Vim 8.0 is coming • Hacker News Board

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#221

Post by justinmk » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:25 PM UTC

jbmorgado wrote: post #126

majewsky wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neovim also has the terminal buffers, which Vim has explicitly stated to never add. (Source: Somewhere in :help, but unfortunately I can't find it right now.)

Well, from my previous not great experience with terminal inside Emacs I don't really need that. I would be much happier if Emacs and Vim just had correct color support in the console so that I could use both from the console in a Tmux terminal and have a real terminal open side-by-side with the editor. I can do that in Vim nicely after hacking the console colors, and Neovim without having to care about the colors an…

> from my previous not great experience with terminal inside Emacs

:terminal in Neovim works very well.

> if Emacs and Vim just had correct color support in the console

Neovim supports true color in terminals that support it.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#222

Post by Gonzih » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

mightybyte wrote: post #108

Gonzih wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil mode is slower than vim. And also you are in evil mode only during the editing phase. All other menus drop you back to default emacs keybindings and that is very painful experience. I used evil mode for a couple of years and still just went back to vim.

I have not found this to be the case with Spacemacs. Almost everything you need is bound to keystrokes using space as the leader key in the spirit of vim. As a long-time and fairly advanced vim user I recommend Spacemacs highly.

I was also using spacemacs for something like 2 month. After that I just rewrote my vim configuration with what I learned from spacemacs in mind. It's great and clean. But it's still emacs and vim emulation. Nowadays i'm much happier with my vim configuration partially thanks to spacemacs.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#223

Post by lottin » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #199

lottin wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not dead, it's finished. It's got all the features of the original vi, therefore mission accomplished. Software doesn't need to be developed ad-aeternum to remain 'alive'.

> Software doesn't need to be developed ad-aeternum to remain 'alive'. Actually it does, as architectures, APIs, etc change, and if the software doesn't catch up, it can get impossible to run it, or it will need BC compatibility layers, to run 5-10-15 years down the line. Not to mention big changes in how we use the software, e.g. the need to handle utf-8, which didn't exist in Bill Joy's time. > It's not dead, it's…

I thought we were talking about nvi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvi

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#224

Post by Gonzih » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

maxaf wrote: post #110

mightybyte wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not found this to be the case with Spacemacs. Almost everything you need is bound to keystrokes using space as the leader key in the spirit of vim. As a long-time and fairly advanced vim user I recommend Spacemacs highly.

Don't you feel like you're pushing a square peg into a round hole? Or do you actually find yourself taking advantage of elisp in harmonious combination with Vim's editing UX?

In my experience it's cleaner than default emacs editing experience, but it's not as clean as you can get in plain vim.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#225

Post by super_mario » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #186

super_mario wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming I never use any GUI tools or never try IDEs. I do. I know how customizable most of them are (all except XCode which is absolute garbage). And you can spend a lot of time doing that (writing your own extensions or invoking those external command line tools on your text selections etc), but why bother spending time on that when I can use those tools directly in the command line? And if I'm going to wri…

Can you give me one example of a command line tool you wrote to help you get your work done?

Just today I wrote a custom git command to help me sync my branch with master without having to first git checkout master, git pull, git checkout , git rebase master and deal with conflicts.

I chose BASH for my language of choice, but could have use Python or Ruby or anything that the shell can execute.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#226

Post by baldfat » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

Syssiphus wrote: post #128

baldfat wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vim stands for vi improved and started on the Amega in 1991 so almost 25 years old. Certain people still use vi which was an improvement over ed August 1969 (Though I have been known to use ed in scripts from time to time).

Nonetheless he is right. As far as I remember Vim is based on the code of an editor that was similar to vi, and not vi itself.

Well I made his short two word answer into an explanation.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#227

Post by patrickdavey » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

donkeyd wrote: post #149

I'm quite a noob at 'nix, so I tend to use nano whenever I need to edit something. Not sure if this is the right place, but could somebody explain the added benefit of spending the time to learn to use vim/emacs? I've tried vim, but it seems very complicated.

Like other comments have said, learning one tool which is available basically everywhere means you only have to put in the up front learning once.

Sure, it is a learning curve, but once you get the basic idea that it's a sort of language for manipulating text, then the rest is just adding to that.

For example, once you know that "d" is the verb to "delete" and that verbs can take nouns (like "w" for "word") then "dw" deletes a word. Now you can learn new nouns and apply to all the verbs you already know. Same for motions G is the motion to move to the bottom of the file, "dG" will delete from the cursor to the bottom of the file.

Anyway, far smarter people than me have made some great introductions. I would recommend the following:

1. go through "vimtutor" 2. Look at vimcasts 3. In a while, "Practical Vim" is a very nice little book.

Good luck :)

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#228

Post by aorth » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

codemonkeymike wrote: post #195

Been using Neovim for about 6 months now, The only real difference I have felt so far is that I was able to remove a few lines from my .vimrc, like history=10000 as Neovim does this by default. As for Vim, I am done with it forever, not because of vim more because of package managers compiling vim without paste mode or lua/ruby support and making me compile vim from source with my own flags, which was a harrowing exp…

Do you ever have to vim somewhere where there is no nvim? Like on a server, etc? I worry about getting used to nvim features or behaviors that might not be compatible with vim (are there any?) and being super bummed on a server some day!

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#229

Post by to3m » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #183

wtetzner wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but writing a Visual Studio extension (or Eclipse, etc.) is much higher friction than Emacs. In emacs, I can just open a buffer in emacs-lisp-mode, write a quick function, immediately eval it and start using it. The instant feedback means that quick, small customizations are very low cost. It's like the difference between writing a code generator for Java vs using macros in Lisp.

I see. Can you give me an example of a function you wrote in that way?

Here are three of mine:

    (defun tom/insert-sterling-symbol ()
      (interactive)
      (insert "£"))

    (defun tom/set-buffer-modified ()
      (interactive)
      (set-buffer-modified-p 't))

    (defun tom/unix ()
      "Set buffer to unix line endings"
      (interactive)
      (set-buffer-file-coding-system 'unix))

The last one exists only because I could never remember the right command to select Unix-style line endings. So rather than train myself to learn it, I just wrote a small wrapper with an obvious (to me...) name, because it's so easy to do that.

I've written some Visual Studio addins as well... the experience is not really comparable. (Visual Studio VBA macros, when it supported that, were painful too.) emacs makes it a lot easier.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#230

Post by dahart » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #35

krylon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, the key point of emacs is extensibility and customizability. So as new stuff comes up, e.g. new programming languages, debuggers, file formats, emacs can be extended without too much pain to work with them (and often, somebody has already done that for me). Secondly, working mainly as a sysadmin and only sometimes doing some development, I do far more with emacs than coding. I edit configuration files,…

I'm about to dive into org mode for the first time today. Do you have any tips for learning it? My plan was to open up the manual and start reading, but maybe you found an article or tutorial that helped kickstart your org mode knowledge, so I thought I'd ask. (Apologies if the question is a bit offtopic.)

Maybe learn to type right-handed so you can keep your left hand on TAB. ;)