Why I teach vim • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I teach vim

#21

Post by sbergot » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #5

Geminidog wrote: post #3

I really wish there was a batteries included vim-like console editor with all the power of the jet brains suite of IDEs and convenience and lightness of vim. As it stands right now I end up using both an IDE and vim. Maybe emacs is the answer but honestly if I look past all the yak-shaving to get emacs to the power level of an IDE does it really get to the point where it has everything that say CLion has?

I'm not sure about the specifics, but providing something a lot more "batteries-included" seems to be the idea behind Emacs distributions like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs. One difficulty is that language-specific tools (language servers, linters... etc) are standalone pieces of software with their own dependencies, requirements... etc. It's hard to bundle together a fully "batteries-included" Emacs without figuring out…

This was indeed the promise of spacemacs. I tried it a few times and roughly 30% of the advertised features were broken out of the box.

Re: Why I teach vim

#22

Post by apocolyps6 » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #14

fergie wrote: post #8

"I wish I could say I agonized over all the options at the time and decided vim was the best pedagogical solution, but the reality of the situation was that vi was what I used in college because my father taught me vi" We dont talk about this much, but many of us hardcore Vi/Emacs users have had this knowledge imparted to us from a mentor. Thats probably why the use of Vi/Emacs is much higher in established tech envi…

They're not really the same thing, compared to vi[m], emacs is statistically dead. And there are already lots of people who're well into their careers in academia and industry who aren't users of either. My own contrarian and probably equally wrong take is that it's mostly about accepting the (evidence-free) premise that modal editing is actually a good thing. It's hard, you suffer but lots of smart people tell you i…

The "suffering" has honestly been overblown by jokes about not being able to quit on one side and the mythologizing of the leet ninja 10x programmer who is only bound by his typing speed and can't waste time reaching for the mouse, on the other side.

It continues to surprise me why people have such strong opinions about someone else's editor choice. My current theory is vim users are like vegans/gluten free/paleo/etc, in that its a personal choice that some are public about, and people love to hate on it and "disprove" it for the same reason.

Re: Why I teach vim

#23

Post by arendtio » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:46 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #12

> I always tell my students that the one editor they are likely to find already installed on a machine is vim Well, vi, since it's part of POSIX. Unless you are fine with ed ;)

I am quite surprised to learn, that vi is actually part of POSIX. I mean that is pretty cool and wonder why someone would down-vote that comment?

Re: Why I teach vim

#24

Post by cweagans » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #12

> I always tell my students that the one editor they are likely to find already installed on a machine is vim Well, vi, since it's part of POSIX. Unless you are fine with ed ;)

In many (most?) modern distros, vi is a symlink to vim.

Re: Why I teach vim

#25

Post by pvg » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:50 AM UTC

rgoulter wrote: post #19

pvg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not really the same thing, compared to vi[m], emacs is statistically dead. And there are already lots of people who're well into their careers in academia and industry who aren't users of either. My own contrarian and probably equally wrong take is that it's mostly about accepting the (evidence-free) premise that modal editing is actually a good thing. It's hard, you suffer but lots of smart people tell you i…

> it's mostly about accepting the (evidence-free) premise that modal editing is actually a good thing. Kakoune's development has started fairly recently. The oldest tags on its GitHub repo are for 2018. I think this defies "people want to continue the legacy of actually-not-that-great thing because I had do suffer, so other people should too". I think you'd only put into making/promoting Kakoune if you genuinely thou…

Oh once you've suffered, there's a huge, inexorable incentive to believe you haven't suffered in vain! Completely agree with you that the belief is genuine and sincere. I just don't happen to think it has much basis beyond its authenticity and sincerity.

Re: Why I teach vim

#26

Post by cupofcoffee » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

I used vim for some time could never really get into it. The benefits that it offers over other simple code editors like TextMate isn't really worth the learnign curve.

It pretty much feels like a mini programming language for text editing.

Re: Why I teach vim

#27

Post by arendtio » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

Geminidog wrote: post #3

I really wish there was a batteries included vim-like console editor with all the power of the jet brains suite of IDEs and convenience and lightness of vim. As it stands right now I end up using both an IDE and vim. Maybe emacs is the answer but honestly if I look past all the yak-shaving to get emacs to the power level of an IDE does it really get to the point where it has everything that say CLion has?

Recently, I tried VS Code with the vim plugin and didn't find it to be too bad. Then again it isn't lightweight, but I think part of the problem is, that every programming eco-system has its own tools and one-size-fits-all solutions are unlikely to be small ;-)

However, it VS Code didn't convince me to give up my regular tmux+vim combination.

Re: Why I teach vim

#28

Post by apocolyps6 » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:56 AM UTC

xenihn wrote: post #16

Lio wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I’ve got used to working with both sets of shortcuts but I miss the Vim undo system in other apps. It’s worth noting that u and ctrl-r don’t operate on an undo stack but on an undo tree. So if you have a series of edits and undo them all then do something else you can still get back to where you were before. Use g+ and g- to walk the tree and the Gundo plugin is gives you a nice visual diff interface. So havi…

This is really cool, and I had no idea about Vim using a tree instead of a stack for undos. I'll check out Gundo. Do you have any other similar recs that would help for learning?

vim generally doesn't need any of those fuzzy file finders that most people use. If you add

  set path+=**

to your vimrc, and open vim from the top level directory for your project :find will just work

Setting up ctags will give vim some IntelliSense-like functionality that people tend to miss from their IDEs. More info here: https://andrewra.dev/2011/06/08/vim-and-ctags/

Re: Why I teach vim

#29

Post by arendtio » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 7:58 AM UTC

cupofcoffee wrote: post #26

I used vim for some time could never really get into it. The benefits that it offers over other simple code editors like TextMate isn't really worth the learnign curve. It pretty much feels like a mini programming language for text editing.

I'm not so sure about that. Yes, I have the hard part of the learning curve behind me, but learning vim actually changed how I write code in a very positive way. Now, I think a lot more in terms of lines and e.g. rogue whitespaces happen rarely. I know that are tools who can remove them, but I want to illustrate, that the editor improved the quality of what I type.

In the end, it depends how much time it will cost you to learn vim and if that is worth the effort and I am honestly not 100% sure, but I wouldn't want to go back to how the world was before.

Re: Why I teach vim

#30

Post by dan00 » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 8:01 AM UTC

apocolyps6 wrote: post #22

pvg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not really the same thing, compared to vi[m], emacs is statistically dead. And there are already lots of people who're well into their careers in academia and industry who aren't users of either. My own contrarian and probably equally wrong take is that it's mostly about accepting the (evidence-free) premise that modal editing is actually a good thing. It's hard, you suffer but lots of smart people tell you i…

The "suffering" has honestly been overblown by jokes about not being able to quit on one side and the mythologizing of the leet ninja 10x programmer who is only bound by his typing speed and can't waste time reaching for the mouse, on the other side. It continues to surprise me why people have such strong opinions about someone else's editor choice. My current theory is vim users are like vegans/gluten free/paleo/etc…

> It continues to surprise me why people have such strong opinions about someone else's editor choice.

I think because people identify themselves too much with their editor, programming language or whatever else choice. Everyone wants to think of themselves as the smart ones, only making objective rational choices, so everyone else making other choices has to be stupid. If now someone criticises their choice or argues about other choices, then they feel personally attacked, and there the flamewars goes.