I believe I had two ah-hah moments about vim when reading this article. I love those moments! How I never knew about ]p is beyond me! I guess I should assume that something I'm doing that is annoying means I'm doing it the wrong way.
Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
151–160 of 228 posts
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why do all articles about how wonderful vi is end with condescension?" Because one way to get someone over the initial learning hump is to "encourage" them by challenging their manhood. Same principle behind a boot camp sergeant telling every single incoming group that they are the worst bunch of nambypamby girliemen he's ever seen and he's been in this army for 25 years and that he will consider it a personal failu…
My response to this approach has always been the middle finger. If someone can't afford me even the minimal level of respect, I'll leave. My worth is not dependent upon what other people think.
So a 4000 word article that includes character-by-character examples for newbies doesn't count as 'the minimal level of respect'?
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny that you got downvoted. The entire industry has spent the last... forever years making things easier to use/gui-fied, and you get dinged for wanting to use those improvements.
Easier for a beginner ≠ better for an expert.
I'm actually quite satisfied in being a perpetual "vi beginner". With regard to Linux however, I started using it (professionally too) before most people (including IT professionals) heard of it at all. I enjoy puzzling my coworkers by declaring that I am "vi-ignorant and proud of it". :)
Anyway, I guess I just dislike vi because it's different from everything else. I like things that are uniform. That's what really saves a lot of time and effort in the long run.
On servers, I only require a few simple things of the editor; for everything else, there's always the command line or one of the P* scripting languages. On my laptop, I can install anything I want. Never saw the point in wasting time to learn an arcane editor from the '70s.
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#154I use vim for about a year or more, and I like it, however I'm still having trouble with copying and pasting tiny fragments of text. Maybe someone can help me out with this? 1) If I yank a line with yy, pressing P or p will insert the text into a new line. 2) If I go to visual mode and select a region, yank it with y, then press p/P, it gets it inserted into the current line. That is, vim preserves new lines. What I…
Does it really make sense, using an editor more than a year and still have trouble with rather basic functions? Use an editor you can use right away and whose controlls don't contradicts with the rest of the software you use. I don't believe in vim neither I don't belive in plain Emacs. Just my 2 cents
'basic functions' in this case being the subtle difference in two kinds of pasting that he already knows how to achieve, and is asking for another way to do one of the paste formats.
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#155I've never really felt comfortable in vi. I first started using it in 1989 at home, used it throughout college, and then used it on-and-off during my career, but it's never really felt powerful compared to a GUI editor. I want a scrollbar. I want a list of files in my project that I can just click on to open. I want tabs I can click. I want multiple windows that I can alt-tab to. And since I spend most of my time thi…
if you're on linux, ctrl+shift+T usually brings up a new terminal window if you're running a desktop. you can alt+tab between these just like you can alt+tab between GUI editor windows.
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#156Whenever I am using a program other than vim I feel clumsy. Plugins for Eclipse, Chrome and so on will only bring you so far. The other way around, namely turning vim into a multipurpose IDE does not satisfy my needs. One needs to admit that some features (refactoring support in Eclipse for example) cannot be matched by the available vim plugins. I know there are other solutions, like eclim, but I am looking for some…
Is there a big reason an IDE couldn't have a child editor process running inside the UI, and operate directly on the file? That would allow you to plug the editor if your choice into the IDE.
This is actually possible in Eclipse.
But I would prefer more upstream solution.
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#157I guess a nitpick on the article. When you say a "Steep learning curve" doesn't that mean the time to learn is quick? (Think X/Y plot with Time being independant, steeper slope indicates faster learning?)
a different way to represent esrauch's point: time is the dependent variable, not the independent.
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why do all articles about how wonderful vi is end with condescension?" Because one way to get someone over the initial learning hump is to "encourage" them by challenging their manhood. Same principle behind a boot camp sergeant telling every single incoming group that they are the worst bunch of nambypamby girliemen he's ever seen and he's been in this army for 25 years and that he will consider it a personal failu…
Comparing vi to an IDE is like comparing a screwdriver to a fully automated car assembly line... it is completely beside the point and they each have their purpose and downsides.
Screwdriver - quick, cheap, easy to use, intuitive. Can be learned once and carried around with you.
Car assembly line - lots of initial capital, specific to one kind of car, lots of time to learn.
Seems like a valid comparison.
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#159What I want to know: how good is the best autocompletion available? Does it stack up to Visual Studio's Intellisense? (For statically typed languages, that is; Intellisense doesn't work very well for eg Javascript).
To be completely honest if you were impressed you shouldn't have been. Learn your IDE! Apart from the douchey tone of the article, the thing he misses is that most editors can do this stuff, you've just got to make a bit of an effort to find out how. Emacs/Vim force you to learn this stuff as they suck without it. That's one of the big difference between Vim/Emacs and others, people don't realise they can do so much…
How does VS2010 compare to vi when making a change to a config file on a remote machine?
He keeps banging on about fingers staying on the home row, but I don't really notice moving to the arrow keys, perhaps it's cognitively similar to switching to/from insert mode.
It's slower. I still move to the arrow keys in vi for some reason, and it noticeable slows me down when I do so. The physical movement of your arm there and back takes time, plus you can't run any other "right-hand commands" while your right hand is out of place. In terms of workflow there's no difference, but in terms of speed there definitely is.
I've not seen an emacs master at work, but I've seen a vi master at work and they are simply stunningly fast at manipulating the text. I've never seen a gui editor master come anywhere close.
Re: Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?
#160I'm realizing that the distinction between vim/emacs and typical IDE editors is entropy. Vim is extraordinarily precise - very low entropy at all times. An IDE editor is constantly moving between high entropy (e.g. mouse motion) and low entropy (e.g. the interpretation of the mouse motion as a precise command). This implies that vim appeals to minds that desire constant precision, and GUI editors appeal to minds that…
Is such a split between types of minds a real thing?
That is my belief, although it is based on anecdotal evidence. Some (most?) hackers enjoy descending into and inhabiting continuously a low-entropy mind-state. There are others that would rather maintain some sort of fluidity between states, as inhabiting that low-entropy mind-state tends to come at the cost of human connectivity.