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Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

andre.arko.net

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Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#41

Post by seren »

lutusp wrote: post #27
danielbarla wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim, but referring to its history is not a particularly compelling one (for me, at least). In today's terms, the above "without wasting too much paper during editing" argument translates into "with as few keystrokes as possible". In some situations, I definitely find my ability to type (or in general, to edit text) to be the bottleneck in gettin…

> I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim ... Sure, no problem: * It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. * It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment -- mouse navigati…

> * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi.

All these operations, except entering text, are available from "normal" mode which is the default mode. This is factually incorrect that you need to switch mode to delete something, or save a file.

Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#43

Post by lutusp »

virtualwhys wrote: post #31
lutusp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim ... Sure, no problem: * It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. * It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment -- mouse navigati…

What is/are your replacement(s) for VIM?

> What is/are your replacement(s) for VIM?

Anything at all. Kate. KWrite. Gedit. The programming editors built into Netbeans and Eclipse. My own (free) program Arachnophilia (http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia), a sort of a descendant of Apple Writer, but much improved and with support for many document types. Essentially anything.

All the above choices take advantage of the modern computing environment. That by itself sets them apart from vi/vim.

Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#44

Post by lutusp »

djur wrote: post #33
lutusp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim ... Sure, no problem: * It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. * It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment -- mouse navigati…

How are "different fonts, text styling, page layout" relevant to a programmer's editor?

> How are "different fonts, text styling, page layout" relevant to a programmer's editor?

You're suffering from a hidden assumption -- that an editor can only be a programming editor, can't be many different things without degrading its usefulness as a programming editor.

Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#46

Post by lutusp »

aidos wrote: post #32
lutusp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just installed vim and tried to use it. For those who don't live in the dark ages, vim is still a command-line editor, and it still has the classic vi modes -- one mode for loading and saving files, one mode for moving the cursor around, one mode for deleting text, one mode for typing in new text, one mode for searching, etc. etc.. In other words, it's vi with a few changes. I still can't navigate while typing, or…

Kudos on Apple Writer - but I think you're confusing easy to learn and more powerful. The modes that you complain about (and let's be honest - there are really just 2 that you use) are what make it so powerful. You don't go into another mode to perform those operations - they're already there, and just a keystroke away. You go into another mode to insert text. By making that compromise you make the system faster and…

> The modes that you complain about (and let's be honest - there are really just 2 that you use) ...

No, to switch from entering text, to deleting text, to searching for text, to copying and pasting text, to saving a file, to loading a file, all require switching modes. Let's be honest.

> By making that compromise you make the system faster and more powerful ...

Having to enter additional keystrokes, a throwback to a computer keyboard that either didn't have control keys or couldn't exploit them, makes editing "faster and more powerful"? Nice reasoning.

Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#47

Post by IanCal »

ezyang wrote: post #30
IanCal wrote: post #18

1) Dump Janus, add the plugins you actually want 2) True 3) :set paste 4) Then wrap it in a function 5) I've always found ctrl-p to be snappy actually. You can replace the matcher with ag or similar > write the Vim configuration lines required to cause those files to be ignored. You have got to be kidding me. Write a small amount of config once per project? It's no more complex than adding things to a UI set wildigno…

Re (3), no, :set paste does not fix his problem.

I've just re-read the problem, I thought he was talking about vim automatically indenting everything.

It should be reasonably easy to create a function for this though, prefix each line in the buffer with 'indent(".")' spaces, or copy the whitespace at the beginning of the current line.

Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#48

Post by DH61AG »

IanCal wrote: post #18

1) Dump Janus, add the plugins you actually want 2) True 3) :set paste 4) Then wrap it in a function 5) I've always found ctrl-p to be snappy actually. You can replace the matcher with ag or similar > write the Vim configuration lines required to cause those files to be ignored. You have got to be kidding me. Write a small amount of config once per project? It's no more complex than adding things to a UI set wildigno…

IMO The only real problem with Vim is lack of proper auto-complete.

Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#49

Post by m2mdas »

regularfry wrote: post #35
m2mdas wrote: post #20

Pasting the reply I gave in r/vim Answer to some of the points, Janus : There are divided opinions in vim community about whether distributions should be used or not. I am on the latter side. But still for just checking out I installed Janus a while ago. Yes it is slow, but it turns out that it is as slow as my then `.vimrc` configuration. I tried to track down the problem. It is because of vim's blocking behaviour d…

> Files that change: If you do external edits more frequently then I think it is time to rethink your work-flow. I think there is a common consensus that you should not run live edit in server. It's possible this isn't what you meant, but external edits do not imply editing code live on a server.

Well I made this comment in context of his editing file via pry-rescue which at first observation looked as if he was live editing in server. Upon further inspection it seems that pry-resque is acutlly a good debugging tool. I did not know about it because of my very little ruby development knowledge. Sorry, My bad :)

Re: Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

#50

Post by IanCal »

maaaats wrote: post #26
IanCal wrote: post #18

1) Dump Janus, add the plugins you actually want 2) True 3) :set paste 4) Then wrap it in a function 5) I've always found ctrl-p to be snappy actually. You can replace the matcher with ag or similar > write the Vim configuration lines required to cause those files to be ignored. You have got to be kidding me. Write a small amount of config once per project? It's no more complex than adding things to a UI set wildigno…

But that's kinda the problem with vim. Having a sane configuration takes hours of setup and googling.

It starts with a sane configuration, the problem is when you want to add loads of features you have to spend a small amount of time adding them. The alternative is to have a fucking insane amount of functionality present to begin with because everyone wants something slightly different.
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