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Why I use vim

michaeltrier.com

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Re: Why I use vim

#41

Post by justanotheratom »

richardk wrote: post #40

Am I the only person who thinks it's absolutely insane how much time people spend learning to use an editor? Am I really supposed to believe that my time is better spent learning an editor than it is spent getting better at programming? I honestly feel that learning these editors has more to do with gaining status than it does self-improvement. Why should I have to spend hours consciously learning an /editor/. It's /…

Personally, I have spent a lot of time customizing and mastering Vim. But I agree with you that mastering a powerful editor is not a sufficient condition to be a good programmer. That realization occurred to me after I found that a few programmers that I respect very much have very primitive editing skills (which was very difficult for me to swallow at first).

Re: Why I use vim

#42

Post by roel_v »

richardk wrote: post #40

Am I the only person who thinks it's absolutely insane how much time people spend learning to use an editor? Am I really supposed to believe that my time is better spent learning an editor than it is spent getting better at programming? I honestly feel that learning these editors has more to do with gaining status than it does self-improvement. Why should I have to spend hours consciously learning an /editor/. It's /…

I'm not sure the many hours I spend 10+ years ago learning vim are really worth it, when compared to the amount of time I saved during editing. However:

1. I had a consistent editing experience for those 10+ years, and expect to have it for decades to come - vim is everywhere, and it works the same everywhere (well at least if you stay away from things that may not be time-proof, like plugins that rely on Python support). It gives me peace of mind - it's a stable factor amongst things that tend to change every 6 months, usually for no good reason.

2. I have a comfortable editing experience, one that is so ingrained that it has become transparent (meaning, I don't notice it any more, like a good pair of shoes that are so comfortable you don't notice wearing them). When I use Visual Studio on a machine with no Viemu installed, there is this continuous nagging feeling that the editing is so sub-optimal. Again I don't know if the time I spend learning vim is objectively justified when compared to the annoyances of the editing in 'plain' editors, but it certainly made for a great quality of life improvement.

I got to go everywhere I wanted to go with my old Citroen, and it was (quite a bit) cheaper than the BMW I drive now, but I still very much like the BMW's improved comfort and joy of driving. Is it objectively a net for me to drive a BMW? I suspect not, the objective marginal value I get out of it over the Citroen is low, but it's worth the money (where for the sake of comparison with vim, money = time) to me.

Re: Why I use vim

#43

Post by exDM69 »

Karunamon wrote: post #29

So has anyone ever been a die-hard vim user, been absolutely seduced by Emacs and the wealth of things that go with it (IRC? Org mode? Holy crap!), tried to use it, and been completely turned off by the abundance of control keys? This describes me. I really, really want to like Emacs and learn to use it, but coming from vim, such heavy use of the meta keys just feels wrong .

Learning emacs has been something I've been pushing back for too long. Currently I'm a Vim user but I'm deeply unsatisfied with the way it integrates to my other tools like debuggers and build systems. Emacs is far superior when it comes to this, even the best of Vim plugins are not as good.

But I like the Vi input model so much that I want to be able to use it in Emacs. I've understood that "evil" is the preferred Emacs-Vi-input layer these days (instead of viper or other alternatives). I'm going to use Emacs 24.

Any suggestions for migrating from Vim to Emacs?

Re: Why I use vim

#44

Post by StavrosK »

I have no idea why I keep using Vim. These past few days I've been trying to switch to Eclipse for coding, as it has all the bells and whistles, but as soon as I need to open another file in the editor, I find myself switching to the command line and opening it in Vim, wondering why the hell I did that with Eclipse open.

I think it just comes down to speed, in the end. I can switch to Vim and open the file in the time it takes Eclipse to go from ctrl+T to the "find file" dialog. Code completion, refactoring, autoimports, etc are great, but I manage fine without them.

I'll continue the experiment and see.

Re: Why I use vim

#45

Post by boofar »

roel_v wrote: post #42
richardk wrote: post #40

Am I the only person who thinks it's absolutely insane how much time people spend learning to use an editor? Am I really supposed to believe that my time is better spent learning an editor than it is spent getting better at programming? I honestly feel that learning these editors has more to do with gaining status than it does self-improvement. Why should I have to spend hours consciously learning an /editor/. It's /…

I'm not sure the many hours I spend 10+ years ago learning vim are really worth it, when compared to the amount of time I saved during editing. However: 1. I had a consistent editing experience for those 10+ years, and expect to have it for decades to come - vim is everywhere, and it works the same everywhere (well at least if you stay away from things that may not be time-proof, like plugins that rely on Python supp…

To me, comfort is also the main reason to use vim.

Not having to think about where the buttons are that I have to press to accomplish something, not having to leave the home row... that's comfortable. While I'm sure I'm faster doing the same tasks with vim than I would be using a regular editor, the comfort of not having to consciously think about what I have to do is clearly the bigger one.

Re: Why I use vim

#46

Post by jvandonsel »

Karunamon wrote: post #29

So has anyone ever been a die-hard vim user, been absolutely seduced by Emacs and the wealth of things that go with it (IRC? Org mode? Holy crap!), tried to use it, and been completely turned off by the abundance of control keys? This describes me. I really, really want to like Emacs and learn to use it, but coming from vim, such heavy use of the meta keys just feels wrong .

Yes, that's me. It took me three tries in as many years to make the switch. So don't give up.

It wasn't the various alternate modes that enticed me so much as a more consistent buffer model for file-find, greps, and compiles. And I'm very happy not to have that constant "am I in insert or command mode?" problem. The control keys are now second nature.

Try, try again!

Re: Why I use vim

#47

Post by lucian1900 »

gnosis wrote: post #33
disnet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but I managed with viper and vimpulse [1] which give vim bindings in emacs. You can have your cake and eat it too :) [1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-es/Vimpulse

I'm a die-hard vim user, who's used vim for many years. I tried emacs with viper and vimpulse recently, and found that while they did make emacs a lot less painful, they were a far cry from making a long-time vim user comfortable in emacs. The biggest problem is that in order to configure emacs and bind functions to keys you have to invest a lot of time in reading documentation and finding out about emacs. If you hav…

Try Evil. It's much, much better.

Re: Why I use vim

#48

Post by yogsototh »

makepanic wrote: post #39

While learning vim it was really helpful to rebind the left/right arrow keys to change my cursor moving behavior. Right now left is :bp and right is :bn to move through my active buffer.

Thank you! Never thought about these.

Re: Why I use vim

#49

Post by Confusion »

StavrosK wrote: post #44

I have no idea why I keep using Vim. These past few days I've been trying to switch to Eclipse for coding, as it has all the bells and whistles, but as soon as I need to open another file in the editor, I find myself switching to the command line and opening it in Vim, wondering why the hell I did that with Eclipse open. I think it just comes down to speed, in the end. I can switch to Vim and open the file in the tim…

I'm using RubyMine with the vim plugin for Ruby coding. That's just awesome: all that's good about an IDE with a lot of what's good about vim.

Re: Why I use vim

#50

Post by actf »

As someone who loves vim I'm both surprised and curious that he mentions using vim to write .NET code

While I love vim, I can't imagine using it to write anything significant in .NET - the lack of auto completion and an integrated debugger is a deal killer for me. I'd love to hear the author, or anyone else, elaborate on what kind of setup they use for writing .NET code in vim (note that I already use the vim plugin for VS, I assume this isn't what the author is referring to though)

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