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Why I Still Use Vim

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Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#101

Post by rootlocus »

Klathmon wrote: post #61
kuschku wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Atom is a more capable "IDE" than any other IDE i've ever used That says more about you than it does about atom. You should check out the IDEA line of IDEs sometimes.

I own a license and use IntelliJ's tools a lot still. Whenever I jump into Java code they are the gold standard! But when I'm working on web code, Atom runs circles around WebStorm.

> Atom runs circles around WebStorm.

Because it can show you a preview of the page? Because, as far as code indexing is concerned, Atom doesn't do a very good job at all.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#102

Post by tombh »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #89
tombh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the part of the sentiment of the quote - the point is that Vim is notable for 2 distinct, but unfortunately inseparable, reasons; 1. Modal editing. 2. One of the most ubiquitous, lightweight, stable and extensible editors in existence. I just want there to be at least a semblance of a possibility to separate these 2 things.

Have you tried emacs?

Yes, but it doesn't exactly have 'conventional' shortcuts either, right? It's a little more heavyweight over Vim as well. So in the light-but-powerful editor universe, I think Vim just pips it to the post. Which is why I use it, albeit with 'normal' shortcuts.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#103

Post by Klathmon »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #96
Klathmon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you consider "performance". An F1 car is going to be the worst tow truck in existence. It's "towing performance" is basically a 0/100. Atom's "extreme performance" for me is in my productivity. the 2GB of ram that my atom windows are currently using is a very very small price to pay for better productivity. Even if Atom were so resource hungry that I needed to buy a new laptop every other year for…

I think any discussion with you is pointless. You just love this editor, and whatever things you need to sacrifice to use it are file. This includes buying a new laptop each year, using only small files, buying more ram etc. I'm just too old for flame wars with their-own-church believers. I just need to write code, so I switch tools to appropriate ones. It's just a tool. I'm sure that some hammer-loving guys do all t…

I really feel I described why I think that pretty well.

If you are more productive doing things another way, that's fantastic! I use IDEA when i'm working in Java code, I use Atom when i'm working with web stuff, I use tail/grep when searching through log files, I use CLI tools as much as possible for everything else as they integrate with things like editors and IDE's very easily.

Everything is a tradeoff, and nothing is perfect. Atom enables me to be a better dev in some areas, and is frustratingly awful in others. But I do genuinely love the editor. I'm glad someone has finally made the tradeoffs that I prefer in an editor, as for me reducing memory usage by a few hundred MB will make literally 0 difference in my life, but adding the ability to click a spot in the embedded browser window and have it take me to the code that defines that component is a nice productivity boost.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#104

Post by christogreeff »

nimchimpsky wrote: post #91
Klathmon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you consider "performance". An F1 car is going to be the worst tow truck in existence. It's "towing performance" is basically a 0/100. Atom's "extreme performance" for me is in my productivity. the 2GB of ram that my atom windows are currently using is a very very small price to pay for better productivity. Even if Atom were so resource hungry that I needed to buy a new laptop every other year for…

> better productivity than what ? wtf is worse than atom. Even notepad++ is better.

Better in which way? In your daily usage scenario? Memory usage? I'm sure there will be cases where Vim or notepad++ works better for me. At present, vscode works for 90%+ of the things I need to do. For my usage scenario, notepad++ is not better than vscode. Use whatever application works for you, but don't say something is better or worse, without looking at it subjectively.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#105

Post by lsadam0 »

staticelf wrote: post #36

Being in 2 slack teams use up as much memory as the entire visual studio 2017 does on my machine. It is electron that is the root cause here and it is the same for all electron based apps.

There was a recent post in which the slack team admitted that they build certain dependencies in dev mode in their production release. I wonder how much that is to blame as opposed to electron? In my experience the windows slack client is a dog, while the mac client is a better experience.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#106

Post by nnq »

Klathmon wrote: post #82
nnq wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being electron/browser based is not and excuse for such horrific resource usage ... Visual Studio Code is also electron based and it's extremely lightweight (ram) and responsive on even the most underpowered machines I've ran it on. The problem is getting people that only have experience writing web apps to develop what is practically an IDE ... The good part is that this will teach frontend web developers a lot of t…

VS Code fairs quite similar to Atom in many tests in the linked article. But it does that by restricting what plugins can and can't do, and by integrating a large number of the functionality itself. I prefer to have the choice of multiple plugins each with their own tradeoffs, so I sacrafice some speed for it, but that choice can more than make up for it in many cases. And as for you claiming that web developers shou…

> I prefer to have the choice of multiple plugins each with their own tradeoffs

Just curios, do you know any languages besides Javascript for which this "freedom of plugins to do anything easily" resulted in any better editing experiences with Atom than with alternatives?

I'm pretty content with VSCode plugins for Python (including those for Jupyter integration and others from scientific computing area) and Go for example. Only real improvement that would actually help me would be truly intelligent (well, more like "not retarded" actually and "don't crash when trying to refactor" but anyhow...) refactoring capabilities for dynamic languages (like JetBrains IDEs have), but having the editor based on a browser + unlimited freedom of plugins to do anything with the UI wouldn't really help for such a feature, that would be implemented in a separate process anyway and could work fine even as a Vim plugin (well, Neovim, since it fixed the interprocess com and async limitations of Vim or so I've heard...).

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#107

Post by tombh »

kronos29296 wrote: post #98
tombh wrote: post #14

> I’ve primarily stuck with [vim] because it’s an extensible editor that doesn’t hog all the resources and kill my machines. Exactly, BUT ... Vim has a non-mainstream shortcut interface, which I've always thought is an unfortunate caveat. So over the years I've actually managed to massage Vim into behaving like a 'normal' editor. It fits into a plugin if you're interested: https://github.com/tombh/novim-mode

Just use nano if you don't want its shortcuts or even emacs. You don't have to use any predefined shortcuts in emacs. Everything is reconfigurable. The main selling point of vim is its shortcuts and modal editing. If it is not for you there dozens of great text editors that do a good job of just editing text compared to Atom.

How do I get autocompletion, linting, gitgutter, and so on in Nano? Emacs is another great editor for sure, but slightly heavier weight than Vim, so I've just invested in that.

There is no other editor that even comes close to being as lightweight and extensible as Vim (or Emacs). Whatsmore I absolutely love my editor being in a tmux pane. This is an unprecedented paradigm, that people should't have to miss out on just because of Normal Mode's learning curve.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#108

Post by tjpnz »

I still can't for the life of me see why Electron was ever a good idea for apps like Atom. It's not like they haven't had to lean on native solutions before - they've already rewritten their JS based buffer in C++.

Is it really that hard to find people who can write native UIs these days?

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#109

Post by makapuf »

kowdermeister wrote: post #68

Something seems off, I just opened a 8.7MB file with Code and it still uses 264MB memory. (Win10) "> Conclusion Learn Vim." It's like saying "getting tired of long commuting?" Buy a Ferrari.

Except everyone can learn vim in a few days whereas not everyone can buy a Ferrari in a few days.

Re: Why I Still Use Vim

#110

Post by Klathmon »

nnq wrote: post #106
Klathmon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code fairs quite similar to Atom in many tests in the linked article. But it does that by restricting what plugins can and can't do, and by integrating a large number of the functionality itself. I prefer to have the choice of multiple plugins each with their own tradeoffs, so I sacrafice some speed for it, but that choice can more than make up for it in many cases. And as for you claiming that web developers shou…

> I prefer to have the choice of multiple plugins each with their own tradeoffs Just curios, do you know any languages besides Javascript for which this "freedom of plugins to do anything easily" resulted in any better editing experiences with Atom than with alternatives? I'm pretty content with VSCode plugins for Python (including those for Jupyter integration and others from scientific computing area) and Go for ex…

JetBrains tools are the gold standard for Java, and I use them as well when i'm in that world. But for Python, JS, go, and a handful of smaller langs Atom is treating me well.

And while it's true that the browser-based nature of Atom won't help with refactoring tools, they do allow you to easily integrate any CLI tools with it (or I should say, they make it easy for ME to do!).

I'm not trying to claim Atom is the best in every way, but if you are in it's target demographic, it's a good experience. I'm more than positive that many people have better setups using other toolsets, and i'm sure there are many people who are worse-off for using Atom at all. But for me, it's a great tool that enables me to do things faster than I could before I used it.

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