Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by gregjor » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:30 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #138

gregjor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You repeatedly claim that vi is lame because it has to work with keyboards with no control keys. You also say that you used vi on terminals that lacked a control key. Your claims are simply false. The original docs for vi, written by Bill Joy and Mark Horton, are online. You can see quite a few places where the docs explicitly refer to control key combinations. For example: http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/usd/12.vi/pap…

> You repeatedly claim that vi is lame because it has to work with keyboards with no control keys. You also say that you used vi on terminals that lacked a control key. Your claims are simply false. First, I never said either of those things anywhere. But, having sampled the level of personal responsibility among the people in this thread, I won't bother asking you to try to locate your source for those false claims.…

Bill Joy's own docs and comments on the origin of vi and the terminals it was designed for contradict your opinions.

I've given examples with supporting evidence. What evidence have you given to back up your claims?

I didn't invent any quotes. The quotes I posted -- using the widely-accepted quotation mark convention of English (assuming your keyboard has those!) -- are clearly indicated. The "vi is lame" statement is my own summary of your opinions expressed in this thread, it is not attributed to you as a quote but as a sentiment. Thus the lack of surrounding quotation marks.

But maybe let that bone go and try to produce any evidence supporting the meager meat of your arguments about early terminals and the history of vi.

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

#142

Post by heurist » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 5:14 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #128

heurist wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>saying you have your entire life in front of you That's not what you said... you said he was too young to know vi/vim better than you. If you haven't used it in 30 years how would you know vim any better than a younger person? Why would age have anything to do with recognizing the benefits and drawbacks of various text editors? My grandparents barely knew how to turn on a computer... they wouldn't try to teach me th…

> ... you said he was too young to know vi/vim better than you. At this point you have two choices. You can locate where I said that and quote my words directly, or you cam post your apology for making a false claim in this public forum. To cut to the chase, I never said what you claim, your claim is false. Ah -- I just figured out why you can't quote my words directly, to discover that I never said what you claim. Y…

> At this point you have two choices. You can locate where I said that and quote my words directly, or you cam post your apology for making a false claim in this public forum.

You first. You said:

> How is calling you young, saying you have your entire life in front of you, an ad hominem

Your exact words:

> Based on simple probability, the chance is better than 50% that I was using vi before you were born.

Don't be so obtuse.

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

#143

Post by klibertp » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 12:15 PM UTC

aidos wrote: post #133

lutusp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still didn't provide any kind of evidence that editing with mouse is faster than using pure-keyboard interface. How about the direction of computer history? Vi was superseded by Apple Writer (and other editors, some of them better) that supported the existence of control characters, those editors were superseded by editors that supported mice, and those editors have in turn been improved on to the present day.…

I'm going to take the bait one more time. That's not research - it's someone talking about research in the abstract. There are no details but it's clear from the context that they're talking about something completely different. "In the early (pre-release) days of Lisa, we had command keys instead of pull-down menus. One of the primary reasons we abandoned command keys was the difficulty of coming up with fixed defin…

Yeah, I seriously given up when I saw the "appeal to authority" of $50 million. I mean, how is this:

> We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface.

Relevant to anything? I'm supposed to feel intimidated by a heap of dollars, right?

Where are the exact experiments described and results presented? Where is the paper with all of these details? I searched the web, but I couldn't find it. Perhaps I need to pay some $.

There's a commentary on this piece by Jeff Atwood, which points out the fact that the article is seriously old and that understanding of the issue has changed in the meantime. I can't say for sure, but from what little info there is in the article it seems that way - I'm not going to argue that there are efficient mouse-centric interfaces being designed and used or that the mouse should never be used as an input device. What I'm saying is that there is a least one keyboard based interface for text editing which is more efficient than equivalent mouse based interfaces - for the most part. I admit that there may be some tasks easier to accomplish with mouse (although we didn't see them yet), but that doesn't invalidate my argument, especially because if they exist, then Vim allows for mouse usage to do them.

The AskTog article is linked to from a page on Plan9 editor, Acme - it's another piece which uses ancient version of vi for comparison. It's so frustrating to see people completely ignore all the development in the Vim interface because it's early versions were much worse. And they are prominent people in our industry, too. It's just sad.

I now have some idea about what makes editing efficient. I may even create the next AppleWriter, although I think Chris Granger already does a good enough job. Almost nothing lutusp said turned out to be true, but the thinking I put into this discussion let me realize some important things about editing. So, on the whole, I don't think I wasted this time.

However, any more than this I feel would be a waste.

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

#144

Post by jbri » Sun, Sep 15, 2013, 1:54 AM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #132

jbri wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is indeed a massive advantage of a mouse over a keyboard-based interface - it's far, far more discoverable for novice or occasional users. In fact, I'd venture to say the mouse (and the corresponding advent of discoverable graphical interfaces) was the primary driver of making computers accessible to non-techies and hence largely responsible for the computing revolution. But, a keyboard-based interface is still…

> But, a keyboard-based interface is still more efficient ... This has been proven false any number of times. It's false when comparing mouse use against a modern keyboard with control and function keys, and it is certainly false for the limited keyboards for which vi/vim was designed, those keyboards that result in vi/vim not being able to exploit control characters. Source: http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVM…

> those keyboards that result in vi/vim not being able to exploit control characters.

Modern vim uses control characters just fine. Have you used it any time in the last decade?

Because you seem to dance around that question a lot, saying "Well when did I say I haven't used vim recently" whenever someone brings it up, and then saying something else completely wrong that indicates you have no idea how a modern version of vim is actually used.

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

#145

Post by _cipher_ » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 1:26 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #25

chrismorgan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious: have you used Vim much in the past few years? (Determine for yourself what "few" means here.)

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…

> Guess why Apple Writer was so popular in 1979 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer), in spite of its many limitations?

Guess why so many people still use Vi(m) and not Apple Writer.