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Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

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Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#131
post #95

Whenever I end up on another computer without my environment setup and end up in nano because it is the default, it always takes me a while. There is the cheat sheet at the bottom but as soon as the text appears I'll start manipulating it using vim keybindings and delete things and whatever else randomly. I always assume my fingers were not on the homerow correctly or something first. It is very disorienting. So I im…

This happens to me even in graphical text editors, my text ends up riddled with ':w's I have to go back through and remove later.

Same for me :)

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#132
post #35
post #28

first stuck in vim 13 years ago. No internet, no GUI, could not speak english, 1 book on unix/linux. So I had to reboot (hard reboot) computer, three times, then re-install OS, since something broke because of hard-forced reboot.

Hah. First stuck in emacs ~26 years ago, on a dumb terminal (want to say VT-102, maybe the VT-220's that were in the adjoining room). Tried everything to get out of it with no success, was too embarassed to ask for help, and eventually just power cycled the thing and walked away sheepishly. Don't believe I ever got stuck in vi. All the cool kids were emacs users and it was years before I bothered to learn it.

emac I tried as well, and then power reseted it too :D

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#133
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the cost of tuition, that should be banned.

"Weed-out" classes are pretty common across subjects, though. I remember taking an introductory course in our undergraduate pre-med track which was basically just a new presentation about novel research every week. The exams would be on these fairly specialized papers which most first-year students were at a loss to understand, so they ended up being exercises in rote memorization. When some of us complained to a TA…

Weed out classes shouldn’t exist. Not when a degree is mandatory and student loans can’t be defaulted.

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#134
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why the hell are they using Unix at all?!

Last time I checked there was no questionnaire to download any distro.

That has nothing to do with the subject or my comment.

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#135

At this point in my life, the only vi command that I do remember is :q!

The only real command I know and use often is gg=G to fix indentation. It's a lot more reliable than Atom or Sublime's reindent, and this is coming from an Atom apologist.

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#136

I really love my vim bindings, I try to use them everywhere possible. So far that is: Web browser: Vimium plugin (Chrome) Music player: Cmus Terminal multiplexer: Tmux & Screen Terminal pager: GNU Less I'm still trying to figure out how best to use vim bindings in my z-shell (zsh) and ipython interactive sessions.

For zsh, just enable vi input mode? (bindkey -v in .zshrc) It starts in insert mode, hit esc to get to normal mode where your typical vi binds work. So instead of ^a to go to the beginning of the line it's 0

I think the issue that I had was that my regular bindings in insert mode (CTRL-a) were disabled while in vi input mode, which caused problems for other shell programs. Plus, with Tmux and GNU Screen already re-configured with vi bindings, managing key binding collisions became complicated with vi input mode enabled. The bigger issue that I tend to have is managing copy-paste buffers between Screen, Tmux, and Vim.

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#137
post #10

Why is this such an issue? It is no harder exiting vim than it is exiting plain old vi, nvi or any other vi clone. In fact, the very same keystrokes that you use for exiting vi can be used in vim as well.

Did you consider the case where the user has never used any vi variant before?

Yes. Of course I did. I merely tried (and failed) to sarcastically draw attention to how some computer users seem unaware of the fact that vim is a vi clone, that vim is one of many implementations in a family of similar text editors.

The way the poster uses the specific term 'vim' while asking a question that pertains to vi-style editors in general implies that he or she is indeed unaware of this.

To my ears, it is a bit like asking the question "how do I make a red Volvo 240 from 1982 go right?" to which my reply would be "you do it the same way as you do with any car in general, namely turning the wheel clockwise". If you have never seen a car before and suddenly find yourself in the driver's seat of one, asking such a specific question may make sense. I suppose that the situation is similar for these computer users: vim is the only vi-style editor they have ever seen because it is what ships with the only unix-like systems they ever encounter.

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#138
post #2

First time I used vim more than a decade ago, I got stuck too. Kill vim from other console and then googled it for future reference.

A professional would use the man page.

For your reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)

#139

You would think that those zealous power-mods on StackOverflow would have closed this as "not a programming question"

Even though https://vi.stackexchange.com/ has been around for a couple of years, questions about Vi/Vim are still considered on-topic on Stack Overflow. I presume it's because a text editor is so fundamental to programming – though questions using and configuring Emacs, not specific to programming, should be asked on https://emacs.stackexchange.com/

Questions about other programming tools such as IDEs are also on-topic and there are specific tags for such questions.

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