You just reboot the computer. The problem is that when you want to close Vim on a server and so call the sysop and ask him to reboot, he gets all testy. Not a team player.
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Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
71–80 of 149 posts
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#72My first year of grad school I was a TA for a first year computer science course that was often taken by students from a variety of majors. The first editing sessions I spent the whole lab time running around help students with frozen vi editors. The main problem is you don't start in "edit mode" and students expect to be able to just start typing (which is a reasonable expectation). Who knows what "command" they jus…
Why not just write the basic instructions up on the board? Or give them a handout with the basic command keys?
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the information IS there but, in any case, a professional would not continue to stumble and fumble and give up on the editor as so many amateurs do.
A professional would be able to reconfigure the system afterwards to make sure it'll never drop them into this annoying to use editor again.
A professional isn't annoyed by vim.
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#74I really love my vim bindings, I try to use them everywhere possible. So far that is:
Web browser: Vimium plugin (Chrome)
Music player: Cmus
Terminal multiplexer: Tmux & Screen
Terminal pager: GNU Less
I'm still trying to figure out how best to use vim bindings in my z-shell (zsh) and ipython interactive sessions.
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#75If you can't turn off Vim and you're a paid professional programmer, then QUIT. If you downvote this you deserve every bit of suffering coming to you working with these people who can't turn off Vim. If you downvote this you probably can't turn off Vim yourself. If you downvote this you're to dumb to even look stuff up on Google. Vim even give everyone a :help with links to a tutorial which explains :q :wq :q! etc. R…
When I first entered vi/vim I had no idea what it was. To know how to exit vim you first have to know that’s what you are trying to exit.
I suspect at least half of the confusion comes from people accidentally entering vim without any intention to do so.
One of the most common examples is git that some times launches a text editor and in some conditions that might be vim.
If you are doing a “git rebase -i” for the first time in Cygwin and you never used another linux/Unix shell before (very common in Windows-only devs, which are a significant portion of devs), then being greeted by some “~” characters, a cryptic status bar and Ctrl+C doesn’t exit - then you google. You don’t even google “How to exit vim”, you google “How to exit git rebase” or similar.
Now, if you launched vim, then the story is different. Then you know what you started. You can at least know WHAT manual to read. But as I said I’m guessing a large number of those can’t leave vim had no intention to start it either.
I must have started vim hundreds of times, almost none of which were deliberate (misconfigured editors on vm’s etc). A lifelong windows user typically wants to use nano or similar.
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#76first stuck in vim 13 years ago. No internet, no GUI, could not speak english, 1 book on unix/linux. So I had to reboot (hard reboot) computer, three times, then re-install OS, since something broke because of hard-forced reboot.
I had the same issue doing a cvs commit where I got stuck in vi. I didn’t know what it was and what to do. I had to quit the terminal.
It was not a good hi experience.
I think vim and emacs come with basic instructions on the splash screen now to help newbies.
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
ctrl+d is the most dangerous kind! Since that one can also exit the terminal itself. gdb takes, depending on the situation, one time ctrl+d or two times ctrl+d to quit. It's a trap! So since gdb usually takes two times, muscle memory learns two times, but then in that rare instance where it required it only once... logged out of ssh :(
In bash: IGNOREEOF=10 In zsh: setopt ignore_eof In ksh: set +o ignoreeof In tcsh/csh: set ignoreeof Normally I just do this for login shells, so I can quickly exit out of subshells.
Similarly, to not overwrite an existing file when doing output redirection, there is bash's noclobber option.
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#78Hot take: Vim should include a simple “Type :qa! to quit” line in its startup message. Something makes me think it would clear up a lot of confusion for first time users. EDIT: I notice now that it has a “Type :q to exit.” I never noticed that before, and I use Vim most days, so I can see how others might miss it too.
In this particular SO question, the asker has already read the "Type :q to exit" message, but it isn't working as they're already in Insert mode. Really it should be "Type :q to exit"
Type :qa! to exit
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#79How is this even possible? I used EMACS for years and had no trouble understanding Vim. Who's hiring these developers who can't even exit Vim? Is this even a real story or the Onion?!? OK, it's real. I need to go outside and get some fresh air. This is simply too shocking.
Why do you necessarily think they are all hired developers?
I find it surprising that you and many others are surprised and even upset by this story.
Imagine someone never having used vim, maybe new to Unix overall, or new to terminal programs. Maybe this person is a student and is trying to learn. In some way he ends up in vim and it is not very intuitive how to exit it. The person searches for "how to exit vim" and find that SO thread and learns how to exit vim.
Does that sound so weird? If you act in a similar way towards colleagues trying to learn something new you should rethink your behavior.
Re: Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim (2017)
#80If you can't turn off Vim and you're a paid professional programmer, then QUIT. If you downvote this you deserve every bit of suffering coming to you working with these people who can't turn off Vim. If you downvote this you probably can't turn off Vim yourself. If you downvote this you're to dumb to even look stuff up on Google. Vim even give everyone a :help with links to a tutorial which explains :q :wq :q! etc. R…
When I first entered vi/vim I had no idea what it was. To know how to exit vim you first have to know that’s what you are trying to exit. I suspect at least half of the confusion comes from people accidentally entering vim without any intention to do so. One of the most common examples is git that some times launches a text editor and in some conditions that might be vim. If you are doing a “git rebase -i” for the fi…
(This is a reply to the GP comment, since it got flagged while I was typing my reply.)
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> If you downvote this you're to dumb to even look stuff up on Google.
What do you think the first result is when you search for how to exit Vim?
> RTFM is at least 50% of what makes a good programmer.
Stack Overflow is part of the metaphorical manual.