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Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

geoff.greer.fm

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Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#211

Post by ggreer »

roghummal wrote: post #191
akkartik wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have followed the vim mailing list for many years, and tried and failed to submit a patch to it. I mostly use neovim now, and have successfully submitted a patch to it. Based on these experiences I found your blog post unnecessarily incendiary. The thread of your patch submission ( https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/-4pqDJfHCsM/LkYNCpZj... ) was actually quite civil. It didn't do what you want, but let's b…

Someday 'vi' might symlink to 'nvim' instead of 'vim'. 'VI Improved Improved'! Mr. Greer's post was necessarily incendiary; He's building his brand. Wasting space on the front page of HN is a feather in his cap.

I'm sorry if you thought the post was self-serving. I can only say with sincerity that it wasn't. I have no motive beyond my interest in software.

If you don't believe my claim of selflessness, believe my claim of competence: If I was trying to build a personal brand, I could do much better than delving into Vim's codebase for a one-off snippet. It's not difficult to create insubstantial content that is widely-shared. I can think of a dozen topics whose mere mention can drive immense traffic and waste absurd amounts of time. HN's front page attests to this.

It's a shame that many people scrutinize others for selfishness. Purely selfish behavior is an extreme rarity, yet it takes much longer to refute such accusations than to make them. I wish it were otherwise.

Before deriding others, please remember: Almost no one is evil. Almost everything is broken.[1]

1. A quote from http://blog.jaibot.com/

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#212

Post by eridius »

anon4 wrote: post #201
eridius wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your blog post recommends using NeoVim today. I've considered looking at it several times, but the home page[1] still says Is it ready to download and run now with all the features? No. Although some features are a work in progress, Neovim isn't at a stable point. Using Neovim should be done with caution as things may change. This warning is why I haven't yet tried switching over. Are they just being overly-cautious?…

Try kakoune[0]. As far as I can see, it's stable today. Just try not to think about how the name sounds shitty. [0] https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/

But that's not Vim-compatible. I have a ton of Vim plugins that I rely on. Switching to a brand new editor is rather untenable.

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#213

Post by roghummal »

ggreer wrote: post #211
roghummal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someday 'vi' might symlink to 'nvim' instead of 'vim'. 'VI Improved Improved'! Mr. Greer's post was necessarily incendiary; He's building his brand. Wasting space on the front page of HN is a feather in his cap.

I'm sorry if you thought the post was self-serving. I can only say with sincerity that it wasn't. I have no motive beyond my interest in software. If you don't believe my claim of selflessness, believe my claim of competence: If I was trying to build a personal brand, I could do much better than delving into Vim's codebase for a one-off snippet. It's not difficult to create insubstantial content that is widely-shared…

You delved[1] into the vim source and found this. You offered no solution except to use neovim, which happens to be 'supported' by the /amazing/ company you're the CEO of. You're very well practiced in false modesty and apologies but fuck you; I'm not sure you know what sincerity means.

I'm sorry if I don't think you're being sincere. Let's have a drink sometime! Let's network!

1. Anything as old as vim, continuously developed, will have any number of these frankenfunctions. They're not hard to find.

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#214

Post by dlitz »

pjmlp wrote: post #30
geofft wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your old code doesn't have a test suite you can run on the new code? Well there's your problem. Testless code doesn't acquire bugs by just sitting around on your hard drive, but it doesn't lose any bugs that way, either, and without a test suite you can't afford to do anything but leave it sitting around.

Outside HN like crowds almost no one writes tests. In most enterprises it even has less value than documentation when deadlines approach. The sad reality is that most software is a by product of the main business and as such the quality goals are always pretty low. Edit: typo has => as

Something like 60% of enterprise IT projects are considered failures, too.

If you don't write tests, then you're throwing away your investment. It's that simple. Telling me that the code works today tells me nothing about how much value the code will add to the business in the next year.

Sooner or later, you won't be able to predict whether a 'small' task will take 3 weeks or 3 years. Even if you don't change the software, some integer overflow might abruptly halt everything. ("It's the primary key for everything? And we don't have tests? Oh...")

Anyone can write code, but it's usually high-risk code with lots of hidden costs. The value that career software developers bring to the table is the ability to manage the software development process so that it's more-or-less sustainable, i.e. keeping costs visible and managing risk so that the resulting software retains its value over time.

If your publicly-traded company depends heavily on software that isn't properly tested, then ethically this should be listed as a risk factor in your 10-K forms. Sooner or later, shareholders are going to figure this out and start holding these enterprises' management accountable.

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#215

Post by JupiterMoon »

msravi wrote: post #194
ggreer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the page as a companion piece to a blog post[1]. The code works, but it's quite buggy. Also, it is almost certainly broken on outdated OSes. It's just that nobody uses the latest Vim on IRIX or VMS, so no bug reports get filed. A quick glance shows some obvious errors in RealWaitForChar(). For example: with typical preprocessor defines, it uses gettimeofday() in a select() loop. This will break if the system c…

Right. So you recommend neovim, which is good, except that it won't install -- not on some unused OS, but on OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). Now I know that's a little behind, but really? Beautiful code that won't work on a 2010 OS is just awesome. As an aside, I think it's a growing problem that the formulae in Homebrew are not updated to support 10.6.8. And Vim? It just works. Maybe it's all those #ifdefs that make the…

Do Apple supply security updates for Snow Leopard still?

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#216

Post by JupiterMoon »

dlitz wrote: post #214
pjmlp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside HN like crowds almost no one writes tests. In most enterprises it even has less value than documentation when deadlines approach. The sad reality is that most software is a by product of the main business and as such the quality goals are always pretty low. Edit: typo has => as

Something like 60% of enterprise IT projects are considered failures, too. If you don't write tests, then you're throwing away your investment. It's that simple. Telling me that the code works today tells me nothing about how much value the code will add to the business in the next year. Sooner or later, you won't be able to predict whether a 'small' task will take 3 weeks or 3 years. Even if you don't change the sof…

> ... should be listed as a risk factor in your 10-K forms. Sooner or later, shareholders are going to figure this out and start holding these enterprises' management accountable.

And on that day publicly traded companies will start to implement comprehensive test suites. Until then they are just extra costs as far as (most) management is concerned and management loves to 'trim the fat' and eliminate costs.

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#217

Post by roghummal »

ggreer wrote: post #211
roghummal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someday 'vi' might symlink to 'nvim' instead of 'vim'. 'VI Improved Improved'! Mr. Greer's post was necessarily incendiary; He's building his brand. Wasting space on the front page of HN is a feather in his cap.

I'm sorry if you thought the post was self-serving. I can only say with sincerity that it wasn't. I have no motive beyond my interest in software. If you don't believe my claim of selflessness, believe my claim of competence: If I was trying to build a personal brand, I could do much better than delving into Vim's codebase for a one-off snippet. It's not difficult to create insubstantial content that is widely-shared…

If you're ever in the Silicon Valley we should "meet up". I'll be nicer to you but you're buying.

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#218

Post by roghummal »

anon4 wrote: post #199
roghummal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someday 'vi' might symlink to 'nvim' instead of 'vim'. 'VI Improved Improved'! Mr. Greer's post was necessarily incendiary; He's building his brand. Wasting space on the front page of HN is a feather in his cap.

I'm really sad neovim didn't call themselves vi improved improved, or vii. It doesn't just carry the naming tradition of vim, but is also one more than vi.

If it had we might be running it right now.

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#219

Post by ggreer »

roghummal wrote: post #217
ggreer wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry if you thought the post was self-serving. I can only say with sincerity that it wasn't. I have no motive beyond my interest in software. If you don't believe my claim of selflessness, believe my claim of competence: If I was trying to build a personal brand, I could do much better than delving into Vim's codebase for a one-off snippet. It's not difficult to create insubstantial content that is widely-shared…

If you're ever in the Silicon Valley we should "meet up". I'll be nicer to you but you're buying.

>>I don’t consider myself very devoted to my work, but

>Don't try and pretend your problems are our problems. Struggling to survive, scrap by scrap. Fuck off. If you're ever in the Silicon Valley we should "meet up". I'll be nicer to you.

You trawled through my writings to find one sentence in one blog post[1] to voice outrage at. I'm not sure how to react to that. I guess... congratulations on your hard work.

I live in the bay area, but I prefer not to hang out with people who treat others so callously. I hope you understand.

Edit: It appears roghummal has significantly revised his comment since I finished my reply.

1. http://geoff.greer.fm/2015/01/07/burnout-is-in-the-mind/

Re: Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

#220

Post by roghummal »

ggreer wrote: post #219
roghummal wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're ever in the Silicon Valley we should "meet up". I'll be nicer to you but you're buying.

>>I don’t consider myself very devoted to my work, but >Don't try and pretend your problems are our problems. Struggling to survive, scrap by scrap. Fuck off. If you're ever in the Silicon Valley we should "meet up". I'll be nicer to you. You trawled through my writings to find one sentence in one blog post[1] to voice outrage at. I'm not sure how to react to that. I guess... congratulations on your hard work. I live…

>Edit: It appears roghummal has significantly revised his comment since I finished my reply.

It doesn't 'appear' that way, that's the way it is. My edit was, just guesstimating here, 25 minutes before your post? Edit was 2-5 minutes after my original post?

You've never said anything you quickly realized was indefensible?

Wrong, even?

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