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The Future of the Vim Project

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Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#251

Post by BanazirGalbasi »

fortunateregard wrote: post #17

What is it that prevents the rest of the vim community from adopting neovim? From what I can observe, a great deal already have. But for the folks holding out, what is it that outweighs all that neovim has to offer?

I feel like I've said the same thing here 3-4 times now, but for some of us it's about what's the most minimal setup required to use the tool. As a sysadmin, I want to be used to the most common tools and configurations that will be on a server without having to take the time to install something new. I could include NeoVim in my Ansible configs for setting up new servers, but generally servers are kept lean so I would rather just use vi/vim for basic edits anyway.

I do use NeoVim with a lightly-customized LazyVim setup on my personal desktop, but I don't use it much differently than I use Vim at the moment. I'm not a power-user, just someone who's comfortable enough with the keybinds that I leave :w everywhere when using a non-vi editor.

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#252

Post by hnfong »

earth2mars wrote: post #198

Why so many people love vim? I have a genuine question. I was trying to delete contents of a file and paste new content. It was nightmare for me to remember the 3 or 4 finger combination shortcuts with small and cap letters involved during the process. I like if the shortcuts using Ctrl or shift or Alt or Command or Windows buttons over 3 finger with caps changing keys. The cognitive load in remembering shortcuts is…

Most "complex long form shortcuts" that Vim use are one or two keystrokes. Add an extra Escape key for switching between insert and command mode.

The "normal" Ctrl/Shift/Alt/Command/Meta shortcuts are two keystrokes as well.

I think it's a matter of preference and habit. I like not having to move my hands away from the home position of the keyboard when I'm intensely typing. Perhaps some people have much greater accuracy than I do when (for example) moving their hands to press the the arrow keys and then returning to the home position. For me, that distracts me a tiny bit having to spend brain cycles to check whether my hands are in the right spot.

Just sharing a personal anecdote.

Oh btw, why do so many people "love" Vim? It's been around for decades. I'm pretty sure unless you use Emacs, you've changed your main text editor over time. The most popular one today, VS Code, didn't exist a couple years ago. Not sure what people used before that, but IIRC no mainstream text editor was around for so long, on so many different platforms, and in such a consistent manner.

Vim has been around for 30+ years, and I've personally been using Vim for 20+. It's easy to be attached to something if it has been around for so long, and so consistently.

And also, sometimes, maybe, when a creator pours love into a product, the users can feel it. Maybe.

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#253

Post by vimbtw »

hardburn wrote: post #195
DicIfTEx wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful checklist: https://getyourshittogether.org/ Others in this thread have talked about safety deposit boxes and buried crates. I'd add that you can just give some trusted party a normal encrypted USB flash drive, and eliminate the risk of getting absolutely rinsed out in the event of a house burglary by splitting the password amongst an arbitrary number of your other contacts using the Shamir's Secret Sharing alg…

I wouldn't trust USB flash drives with anything long term. Best archival method would be to print something out (perhaps an encrypted message in a QR code), have it put away somewhere secure, and use that for a key to unlocking everything else.

Bitcoiners have been thinking about this storage problem for a decade now. Secure electronic devices in faraday cages and tamper and water proof bags or engraved steel plates (possibly cut up and distributed) seem to be the way to go for storing small bits of extremely valuable information.

Or of course you can use multiple key storage techniques and have a 2 out of 3 or more type setup. It all depends on how valuable the information is.

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#254

Post by guhidalg »

BanazirGalbasi wrote: post #251
fortunateregard wrote: post #17

What is it that prevents the rest of the vim community from adopting neovim? From what I can observe, a great deal already have. But for the folks holding out, what is it that outweighs all that neovim has to offer?

I feel like I've said the same thing here 3-4 times now, but for some of us it's about what's the most minimal setup required to use the tool. As a sysadmin, I want to be used to the most common tools and configurations that will be on a server without having to take the time to install something new. I could include NeoVim in my Ansible configs for setting up new servers, but generally servers are kept lean so I wou…

Serious question: how is neovim “heavier” than vim?

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#255

Post by rgoulter »

tambourine_man wrote: post #236
rgoulter wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what circumstances would you run `vi` and find yourself upset that you end up in `vim`?

You won’t, but vi is scriptable and part of POSIX. It’s a basic infrastructure that you don’t want to break.

Apparently the original vi isn't POSIX compliant; nor is vim. https://vimhelp.org/vi_diff.txt.html#posix

I think "if the script worked before, I want it to work later" has much more practical weight. Though, on the other side of practicality, I've heard sed, awk, and perl suggested for manipulating text in bash scripts far more than I've heard of vi recommended for the task.

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#257

Post by apetresc »

pmoriarty wrote: post #105
infinitezest wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not important to some but the ability to use Lua over VimScript is a big win in my opinion. In fact, I use a mix of thr two where necessary.

How much of the rest of the vim ecosystem is Lua-based, though? As far as I know it's still mostly vimscript. Vimscript's dominance in vim is one of the things that got me to switch to emacs when I got interested in Lisp and Scheme more than a decade ago. Sure, even then I could write scripts for vim using Vim's scheme compatibility mode, but I'd probably be one of the only ones doing so. Pretty much everyone else wa…

Neovim's adoption has been incredible. Virtually every major vimscript plugin has either been ported or overtaken by a Lua-native alternative in the Neovim ecosystem.

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#258

Post by random_mutex »

kzrdude wrote: post #40
random_mutex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What features?

One "meta feature" that was dropped was the ability to build the editor with or without different features. vim --version shows a long list of +/- features, neovim doesn't do that. I'm sure neovim dropped a lot but I don't have the full overview. Prominently it dropped support for giving !commands access to the actual tty. Commands that access the tty have to be used through the command :term instead. Neovim prominen…

>One "meta feature" that was dropped was the ability to build the editor with or without different features. vim --version shows a long list of +/- features, neovim doesn't do that.

What's wrong with all features enabled by default?

> I'm sure neovim dropped a lot but I don't have the full overview.

https://neovim.io/doc/user/vim_diff.html

>Prominently it dropped support for giving !commands access to the actual tty. Commands that access the tty have to be used through the command :term instead.

Why would you run an interactive command with `:!` ?

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#259

Post by phpisthebest »

OskarS wrote: post #13

My brother passed away very suddenly a few years ago, and I was put in charge of wrapping up and archiving his "digital" life. We were very lucky that we had access to a recovery email for his main gmail account (as well as a couple of passwords that his partner knew) and was able to access and archive virtually all data we could think of (services like Google Takeout were invaluable). I realized that if this had hap…

I keep a hard card in my safe next to my property titles, and other important paper work that has my bitwarden master password on it. From there who ever processes my estate should have no problems accessing everything

Re: The Future of the Vim Project

#260

Post by wruza »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #217
tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any source for that claim? I had a coworker who swore that X was the fastest way to do Y. Turned out it wasn't and X just made him very busy hitting keyboard quickly.

As a vim user, I am 100% convinced that I am not that much faster than my colleagues who use normal key binds. However, I subjectively feel a lot less friction editing with vim keys than I do with the mouse and arrow keys. So Vim makes me happier...

Same thing. Not sure why everyone is obsessed with the speed argument. Reducing cognitive load is the goal. How do you do that - with vim or something else like snippets or copilot or just muscle-memorying ctrl/shift-arrow motion is up to you.

Asking why people prefer vim is like asking why they prefer skateboard over rollers. You’re proficient at what you learned the most. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that every tool has its limits, so choose what you’re going learn from that perspective as well.

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