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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

#81

Post by lutusp »

aidos wrote: post #64
lutusp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You'll need to provide explicit examples of where any of those operations requires more keystrokes in vim than any other editor - I can't think of any. You're calling vim commands "modes" to deliberately make it sound more complex than it is. I want to change to next 3 words. I type 'c3w' - you're saying that's modal - which it sort of vaugly is. I could have done 'v3w' to highlight the next 3 words (something you wo…

> You're calling vim commands "modes" to deliberately make it sound more complex than it is.

* I am moving the cursor, but I want to enter text. To do so, I need to enter colon, i, Enter, then my first text entry.

* I am entering text, but I want to move the cursor. To do so, I need to type Esc, Esc, then commence moving the cursor.

* If while entering text, I want to do something besides move the cursor, I need to type Esc, colon, then a command letter, then its arguments.

I don't need to "make it sound more complicated than it is." It is in fact more complicated -- more complicated than Apple Writer, now justly consigned to a museum, and more complicated than any modern editor.

> I type 'c3w' - you're saying that's modal - which it sort of vaugly is.

This is getting comical.

> I could have done 'v3w' to highlight the next 3 words (something you would do in any other editor).

No, in any other modern editor, I wold pass the mouse cursor across the desired characters, thus selecting them (any subset of characters or words or paragraphs, and very, very fast). There's a reason the mouse was invented, and it wasn't because it's a cute but insubstantial gimmick meant to pander to the tastes of ignorant, unsophisticated computer users.

In Android, I would swipe my finger across the desired text. No mouse needed.

> I stand by my assertions ...

Try moving beyond assertions -- try locating some evidence, as I have just done. Pretend to be a scientist.

> it's up to you to provide the counter examples to back up your claims.

As I have been doing since this thread started? Read my posts.

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

#82

Post by klibertp »

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.

Depending on how you define "sane" it can be months. Vim is said to be a programming language for text editing - I wouldn't expect anything less of a complexity from a thing like this. I recently learned Emacs and it took me two months - that short because I already went through the process with vim some years ago - to learn it and configure it to my liking. My Emacs config counts 983 lines with comments and whitespaces removed[1]. My .vimrc was shorter, but mainly because I dislike vimscript and like Lisps.

[1] cat .emacs.d/config/*.el | egrep -v '^$' | egrep -v '^;;' | wc -l

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

#83

Post by lutusp »

jeremysmyth wrote: post #71
lutusp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine bolstering your fantasies with evidence. Apple Writer was retired at just the right moment -- when something better came along. That's how technology works, and no one was more pleased than I was. > The bitterness seething out of your every pore that your software has been consigned to the graveyard ... Dream on, moron. Apple Writer belongs in a museum along with vi. What's astonishing is that people are stil…

I feel the need to point out that everyone else is talking about vim, but you're talking about vi. Could that explain some of the differences in how you remember things based on how they are? (redux)

> I feel the need to point out that everyone else is talking about vim, but you're talking about vi.

Yes, and vim = vi with decorations, but essentially the same editor. Or did you miss the first time I pointed that out?

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

#84

Post by mheathr »

klibertp wrote: post #57
lutusp wrote: post #2

> Vim is the worst editor ... except all the other editors Yes to the first five words, no to the rest. How many Vim users realize that some of its more infuriating behaviors can be traced back to its predecessor vi, which had to be able operate with a "paper terminal", essentially a roll of paper as a display, without wasting too much paper during editing? And how do I know this? During my time at NASA designing par…

Oh, it's you again. We talked about this some time ago. Since then I stopped using Vim in favor of Emacs, which is modeless - I remember that having modes was the biggest sin of Vim in your eyes. It's been 5 months since I switched to Emacs. My .emacs.d is actually bigger than .vim_runtime was, but it's because of more configurable features found in Emacs plugins, so it's natural. My init.el is also longer than my .v…

I also use Emacs (and Vim).

While I respect the research done concerning modal UI and the associated consequences of that in the context of HCI, in practice I do not find that there is ever any confusion about what mode I am in when using Vim after using the editor for many hours, and if one was supremely concerned with avoiding such confusion UI changes per state could be implemented so that the changes were unavoidably obvious (such as by changing the entire background to a different color on a context switch).

The design has some nice benefits elsewhere too with how Vim uses it.

However, I do not find Emacs chording emphasis particularly demented either though, especially once the full array of modifiers are used.

The amount of chords is only really burdensome due to how many domains Emacs covers though IMO, as it makes collisions with short chords much more frequent as the amount of keybinds necessarily expands.

I find the criticisms of Vim usually extremely exaggerated and generally indicative of ignorance concerning its design, some of which you have correctly noted and addressed in your response.

That is not to say that Vim is without its imperfections, but the design is well thought out, coherent, and well documented which makes the learning curve bearable.

I find a mixture of chords and modes in Emacs quite nice using Evil-mode as I can choose to either avoid changing states or not, unlike in Vim.

As I have noted elsewhere though, there is no intrinsic reason why Emacs must use chording over a modal design or some other means of using individual key sequences to invoke commands.

It is merely a matter of redesigning how commands are invoked across Emacs, something which some people are working on and may be interesting in the future.

I do wish there was something up to date that was similar to Practical Vim but for Emacs though as that was a very illuminating and fun text.

Do you know of some documentation that elucidates CEDET more than the documentation on the site does? I have read that documentation a few times and have yet to grok what it really does and how one would use it in practice. It seems extremely powerful but I do not see how an end user takes advantage of it or how an extension writer would use it to compose an IDE for a new language.

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

#85

Post by bpizzi »

pestaa wrote: post #65
bpizzi wrote: post #37

> I've been using it full-time for just over three months now. That's it: you just need to give it more time. One simply can't expect to fully climb vim's learning curve in just a quarter of a year. Your brain can't adapt so rapidly to so much new shortcuts. > Jump to CSS selector. Jump to class. Fuzzy string matching. All these things and more are what I am used to. Vim just can't do them. That's one example among o…

I like the spirit, but how will Vim's marking system help me jump to a CSS selector in an unbuffered stylesheet? I'm really curious; missing this feature from heavyweight IDEs.

Been there also. _My_ solution was not to rely anymore on stuff provided by a heavyweight IDE.

"Jumping to somewhere in an unbuffered file according to where I am in the current buffer", that is actually depending on a background worker that knows a very specific set of rules and use it to constantly cycle threw the filesystem. Which bg process is usually provided by tanks like Eclipse.

With the time I've found something that matches that behavior without the payload on the computer, and guess what, it's my brain.

I'm no more in pain of jumping to the definition of a css rule, because I know which css file I have to invoke and I can do it _very_ quickly thanks to Control+P, and jumping to the definition is a matter of one or two "/".

Of course you need to organize things smartly in your project if you ever want to do that without too much thinking time, but hell, I count that on the bright side of this solution.

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

#86

Post by mheathr »

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…

There are at least 6 that are explicitly used (there are more in practice but they are mostly transparent of rare and even realizing this will require reading some of the more esoteric documentation): visual line mode, insert mode, ex mode, normal mode, replace mode, visual block mode.

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

#87

Post by lutusp »

klibertp wrote: post #57
lutusp wrote: post #2

> Vim is the worst editor ... except all the other editors Yes to the first five words, no to the rest. How many Vim users realize that some of its more infuriating behaviors can be traced back to its predecessor vi, which had to be able operate with a "paper terminal", essentially a roll of paper as a display, without wasting too much paper during editing? And how do I know this? During my time at NASA designing par…

Oh, it's you again. We talked about this some time ago. Since then I stopped using Vim in favor of Emacs, which is modeless - I remember that having modes was the biggest sin of Vim in your eyes. It's been 5 months since I switched to Emacs. My .emacs.d is actually bigger than .vim_runtime was, but it's because of more configurable features found in Emacs plugins, so it's natural. My init.el is also longer than my .v…

> Elsewhere in this thread you're saying that Vim can't use mouse and clipboard. Of course it can - "=y copies to system clipboard instead of local one.

1. Thanks for correcting me.

2. Four characters. Very efficient.

3. All to avoid using any control keys. The reason? vi must be able to work with a keyboard that doesn't have any control keys, and vim must work exactly like vi.

Not only do modern keyboards have control keys, but modern computers have mice and other pointing schemes. But vi/vim lives in a permanent time warp, a warp so profound that an old, justly retired editor I wrote in 1977 was far better at exploiting technological advances.

Why was Apple Writer retired? Its limitations quickly became obvious, especially once early Apple computers supported mice (which happened before the Macintosh). No one wanted to keep using such a dinosaur in modern times, including me.

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

#88

Post by lutusp »

ehsanu1 wrote: post #76
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…

These don't seem like the most sound criticisms honestly. It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. Not sure what the issue is there? It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment gvim/macvim exists. They also give you regular clipboard support. Though I honestly don't get much out of all that, and am happy enough with vim in a terminal, but I understand the motivation. To perform multiple operat…

> These don't seem like the most sound criticisms honestly.

So Steve Jobs was wrong to visit Xerox Parc, be impressed by what he saw, and create the modern computer?

> Vim is modal, yes, but what is the specific disadvantage of that?

It is less efficient. But you are now obviously trolling, posing arguments that no rational person could possibly accept. "So, a few more keystrokes for each command, repeated for each such command. So what? Are you in a hurry to get somewhere? Do you want to live forever?"

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

#89

Post by lutusp »

lake99 wrote: post #79
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…

I hate vim too, but some of your points are simply not true: > * 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. Open a file. Insert some text. Use arrow keys to scroll. Hit Alt-/ to search forward. Hit Alt-Shift-/ to search backwards. Sure, some commands need you to switch modes,…

> I hate vim too, but some of your points are simply not true

Your claim is that what I said is false.

> Sure, some commands need you to switch modes, but not all.

Your claim is that what I said is true.

Only one of the above comments can be so. If one is true, then the other is false. Take your pick.

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

#90

Post by lutusp »

mheathr wrote: post #86
aidos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are at least 6 that are explicitly used (there are more in practice but they are mostly transparent of rare and even realizing this will require reading some of the more esoteric documentation): visual line mode, insert mode, ex mode, normal mode, replace mode, visual block mode.

Thanks. I got tired of trying to use vi/vim before fully plumbing the depth of these additional modes.
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