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>> The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics. It's kind of ironic how nowadays I prefer using Vim for coding and other tasks. And I also find mysel

>> The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics. It's kind of ironic how nowadays I prefer using Vim for coding and other tasks. And I also find myself preferring Markdown more and more whenever I can for a variety of tasks, from planning meetings to preparing presentations.

eli 10y ago
Vim is a tiny fraction of a percent of word processor usage. Most people like GUIs.
- babuskov 10y ago
  Yes. Most people who aren't in the tech just launch a word processor (word, libreoffice, etc.) Tech people on Windows use Notepad or a similar GUI program. Vim is used by a tiny, tiny fraction of people in the world.
  - Spivak 10y ago
    > Tech people on Windows use Notepad. I'm always horrified to see this. MS really shot themselves in the foot with the dev community by not providing a powerful text editor as the default. Getting a WinAdmin to enjoy the UNIX'y way of doing things is like trying to feed a child broccoli.
    - jandrese 10y ago
      Also cmd.exe being a steaming pile of shit and the handful of commandline utilities that ship by default are mostly ancient DOS versions from the 80s. There are a couple of gems (netsh for example), but commandline on Windows is just painful. Powershell does give you a lot more potential, but I've found its syntax to be too verbose to be a comfortable commandline replacement.
      - uxp 10y ago
        Powershell is an interesting environment. On one hand, it's almost a C#/CLR REPL with amazing power to program and script almost anything you could think of, but on the other it's not a shell and anyone coming from *nix that tries to think like a shell will be sorely disappointed in how verbose and unintuitive it behaves.
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    > Tech people on Windows use Notepad. Tech people on Windows use Notepad++ when they can. Vim is rarely used outside of editing config files on appliances.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      This. Notepad++ has been my goto for years. It's tabbed, it does some highlighting. Opens literally anything. I've never wanted for more than Notepad++ offers by default. And if I did... there's plugins. I know a bunch of people who swear by UltraEdit too. I think Notepad++ vs. UltraEdit is like the far tamer Windows version of Vim vs. Emacs.
      - stephengillie 10y ago
        I swear by Autosave. My favorite IDE is N++ and a Powershell window. I code in N++, then click on Powershell and reload the already-saved file. And a compare plugin does exist as well, it's functional.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    ViEmu adds Vim to Office (Word/Outlook, SQL Server Management Studio, and Visual Studio. I wouldn't ever consider using a source editor without Vim support now (I started a few years ago and am amazed how awesome Vim is.)
- hackuser 10y ago
  Vim is not a word processor.
- JupiterMoon 10y ago
  How awesome would vim key bindings for Libreoffice be though?
pivo 10y ago
I remember talking to some very unhappy legal secretaries way back then when they were forced to switch from WordPerfect to Word. They used WordPerfect day in and day out and were very efficient at it's keystroke commands and loved it because it was fast. With its focus on the mouse and GUI slowness, Word was a very painful transition and productivity drain for them.
- ethbro 10y ago
  Mouse is always easier for new users to learn. Keyboard is always faster for trained users and anywhere with tight processing performance metrics you'll see almost exclusively-keyboard users. Ironically, a lot of users still prefer mainframe applications over newer GUIs for the same reason. Source: I've worked for quite a few "on the floor" user processing centers for various types of data. 30s-2min per work item type of stuff.
- smacktoward 10y ago
  But at least part of that resistance was the tech version of Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome). They didn't love WordPerfect because it was better than Word, they loved WordPerfect because it was what they already knew and they had invested a lot of time in learning its idiosyncrasies. Moving to Word meant throwing all that learning out and having to start learning all over again, which they (quite naturally) didn't want to do. But none of that means that WordPerfect was a superior product; it really wasn't, especially for new users. It just means that people who were heavily invested in WordPerfect -- and there were a lot of those people back then -- didn't want that investment to have been for nothing. Microsoft addressed this issue quite effectively by providing a mode in early versions of Word that supported all of WordPerfect's key bindings. This let those hard-core WordPerfect users ease into the new application without having to learn a whole new way of working. Over time they discovered how much easier it was to use the mouse and WIMP interface, so the WordPerfect compatibility mode became less and less of a selling point. But at the beginning it was absolutely crucial to selling Word into organizations that had been bastions of WordPerfect use.
  - 10y ago
dagw 10y ago
It's kind of ironic how nowadays more people are using Vim. Are they? Based on my totally unscientific observations vi(m)s popularity has dropped over the past 15-20 years
- JupiterMoon 10y ago
  I think a lot of people are using vim emulators that bring the modal concept and keybindings in other software. Maybe NeoVim will eventually change this once vim can be embedded in a decent GUI and have addons that don't slow the how thing down to a crawl. P.S. I love vim but I love it enough to recognise flaws.

eli 10y ago

Vim is a tiny fraction of a percent of word processor usage. Most people like GUIs.

babuskov 10y ago
Yes. Most people who aren't in the tech just launch a word processor (word, libreoffice, etc.) Tech people on Windows use Notepad or a similar GUI program. Vim is used by a tiny, tiny fraction of people in the world.
- Spivak 10y ago
  > Tech people on Windows use Notepad. I'm always horrified to see this. MS really shot themselves in the foot with the dev community by not providing a powerful text editor as the default. Getting a WinAdmin to enjoy the UNIX'y way of doing things is like trying to feed a child broccoli.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    Also cmd.exe being a steaming pile of shit and the handful of commandline utilities that ship by default are mostly ancient DOS versions from the 80s. There are a couple of gems (netsh for example), but commandline on Windows is just painful. Powershell does give you a lot more potential, but I've found its syntax to be too verbose to be a comfortable commandline replacement.
    - uxp 10y ago
      Powershell is an interesting environment. On one hand, it's almost a C#/CLR REPL with amazing power to program and script almost anything you could think of, but on the other it's not a shell and anyone coming from *nix that tries to think like a shell will be sorely disappointed in how verbose and unintuitive it behaves.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  > Tech people on Windows use Notepad. Tech people on Windows use Notepad++ when they can. Vim is rarely used outside of editing config files on appliances.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    This. Notepad++ has been my goto for years. It's tabbed, it does some highlighting. Opens literally anything. I've never wanted for more than Notepad++ offers by default. And if I did... there's plugins. I know a bunch of people who swear by UltraEdit too. I think Notepad++ vs. UltraEdit is like the far tamer Windows version of Vim vs. Emacs.
    - stephengillie 10y ago
      I swear by Autosave. My favorite IDE is N++ and a Powershell window. I code in N++, then click on Powershell and reload the already-saved file. And a compare plugin does exist as well, it's functional.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  ViEmu adds Vim to Office (Word/Outlook, SQL Server Management Studio, and Visual Studio. I wouldn't ever consider using a source editor without Vim support now (I started a few years ago and am amazed how awesome Vim is.)
hackuser 10y ago
Vim is not a word processor.
JupiterMoon 10y ago
How awesome would vim key bindings for Libreoffice be though?

pivo 10y ago

I remember talking to some very unhappy legal secretaries way back then when they were forced to switch from WordPerfect to Word. They used WordPerfect day in and day out and were very efficient at it's keystroke commands and loved it because it was fast. With its focus on the mouse and GUI slowness, Word was a very painful transition and productivity drain for them.

ethbro 10y ago
Mouse is always easier for new users to learn. Keyboard is always faster for trained users and anywhere with tight processing performance metrics you'll see almost exclusively-keyboard users. Ironically, a lot of users still prefer mainframe applications over newer GUIs for the same reason. Source: I've worked for quite a few "on the floor" user processing centers for various types of data. 30s-2min per work item type of stuff.
smacktoward 10y ago
But at least part of that resistance was the tech version of Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome). They didn't love WordPerfect because it was better than Word, they loved WordPerfect because it was what they already knew and they had invested a lot of time in learning its idiosyncrasies. Moving to Word meant throwing all that learning out and having to start learning all over again, which they (quite naturally) didn't want to do. But none of that means that WordPerfect was a superior product; it really wasn't, especially for new users. It just means that people who were heavily invested in WordPerfect -- and there were a lot of those people back then -- didn't want that investment to have been for nothing. Microsoft addressed this issue quite effectively by providing a mode in early versions of Word that supported all of WordPerfect's key bindings. This let those hard-core WordPerfect users ease into the new application without having to learn a whole new way of working. Over time they discovered how much easier it was to use the mouse and WIMP interface, so the WordPerfect compatibility mode became less and less of a selling point. But at the beginning it was absolutely crucial to selling Word into organizations that had been bastions of WordPerfect use.
- 10y ago

dagw 10y ago

It's kind of ironic how nowadays more people are using Vim. Are they? Based on my totally unscientific observations vi(m)s popularity has dropped over the past 15-20 years

JupiterMoon 10y ago
I think a lot of people are using vim emulators that bring the modal concept and keybindings in other software. Maybe NeoVim will eventually change this once vim can be embedded in a decent GUI and have addons that don't slow the how thing down to a crawl. P.S. I love vim but I love it enough to recognise flaws.