificant, because something else is so much more significant? I seriously don't get your point there.

Let people love their editor, even if it is insignificant to you. People actually are more productive, when they are happy using a product they like, or could you seriously imagine writing code/surfing the web/do anything with the on-screen keyboard? Even you would get frustrated and would hate your job. It does matter. Maybe not the productivity-wise, but definitely how you, as a person, feel.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#154

Post by JulianWasTaken »

Shorel wrote: post #140
JulianWasTaken wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This may come as a surprise, but modern programming editors don't require the operator to switch between three mutually exclusive modes -- insert, delete and navigate. That's because modern keyboards have keys dedicated to those purposes, which means the operator doesn't have to either wonder which mode he is in, or switch modes, which saves an enormous amount of time when programming. You speak as if modal editing…

> the operation involved there is not one you can do in-stride or with as few keys in any other "modern" editor SublimeText2: Ctrl-Delete: deletes the rest of the current word.

That's not the operation from the question in the link (not that I'd be terribly surprised if Sublime Text had a way to do it anyways, but it's not as fluid as vim).

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#155

Post by avenger123 »

robomartin wrote: post #138
goldfeld wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people who don't understand what vim is before criticizing it seem to miss the point that vim doesn't make you faster at writing code. Insert mode is a dumb text entry mode like any other, and Visual Studio and Textmate in fact have out of the box more tools for snippets and auto-completion than most vim users care to even supplement with plugins. Because the power is in editing text, not writing it. And oh,…

I'll tell you when and why I use vim and how I can justify its useage: Linux servers. I use vim on my servers to edit everything. Why? Because I know it's there and I don't have to install anything. And, even though I think it's a horrible UI that could only be justified in an era with keyboards that barely had characters and numbers, I use it. A religious attachment to vim? No friggin way. No editor has ever caused…

I agree with the usefulness of Vim on Linux servers. I would say that everyone is different in how they approach their work and in the case of software development, the tools they use.

I wouldn't consider it funny that someone would want to optimize a very important tool to make it more functional. The tools we use for software development are both a curse and a blessing. A curse that there is no ONE TRUE WAY of doing something and a blessing that we can build and mold the tools to accomplish what we need.

I am not religious about Vim or any other text editor but I can definitely appreciate others wanting to optimize their usage.

Personally, I find that once you have setup Vim the way you want, its pretty much on autopilot. I would say that if someone is a natural tinker, Vim is the best black hole one can get into as there can be no end to the tinkering.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#156

Post by klibertp »

lutusp wrote: post #141
klibertp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"imagine eliminating both the indicator, and the modes" I was using modeless editors all my life; I was working with Zend Studio and Komodo IDE which are definitely modern editors. Yet I chose to have modes and switched to VIM. In other words I have no problem with imagining editors you talk about, I just don't like them. "When I wrote Apple Writer in 1978 ..." That's a funny thing, because VIM appeared in 1993 and o…

> That's a funny thing, because VIM appeared in 1993 and only really became what it is now around 2006. Whatever you did deprecate, it was not VIM. I identified my subject very clearly. Are you really unaware that vim derives from vi, and contains the same core code and strategy? That a discussion of vim is a discussion of vi? But let's allow Google to decide this for us: Search for "vi/vim" : "About 482,000 results"…

VIM is the de facto vi on many platforms, I suppose that this is the reason for your search results.

I agree that VIM derives from vi, it's obvious - my point, however, is that the additions and improvements and changes in VIM are many times larger (in terms of code and "user facing surface" like commands) than the core itself; and that essentially creates a new, separate product. Take MS DOS and MS Windows 95 as an example - IIRC Win95 still ran under DOS, yet it exposed completely new APIs and model of user interaction. Would you say that discussing Win95 means discussing DOS? Would you say that Win95 is the same as DOS?

As for modes - I didn't want to get into this - you seem to be convinced that having modes is a bad thing. Your argument is that "every other editor is modeless" - and it's false. The truth is that almost every modern, serious editor includes vi emulation mode and hence can work in a modal fashion - from Visual Studio to PyCharm to SublimeText all of them have an option to have modes. So your argument is simply wrong.

Is modal editing objectively worse thing? I don't believe so. I think that, while introducing some overhead for simple commands (one additional key press for changing modes) it significantly simplifies complex things, because you don't need modifiers and chaining commands is easier.

As for VIM being vi brought back to life - see Win95 argument above.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#157

Post by saidajigumi »

redblacktree wrote: post #105

Typing is not the bottleneck.

No, it isn't, and that's the major underlying theme of Drew's writings on vim. This article is no exception. By learning to use the power of the tool, you work fluidly with the structure of the text, not just the characters/lines. That is, your expertise of the tool is shaped to match the mental patterns around the code you work with.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#158

Post by debt »

ramblerman wrote: post #150
robomartin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would at least help you avoid looking like a fool by ranting about things you clearly don't understand. Let's talk about being a fool and talking about things I don't understand. I have started (and self-funded) at more than three technology businesses in my life. I am in the process of starting two more. In all cases these businesses started in my garage (one actually in my closet, before I had a garage) and…

What a vicious and sad rant. you've boiled the whole argument down into whether a text editor is the pillar upon which a successful product is built. Well of course not! Nobody is even claiming that. Some people are merely expressing it allows them to put thought onto paper a little quicker, or that they just enjoy it. Others just enjoy being able to tweak their editor, it's a fun meta activity for any programmer. It…

I think he's encouraging people to focus on more pressing problems. I think he's angry because there is a silly and opinionated subculture surrounding a text editor. He exploded likely because this article - while innocent as it may be - broke the camel's back. For a site so focused on the hacker mantra of getting things done, one might think he's right in his anger, as a text editor usually is just about the lowest barrier of entry to a software development problem. HEY GOOD DISCUSSION THOUGH.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#159

Post by robomartin »

ramblerman wrote: post #150
robomartin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would at least help you avoid looking like a fool by ranting about things you clearly don't understand. Let's talk about being a fool and talking about things I don't understand. I have started (and self-funded) at more than three technology businesses in my life. I am in the process of starting two more. In all cases these businesses started in my garage (one actually in my closet, before I had a garage) and…

What a vicious and sad rant. you've boiled the whole argument down into whether a text editor is the pillar upon which a successful product is built. Well of course not! Nobody is even claiming that. Some people are merely expressing it allows them to put thought onto paper a little quicker, or that they just enjoy it. Others just enjoy being able to tweak their editor, it's a fun meta activity for any programmer. It…

> For all that name dropping of the vast and expansive techs you've worked with, you seem to be extremely close minded on this issue.

It's exactly the opposite. All of that has given me perspective that seems lacking on some entering into these religious conversations. I don't even know how many code editors I have used over the years. I probably couldn't list them. I've even had to write some of my own. The point is that across all of those technologies, platforms and years, this has never mattered. The text editor has never --ever-- played a significant role in the factors leading up to the quality, schedule, success or failure of a project.

If you like using vim and messing with it. That's OK. I use it too when I work on Linux. No issues there. Now, to go to the extreme to say that one is not a professional programmer if one does not use vim (I claim I have seen many times) is, well, nonsense.

In addition to that someone chose to call me a fool who does not know what he is talking about. I felt the incomplete list might be a reasonable superficial qualifier. Not enough? My email is in my HN profile. Shoot me a note and I'll provide you with my Linkedin profile.

My primary objection to the "vim religion" is that newbie programmers are almost intimidated into wasting their time with such an utterly insignificant aspect of the job. This is particularly true of someone who wants to be an entrepreneur as opposed to a data entry clerk. There far more important and useful places to spend your learning hours than learning to use a shit editor with a shit UI that originated at a time keyboards had half the keys they have today, GUI's did not exist, monitors were terminals that displayed 80 x 25 characters and mice were nowhere to be found.

In the context of starting, launching, growing, evolving and maintaining a tech business spending any time to get into something like vim is an absolutely irresponsible waste of time and effort.

Re: Vim users: stop using hjkl

#160

Post by robomartin »

macalicious wrote: post #153
robomartin wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're a professional programmer, you use a keyboard all day, so you touch type right? hjkl sits right on the home row, where your fingers sit. It is just a natural place to put movement keys. Nothing to do with the number of keys on the authors keyboard. And my point is that it does not matter. Use the mouse. Use the arrow keys. Use the function keys. Use a GUI. Use multiple monitors. If we are talking about produ…

Seriously, I can't stop but think while reading your comments that you have a lot of emotions building up within you. I see your point in people evangelizing VIM, Emacs, Apple, whatsoever, but... who cares? Let them be. I don't see, why you try so hard to prevent people from being happy and enjoy little things in life. Why does everything have to be insignificant, because something else is so much more significant? I…

Well, it's possible that you are confusing passion with emotion. It really takes a thick skin to go against the grain. The grain on HN is very pro-vim for some reason. And, yes, it blew my top to see an article now proposing to go farther and ignore "hjkl". How insane will this cult get?

If all I achieve is to virtually snap a newbie out of the trance created by HN dogma the result is good. It would be a tragedy to promote these tools for another thirty years.

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