Why Vi Rocks • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#41

Post by colordrops » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:39 AM UTC

org3432 wrote: post #21

cwbrandsma wrote: post #6

I’ve learned some vi, and emacs, Visual Studio, VS Code, XCode, IntelliJ, and Android Studio. All the examples listed are pretty uncommon or trivial in any of the other IDEs (aside from the regex part, which is cool, but I never want to be in a place where I have to regex my code...ever). 90% of the time I’m doing simple code maintenance, with an occasional refactoring. And I know devs that swear by vi...they are dev…

> And I know devs that swear by vi...they are developing any faster than I am I hear about this from time to time, but have never seen it people do it successfully first hand, what I do see is silly mistakes in their checkins; incomplete variable renames, formatting is off, syntax errors, switching between browsers and their code while looking at manuals, or other obvious mistakes that can be caught inline by IDEs wh…

Hmm, I've got syntax/compile checking, linting, automatic code formatting and generation, and code completion based on context in vim right now. I don't see how any of the problems you mention are vim specific.

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#42

Post by colordrops » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:41 AM UTC

milin wrote: post #23

adrianrocamora wrote: post #8

I've been using Neovim consistently for the last few months and it's a game-changer. Terminals within Neovim that I can paste into/from my Vimwiki files or source files is amazing. It's not very different from a Vim setup and using it with the Qt GUI on Windows gets rid if the issue of having everything close when eventually having to call . Meanwhile, in my linux environment it runs like a charm on a terminal.

Same here neovim with session management and tmux with session management, with tmux russerect and tmux continuum. And with the language server integration in neovim, its a swiss army knife that works well with most modern languages and devops.

I've got resurrect and continuum installed and all they ever seem to do is load up an empty vim window that is rendered improperly. What is your setup?

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#43

Post by mypalmike » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:41 AM UTC

thethirdone wrote: post #11

cwbrandsma wrote: post #6

I’ve learned some vi, and emacs, Visual Studio, VS Code, XCode, IntelliJ, and Android Studio. All the examples listed are pretty uncommon or trivial in any of the other IDEs (aside from the regex part, which is cool, but I never want to be in a place where I have to regex my code...ever). 90% of the time I’m doing simple code maintenance, with an occasional refactoring. And I know devs that swear by vi...they are dev…

> but I never want to be in a place where I have to regex my code...ever). I use regex search and replace fairly often; why are you so opposed to it? If I need to change $t1 into t1 in a group of 6 lines (something I did today), its pretty easy to just make that replacement automatically. Doing it by hand would just take longer. > ... with an occasional refactoring That's exactly what I use the feature for.

In a refactoring IDE, you never risk overmatching or under-scoping. You just rename the syntactic object and it's renamed exactly where it needs to be, including possibly on the filesystem and in git.

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#44

Post by 6keZbCECT2uB » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

greysonp wrote: post #20

andrewfromx wrote: post #7

i see people struggling, fighting with Intelli-J every day. I wish I could give them vim as a gift. All the extra stuff you think you can't possibly give up you don't need. I'm a professional text file editor. Vim is like playing the piano. I guess what I'm saying is learn to play the piano for real, and don't spend your life in a piano-player-helper IDE thing.

Vim is a fantastic text editor, but it is not an IDE replacement. Here's just a few IntelliJ features I use daily that Vim doesn't have: Go to declaration, find usages, rename method/class, change method signature, auto-import, shortcut to override method, easy-to-configure style rules, really good code completion, quick access to javadoc. I could keep going. Again, not hating on Vim. I use Vim keybindings in Intelli…

I imagine there are probably IDEs out there with low-friction searching, highlighting, diffing, replacing, block operations, and convenient macros, but I never ran into those features in the IDEs that I've used. I also expect there are probably IDEs out there that don't crash on code bases larger than a GB and code bases which can't be compiled locally, but I haven't used those ones.

>> Here's just a few IntelliJ features I use daily that Vim doesn't have: vim is intended to work with an operating system. The following assumes C or C++ since that's what I use. Maybe someone will find this list of equivalents useful? 1. Go to declaration: I use ctags which is built into vim. clangd can do better, but I've never bothered. 2. find usages: ctags also has support for this I think. 3. rename method/class: I haven't needed to rename something that wasn't exclusively in one file yet, but I expect clang-rename works well. 4. change method signature: not sure what this does. If it's just changing the declaration of the function, that seems pretty easy. ci( 5. auto-import: This one seems harder to get, but I never noticed it wasn't there. For in-project stuff, I just jump to definition. For standard library stuff, it's standard library. 6. shortcut to override method: I don't do much inheritance, so I never really noticed. This seems pretty easy to do a hack job with a macro and jump to definition. 7. easy-to-configure style rules: clang-format 8. really good code completion: basic autocomplete is built into vim. clangd is probably pretty good, but I don't usually need autocomplete. 9. quick access to javadoc: cppman is pretty good. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2272759/looking-up-c-doc...

Maybe the state of tooling for Java isn't as openly accessible outside of an IDE and isn't as good for vim as C++? If using an IDE works well for you, great. I like using vim because it's lightweight, has good support for different file endings and large files, scales to any size code base I've encountered, and it gets out of my way. I feel like it's optimized enough that my brain is the limiter.

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#45

Post by foob » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

org3432 wrote: post #21

cwbrandsma wrote: post #6

I’ve learned some vi, and emacs, Visual Studio, VS Code, XCode, IntelliJ, and Android Studio. All the examples listed are pretty uncommon or trivial in any of the other IDEs (aside from the regex part, which is cool, but I never want to be in a place where I have to regex my code...ever). 90% of the time I’m doing simple code maintenance, with an occasional refactoring. And I know devs that swear by vi...they are dev…

> And I know devs that swear by vi...they are developing any faster than I am I hear about this from time to time, but have never seen it people do it successfully first hand, what I do see is silly mistakes in their checkins; incomplete variable renames, formatting is off, syntax errors, switching between browsers and their code while looking at manuals, or other obvious mistakes that can be caught inline by IDEs wh…

I think this says more about those developers than it does about Vim. In my experience, people who are highly effective at programming in Vim typically have it configured in such a way that it offers language-specific functionality comparable to any IDE. You don't get that out of the box (unless you use a Vim distro), but you are able to personalize it to your workflow more exactly than you can with an IDE. A junior developer probably isn't going to be more effective in Vim than an IDE, but a very senior developer easily could be. And somebody who is committing code with lots of obvious errors is almost by definition not a senior developer in my book, regardless of whether they're programming in nano, Vim, or an IDE.

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#46

Post by asciimov » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

Why do I use vi(m)?

* Eclipse - Forced to use this in University in the early aughts. I would say that crashing and clobbering systems was its best feature. You moved your mouse it crashed; thought about saving crash; need an update, now you need to format and clean install windows; want to print, printing works! want to compile, your gonna need to try again after restarting windows...

* SSH - In University we had some awesome terminal servers that were a joy to work with. I could access all my work from anywhere, regardless of how limited my local machine was. Vim was always there, chugging right along.

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#47

Post by thethirdone » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

mypalmike wrote: post #43

thethirdone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I never want to be in a place where I have to regex my code...ever). I use regex search and replace fairly often; why are you so opposed to it? If I need to change $t1 into t1 in a group of 6 lines (something I did today), its pretty easy to just make that replacement automatically. Doing it by hand would just take longer. > ... with an occasional refactoring That's exactly what I use the feature for.

In a refactoring IDE, you never risk overmatching or under-scoping. You just rename the syntactic object and it's renamed exactly where it needs to be, including possibly on the filesystem and in git.

Importantly, you don't get that safety in comments or strings.

The nice thing about replacing via vim is that you can restrict it to a selected block which also gives you a type of safety.

Particularly for the situation I used replacement today, an IDE couldn't make it better and doing it only on a range was helpful.

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#48

Post by rohansingh » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

civility wrote: post #33

umvi wrote: post #14

Vim is like Dvorak. The cognitive burden for remembering which key maps to what is high unless you use it 24/7.

I have a friend who used to use Vi(m) with his Dvorak keyboard at home, and Emacs with his qwerty keyboard at work. He considered it an exercise for keeping his brain sharp. I don't think he still does it, but maybe. Vim on Dvorak is insane, imho.

Why do you feel that Vim on Dvorak is insane?

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#49

Post by scruple » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 2:55 AM UTC

org3432 wrote: post #21

cwbrandsma wrote: post #6

I’ve learned some vi, and emacs, Visual Studio, VS Code, XCode, IntelliJ, and Android Studio. All the examples listed are pretty uncommon or trivial in any of the other IDEs (aside from the regex part, which is cool, but I never want to be in a place where I have to regex my code...ever). 90% of the time I’m doing simple code maintenance, with an occasional refactoring. And I know devs that swear by vi...they are dev…

> And I know devs that swear by vi...they are developing any faster than I am I hear about this from time to time, but have never seen it people do it successfully first hand, what I do see is silly mistakes in their checkins; incomplete variable renames, formatting is off, syntax errors, switching between browsers and their code while looking at manuals, or other obvious mistakes that can be caught inline by IDEs wh…

Most of the things you're describing as editor issues would be caught by formatters and linters and a test suite, so I have a hard time understanding where you're coming from with this.

edit/ A word.

Re: Why Vi Rocks

#50

Post by max76 » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 3:00 AM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #37

cwbrandsma wrote: post #6

I’ve learned some vi, and emacs, Visual Studio, VS Code, XCode, IntelliJ, and Android Studio. All the examples listed are pretty uncommon or trivial in any of the other IDEs (aside from the regex part, which is cool, but I never want to be in a place where I have to regex my code...ever). 90% of the time I’m doing simple code maintenance, with an occasional refactoring. And I know devs that swear by vi...they are dev…

I am writing this from emacs experience (some if not all these features are in vi as well), there are features from emacs that make a real difference in writing programs especially: * Unlimited yanking from kill rings: ie pasting text from history of the clipboard.(This is one thing I have most difficulty with when switching from emacs to modern editors) * Macro recording and playback : recording an arbitrary set of…

> some if not all these features are in vi as well

I'm not sure exactly which vim features are also in vi. Vim has been a daily use tool for me since about 2007.

Vim has really good Macro recording. Vim + Tmux is great for side by side code frames, and there are plugins for showing multiple buffers in one Vim instance. Remote file editing is good with SSH + Vim. Vim has multiple registries for yanking/putting. Vim has column editing functionality.

Almost anything Emacs does out of the box Vim can do with either a plugin or with an external program pairing. I prefer Vim's keybindings because there are less "chords" (Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are copy and paste chords, they requiring pressing two buttons at the same time). Too many chords causing my pinky fingers to become tired. Vimscript is a surprisingly powerful language for dealing with text data, but it's cryptic the first decade you are exposed to it.

EDIT: I'm more interesting in the code people write than the way people write it, but I wanted to share some of my vim knowledge and point of view.