The problem with vim • Hacker News Board

Re: The problem with vim

#31

Post by nimrody » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 10:41 AM UTC

At least with VIM the standard commands are good enough to make one productive on any VIM installation.

With emacs, you have to do so much customization before it becomes useful that you find yourself completely lost when using another installation. Try helping a friend only to find out all your commands do not work...

Re: The problem with vim

#32

Post by tenfingers » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 10:42 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #29

kzahel wrote: post #28

I never considered using vim because the navigation is based on a query layout, which I don't use. It didn't seem worth the effort to try and re-bind the keys to make more sense. With emacs, the key bindings sort of make sense (f-orward, b-ack) (n-ext p-revious) for the right-left-down-up. Not sure why v is for page down/up, but it seems to have stuck.

V : down arrow ^ : up arrow

I have been using emacs for years (never really cared for the keys themselves), but I realized this association just now...

Re: The problem with vim

#33

Post by AlexanderDhoore » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 10:54 AM UTC

terhechte wrote: post #5

Most of these vim emulators are open source, so there's always the chance to just fix it and do a pull request. The main two vim emulators that I am using are: - XVim for XCode - Evil for Emacs And both do a really good job. Evil beats XVim hands down, but XVim is a lot better than the others I tried: IdeaVim (for Intellij), Vrapper (Vim for Eclipse), and Vintage (Vim for Sublime). Out of these, vintage is by far the…

I looked at Xvim some time ago and decided not to use it because it seemed abandoned. But apparently they're working on another branch! Good, XCode really needs a vim plugin.

Re: The problem with vim

#34

Post by Quiark » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:06 AM UTC

kzahel wrote: post #28

I never considered using vim because the navigation is based on a query layout, which I don't use. It didn't seem worth the effort to try and re-bind the keys to make more sense. With emacs, the key bindings sort of make sense (f-orward, b-ack) (n-ext p-revious) for the right-left-down-up. Not sure why v is for page down/up, but it seems to have stuck.

I learned Vim on qwerty, then switched to Dvorak and re-learned the positions and I'm pretty fast again. Using it with qwerty is like being on drugs, though.

Re: The problem with vim

#35

Post by johncoltrane » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:47 AM UTC

kzahel wrote: post #28

I never considered using vim because the navigation is based on a query layout, which I don't use. It didn't seem worth the effort to try and re-bind the keys to make more sense. With emacs, the key bindings sort of make sense (f-orward, b-ack) (n-ext p-revious) for the right-left-down-up. Not sure why v is for page down/up, but it seems to have stuck.

You are not forced to use hjkl to move around. The arrows work just fine, too, and you can't beat them on the expressivity front.

Anyway, Vim has far more useful ways to move around than char-by-char. If you are curious, read `:help motion.txt`: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#motion.txt

Re: The problem with vim

#36

Post by sesm » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:47 AM UTC

terhechte wrote: post #5

Most of these vim emulators are open source, so there's always the chance to just fix it and do a pull request. The main two vim emulators that I am using are: - XVim for XCode - Evil for Emacs And both do a really good job. Evil beats XVim hands down, but XVim is a lot better than the others I tried: IdeaVim (for Intellij), Vrapper (Vim for Eclipse), and Vintage (Vim for Sublime). Out of these, vintage is by far the…

va" and vi" are now supported in IdeaVim, as well as other i/a commands for ",{,(,[,<. However, tags (vit, vat) are not supported, which is disappointing.

Re: The problem with vim

#37

Post by cardamomo » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 12:21 PM UTC

I remarked to a friend a couple months ago--right when I started to feel about the same way as the author of this article--that I love vim.

As I said these words, I realized that the truth in them is sort of startling. I love vim.

No, it's not like loving a person, but it's at least as strong an emotional connection as loving my favorite coffee mug or loving a particularly thoughtful gift from a friend.

As an aside, I often find vim verbs and commands sprinkled throughout things I write in other text editors. :wq

Re: The problem with vim

#38

Post by apinstein » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 12:28 PM UTC

After I learned vim, I got very frustrated going back and forth between vim and Mac apps (Mail, MS/Word, etc) because I had to switch between the vim and Mac style of keyboard-based cursor movements/selection patterns. So I sat down for a few hours and figured out how to exactly replicate all Mac cursor/selection shortcuts in vim.

https://github.com/apinstein/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc#L57

Fortunately they don't really conflict with too many existing vim patterns, and it's pretty nice to be able to use the cursor/select patterns across vim and all Mac apps.

Re: The problem with vim

#39

Post by 6ren » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 12:38 PM UTC

I've found I switch fairly easily between browser-style editing (like here) and vim. Sometimes I forget, and have a few moments of perplexity, and then I'm OK. Maybe it's different for other programming editors (as opposed to browser editing).

BTW: one thing that helps is adding standard browser key-strokes to vim, so if I forget, it doesn't matter.

Re: The problem with vim

#40

Post by NAFV_P » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 12:41 PM UTC

I used vim on windows, but only started to like it after I installed ubuntu. I also installed JOE, which has a word-star emulator, a pico emulator and an emacs emulator.... but no vi emulator. Does that mean JOE has a 'vile' hatred of vi?