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I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

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Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#51

Post by Rotundo »

Uptrenda wrote: post #43
suchoudh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you do not need to install it anywhere... its already everywhere ( I am vim enthusiast ) for eg: Keep right hand free for writing/eating by reserving left hand for mouse. (keep same settings for right handed mouse) Brrrr... :p

So would the use-case mostly be for people who edit lots of files over shells? I guess I was mostly thinking of coding stuff. Or do people use it for coding too?

Of course vi/Vim is used for programming ('coding').

I've been doing that since the early nineties. First vi, later Vim.

I like it better than Visual Studio, better than Eclipse and way better than VScode.

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#52

Post by tomcam »

scelerat wrote: post #41

I think it took me about four months of daily use to know most of the editor basics without having to pause to look up things. Another eight for it all to feel natural. And, maybe about six years later, it remains my favorite text entry and code editing environment. I've been using the LazyVim https://www.lazyvim.org/ > neovim setup and a handful of extras, but not too many. I still have to look up some esoteric stuf…

> but lately I've been using the mouse where it makes sense

Get off my lawn, hippie

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#53

Post by slim »

swyx wrote: post #11

> single keystroke could move the cursor halfway across the file to exactly the right spot. sorry what is this? exaggeration?

This can happen if you hit * when cursor is on say a function name. it gets you to the next occurance of that word. very useful

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#54

Post by CyberDildonics »

Uptrenda wrote: post #35

I never understood the appeal of these command-line editors with a million commands for different edge-cases. Why not just use VSCode? It has every possible extension you already need and a simple GUI. No need to type commands just to edit text when there's a file manager... It has remote SSH and features for vm machines. To me the kinds of people using these editors are the kinds of people that love making everythin…

these command-line editors with a million commands for different edge-cases

Have you ever actually tried vim? You use the keyboard to move around and search for terms. You don't actually need to learn much.

Why not just use VSCode?

Because it's a bloated electron program that takes huge resources to edit text.

To me the kinds of people using these editors are the kinds of people that love making everything more complex to seem smart.

Seems like insecurity if you've never learned it yourself.

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#55

Post by saila »

Uptrenda wrote: post #43
suchoudh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you do not need to install it anywhere... its already everywhere ( I am vim enthusiast ) for eg: Keep right hand free for writing/eating by reserving left hand for mouse. (keep same settings for right handed mouse) Brrrr... :p

So would the use-case mostly be for people who edit lots of files over shells? I guess I was mostly thinking of coding stuff. Or do people use it for coding too?

I mostly use IDEs for day to day coding, and pretty much every IDE supports vim keybindings, which I always have enabled. I also use vim in the terminal for small edits and one-off files, so it's not either/or.

After the initial learning curve and fiddling with settings, it just becomes natural and you can edit code or other text at blazing fast speeds. I also find that it helps with RSI by reducing arm motions reaching for the mouse.

Of course, there are other good options out there, but if vim fits your brain, it can significantly boost your editing speed. For those who say programmers don't spend that much time typing, that's true sometimes, but there are periods after the design/planning phase where we type a lot, and I want that to go as fast as possible while I have an implementation loaded into short term memory.

As someone who used to be a vim skeptic myself, I'd suggest you either give it another look or just accept that it works well for other people and go on with your day.

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#56

Post by tecoholic »

shmerl wrote: post #36

I'm using neovim all the time, but I don't find this "zipping through the code" to be very critical. Most of the time is spent on thinking and analyzing it, not on fast typing or jumping through it.

Depends on what you are doing. When it’s a large codebase, trying to debug or understand a implementation, hitting * to cycle through the occurrences in a file, “gd” to jump to the function definition, Ctrl+o to go to previous position are crucial.

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#57

Post by tecoholic »

Uptrenda wrote: post #35

I never understood the appeal of these command-line editors with a million commands for different edge-cases. Why not just use VSCode? It has every possible extension you already need and a simple GUI. No need to type commands just to edit text when there's a file manager... It has remote SSH and features for vm machines. To me the kinds of people using these editors are the kinds of people that love making everythin…

I use zed now, Pycharm before that, Emacs before that, VSCode before that - one common thing amongst them all, I always install the “vim mode” plugin as the first thing. I always have a working vim/neovim setup beside all of them.

It’s not to look smart or because I like making things complex. I am not the one to tinker too much (hence the jump between editors, if I get too invested, I move). The benefits of VIM motions have nothing to do with the editors themselves. If you have never tried it, I would strongly recommend giving vim mode a go, in whatever editor you fancy.

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#58

Post by jmholla »

michaelbarton wrote: post #49
omoikane wrote: post #29

Instead of having encyclopedic knowledge of every feature, I think editor fluency is being really good at the few features you need such that the editor is no longer the bottleneck. The few features you really need to know for VIM are mostly in `:help motion.txt`. Knowledge of other features is obviously helpful in actually editing text, but being able to navigate well should remove most of the bottlenecks, especiall…

Does anyone have a motion jump plugin they use with neovim they can recommend? I used to use a plugin where you could just to a given character in a given buffer, but I can’t remember the name or if it even works with neovim.

Like the nth character in the current buffer? I believe vim has that built-in: `go`. I think `` will do it relative to your current position.

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#59

Post by zvr »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #47
Uptrenda wrote: post #35

I never understood the appeal of these command-line editors with a million commands for different edge-cases. Why not just use VSCode? It has every possible extension you already need and a simple GUI. No need to type commands just to edit text when there's a file manager... It has remote SSH and features for vm machines. To me the kinds of people using these editors are the kinds of people that love making everythin…

> To me the kinds of people using these editors are the kinds of people that love making everything more complex to seem smart. If your instinct is to be denigrate people who do things differently than you, you will never understand them. However, you get the advantage of feeling superior. Let me say why I continue using vi. I started using vi in the early 80s, then moved to vim in the mid 90s. Even people who aren't…

This matches my experience completely: more than 40 years using vi and then vim, my fingers and my brain know to do.

I've tried to use VScode, especially since people said that it could emulate vi... it can't. Some of the basics are there, but then you forget you are in a different program, and use something that works in vim... and it fails. A couple of times with catastrophic results: I lost a file completely after typing a command.

I actually repeat the experiment every year or so, but I do not see much improvement.

Re: I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool

#60

Post by samgranieri »

I’ve been using vim and now neovim for 15 years. Before that I was using TextMate. I’ve hand written my own config. I used Janus by Carlhuda, SolarVim, and now I’m on lazyvim because Folke is a goddamn wizard and I want to spend more time getting work done that dealing with breakage in my neovim config
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