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Just Use Sublime Text

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Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#181

Post by ollysb »

The area where sublime really wins for me is discoverability. Say I'm writing some markdown and I decide I want to preview it in the browser. A short key combo opens the command palette, I type install package, hit return, type markdown, see that there's a plugin called markdown preview, down arrow and return and it's installed in a couple of seconds. I open the command palette again, type markdown preview, hit return and it's open in my browser. Follow these steps and it will take you maybe 10 seconds or so. Everything's happened without leaving the keyboard and you haven't had to learn any key combos. If you find yourself using a command a lot then you can assign a key combo.

That was just an example, pretty much everything happens this way in sublime. It can all be done by searching commands from the keyboard. The command matching is fuzzy so you can actually figure out the 2 or 3 letters that bring up the command you want and you've got yourself a key combo.

It's this discoverability that makes sublime a joy to use. With vim I find I'm constantly googling how to do things. With sublime learning how to do something usually happens in the editor, thanks to the command bar.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#182

Post by pekk »

nnq wrote: post #117
ebbv wrote: post #25

Am I the only person in the world who: a) Never thought vim was that hard to learn (and I first learned it when I was a teenager and nobody helped me. I switched when someone on a MUD made fun of me for using pico.) and b) Thinks vanilla vim works just fine. Seriously my vimrc is like 10 lines long and I don't even have it on every server I work on. I don't bother with any plugins. I don't need vim integrated with gi…

> what kind of medication the OP stopped taking The OP has a really "sane" take on things imho (yes, it's incredibly opinionated , but it's blog post featured on HN, not a SO question someone like you can close in minute :) - and I'm glad he bothered to write it, as I'd probably just send the link to it to any newbies asking me about "the magical vim" instead of bothering to tell them what I think) and he's right on…

What nonsense.

It is absolutely incorrect that you have to 'keep Vim in your head just as much as the code that you're editing' unless you have not learned Vim at all. The reason you don't (constantly) have to think in ST or notepad++ is because you have already learned that editing paradigm. Although, that editing paradigm IS more obtrusive than vim's. It's abundantly clear that you do NOT understand vim's keybindings and modal editing concept, if you constantly think about vim.

vim has code exploration tools integrated: they just have funny names like ctags, grep, cscope. If you want them. You can also just use separate tools for browsing vs. editing, with no obvious productivity loss.

The productivity impact of having the debugger in your editor process cannot be a big deal, and it's pretty weird to hear that this is essential right after you stress that notepad++ is good enough. Which one is it?

If the point is that you spend most of your time writing, editing and reading code and otherwise the only advantages are in heavy-duty tools not present in ST, then the implication isn't that it's "sane" to reject vim, the implication is that it doesn't make any difference what you use.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#183

Post by JulianMorrison »

justinhj wrote: post #47

If you intend to be a professional programmer for 10 years, 20 years, maybe 40 years, why is it a big deal to spend 2 years becoming adept at an editor? Vim and Emacs are both likely to be lifelong tools that will easily repay the difficult early days.

If you are going to become adept in an editor, Sublime text has a lot of depth and power and seems like a good one to learn.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#184

Post by pekk »

kamaal wrote: post #143

Almost anybody who associates great programming with things like super keyboarding skills and muscle memory is unfortunately degrading the status of programming to mere typing. What is it that is so distracting and pulling you out of your zen when you use a mouse? Seriously you type so fast and code at the speed of thought that a little glitch here is like making a mistake with a Formula 1 car in the Monaco Grand Pri…

Once you have learned to do without the mouse and the arrow keys, it is actively annoying to be FORCED to do that additional motion. This is a matter of ergonomics. Maybe you don't care about the ergonomics of your tools. Using a tool with poor ergonomics is not rationalized by pointing out that you should read and think about what you're doing.

You have no right to condescend to tell others how 'real work happens' and how 'productive people' work, as if you were the only real productive worker in the room because everyone else is using a stupid editor rather than the mouse. Using the mouse doesn't make you a Real Programmer more than other people.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#185

Post by pekk »

MetaCosm wrote: post #29
ebbv wrote: post #25

Am I the only person in the world who: a) Never thought vim was that hard to learn (and I first learned it when I was a teenager and nobody helped me. I switched when someone on a MUD made fun of me for using pico.) and b) Thinks vanilla vim works just fine. Seriously my vimrc is like 10 lines long and I don't even have it on every server I work on. I don't bother with any plugins. I don't need vim integrated with gi…

He tried to turn vim into an IDE, a role that vim specifically decided not to embrace, that will make anyone go a little crazy. Vim is good at editing text, is extremely portable, and works great with a partner in crime like tmux. I have used vim for 12+ years, and the complexity of his setup makes me a bit dizzy.

There is nothing wrong with using vim's intentionally built in extension mechanisms.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#186

Post by Avshalom »

sanityinc wrote: post #138
nnq wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what kind of medication the OP stopped taking The OP has a really "sane" take on things imho (yes, it's incredibly opinionated , but it's blog post featured on HN, not a SO question someone like you can close in minute :) - and I'm glad he bothered to write it, as I'd probably just send the link to it to any newbies asking me about "the magical vim" instead of bothering to tell them what I think) and he's right on…

> eg. arbitrary multiple cursors (no other IDE or editor besides Notedpad++ has them yet Emacs support for multiple cursors is also available: https://github.com/magnars/multiple-cursors.el

Jedit has had multiple cursors built in for years. like '08 at least.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#187

Post by pekk »

bcoates wrote: post #75
Puer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from nano to vim a few hours ago. When I first installed Arch Linux all those months ago I was intimidated when I was presented with the choice between nano, the default, and vim, "for experts only." When I used vim for the first time today I expected it to be a lot more "difficult" based on everything I had read/heard prior, but after reaching the Arch Wiki entry I was able to hop right in with no difficu…

Just out of curiosity, what made you decide to change? I've never felt a strong motivation to not just keep using pico/nano, actually putting effort into learning a text editor strikes me as the weirdest hobby ever.

It isn't a hobby, it's a one-off investment. Surely anyone who programs learns a new thing every now and then?

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#188

Post by pekk »

jamesrcole wrote: post #91
ebbv wrote: post #25

Am I the only person in the world who: a) Never thought vim was that hard to learn (and I first learned it when I was a teenager and nobody helped me. I switched when someone on a MUD made fun of me for using pico.) and b) Thinks vanilla vim works just fine. Seriously my vimrc is like 10 lines long and I don't even have it on every server I work on. I don't bother with any plugins. I don't need vim integrated with gi…

Vanilla Vim is pretty sub-optimal for writing prose. Vim is my text-editor of choice, but it took me a lot of time and effort to customise it to make it more suitable for writing prose. E.g. the fact that it scrolls by logical lines rather than screen lines (note I that I said scrolls . I'm aware that you can navigate by screen lines by using gj and gk). The way this makes the text scroll by unpredictable amounts whe…

When you say prose, do you mean emails or some document format or what?

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#189

Post by tmarthal »

CJefferson wrote: post #173
vacri wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he had some odd examples. If you can't type "/word " faster than someone can move their hand to the mouse, target the word, and click it, then you can't touchtype. That was a strange example of his. But nevertheless, I would happily take up his challenge: let's find a word that is in the document, but not currently on-screen - hardly an 'edge case', more like 'routine task'. Good luck at winning that one, mouse…

If I am looking for a particular word, then I will use a search. Even notepad and nano has a short-cut key for a simple search for a particular word. Where I find a mouse useful is when I want "that loop which I suspect is misbehaving. That one which adds a new member to all arrays". There a quick flick of the mouse-wheel, and then fine positioning of the mouse cursor I find gets me to my location faster. Even when t…

My .vimrc is the following: set number Which shows the line number no matter what in a vi editor.

Jumping to a loop on the screen is as easy as viewing the line the loop is on, then hitting colon+line number (e.g. ":68"). This might be what you're referring to with a "hard jump".

I also use the "number+command" shortcuts quite a bit. If you want to jump up/down 20 lines (or 2000), then "2000k" or "2000j" will move the cursor up 2000 lines or down 2000 lines. Also a hard jump.

But to find an occurrence of a word at the end of the file, the typical search sequence is the following: 1) :$ - this jumps to the end of the file ($ is a common regex meaning 'end of', the same way that '^' means beginning of) 2) ?word - this does a backwards search for the word. this is at the bottom of the file, searching upwards 3) n - this jumps to the next occurrence of the word

So thats like 5 keystrokes not including typing in the word. Jumping around and viewing files really is neat with vi/vim.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#190

Post by adestefan »

riledhel wrote: post #114
Puer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from nano to vim a few hours ago. When I first installed Arch Linux all those months ago I was intimidated when I was presented with the choice between nano, the default, and vim, "for experts only." When I used vim for the first time today I expected it to be a lot more "difficult" based on everything I had read/heard prior, but after reaching the Arch Wiki entry I was able to hop right in with no difficu…

Once you learn to jump quickly between words, lines, etc. and change whole blocks of text with a few strokes you discover another dimension of vim that's very hard to replace with other tools.

If you learn how to do the same things in emacs, about 90% of it carries over to the native text widgets in OS X and Linux.
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