5 ms·

Why is it weird? You created yours 10 years ago, great. For those of us who didn't it is a bit of a hassle.

by Touche 10y ago

dmix 10y ago
Pretty much everyone knows the price of admission to using tools like Vim and Emacs is the time investment in config and learning the quirks. What the OP is saying that this doesn't have to be a perpetual state. Once you invest effort early on getting it right you often don't need to touch it, beyond a few tweaks now and then. The maintenance burden definitely declines over time. Then all you need is a storage solution like git and GNU Stow or the various clones (plenty of good ones around or just use a basic dir). There are a few preconfigured configs on github, ala oh my ZSH but for Vim or Emacs. That's one solution. But otherwise if you're not a fan of this config heavy approach then it's not for you. Just like using Linux desktop vs Mac. I love the configurability of Archlinux and I've similarily reached a mature point in my configs where setting up a new machine is zero work and I rarely need to tweak it, nor does it ever 'break' (which is a side effect of constant change).
- doktrin 10y ago
  > Pretty much everyone knows the price of admission to using tools like Vim and Emacs is the time investment in config and learning the quirks. To me, the real hurdle to vim (or emacs) isn't configuration : it's learning vim (or emacs). That muscle memory doesn't come from a .vimrc file, and it doesn't come overnight. Is that what you meant by "quirks"?
  - Barrin92 10y ago
    It's the same story with the muscle memory though. Build it up once, then the effort of learning new things is not very large. I don't think anybody doubts that there's a steep learning curve and some investment required to get set up, but you get a completely custom user experience out of it. And if you stick with it for years you're definitely getting your investment back.
  - cholantesh 10y ago
    This can be said about anything, though. You still have to develop muscle memory for shortcuts and menu paths in other applications.
    - doktrin 10y ago
      It can be said about anything, but it obviously applies more to CLI based editors since literally everything requires specialized muscle memory. Take a super simple example : Unless I've literally never used a computer before, I don't need new muscle memory to copy or cut out a block of text with VS Code, or Sublime, or Atom.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - pera 10y ago
    Muscle memory only comes after using your editor of choice for a considerable amount of time. With Vim, as a mnemonic, internally talking with the editor is the best way to go: for instance, if you need to change the content of a string literal like "hello world" just think Change Inside ". To me learning Vim is essentially learning a live programming language.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- noam87 10y ago
  Honestly, I learned to code with vim, and it never struck me as particularly complicated. The commands follow a pretty consistent logic... the defaults aren't great but it took me one google search to find out what a vimrc file is. emacs on the other hand, even as an experienced programmer, I found near unusable in its default and after a week of frustration with all the inconsistencies and oddities gave up on it. Which is a shame because obviously it is the more powerful of the two. I wish someone would create a modern editor in the spirit of emacs.
  - thinbeige 10y ago
    Agree on Emacs. Tried to get into Emacs few times because I am not the biggest fan of VimScript (I use it quite often though). So, I thought that it's worth learning Emacs with a proper Lisp underneath. But I failed everytime and getting back to Vim felt just natural and as easy as turning on my PS4. One thing with emacs is that some Alt bindings do not work over remote connections. Maybe it was my fault but I could not get all Alt bindings to work.
    - saghm 10y ago
      > One thing with emacs is that some Alt bindings do not work over remote connections. Maybe it was my fault but I could not get all Alt bindings to work. Were you connecting from a Mac to Linux? Emacs on OS X has Esc as meta by default, which means you need to redefine the meta key to be Alt or else it's basically unusable.
  - phaedrix 10y ago
    Recommend you checkout http://spacemacs.org/ http://spacemacs.org/ It's an emacs with sane defaults and built around Evil (emacs vim plugin)
  - dp88sdf8 10y ago
    I get the feeling Emacs is where things like Atom and VS Code are looking for a lot of inspiration. Unfortunately, they used bloated Electron framework. Little over a year ago I began sketching out a native Mac OS editor, taking ideas from xiki, ia writer, emacs. The core API was mostly fleshed out. I just got wrapped up in personal life stuff. Might have to take another look at that soon.
- ruleabidinguser 10y ago
  No matter how much you tweak it, you will never even start to scratch an experience like Visual Studio. Vim is a fundamentally weaker platform.
  - Tenhundfeld 10y ago
    Meh. I've used both and disagree. Visual Studio is a better IDE. Vim is a better text editor.
    - yamaneko 10y ago
      Has anyone tried VsVim [1]? It is the best vim experience I've had in any other editor. And I've already tried Sublime's, VSCode's, and others. Most of the vim functions I use are there, but it's been a while since the last time I used VisualStudio, so I don't recall the ones with problem. You can even plug in relative line numbers [2]. [1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=JaredParMSFT.VsVim https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=JaredPar... [2]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ZoltanKlinger.RelativeLineNumbers https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ZoltanKl...
      - flukus 10y ago
        The biggest issue is you're still tied to the real crappy windowing of VS, not the much better ones of vim or tmux. VsVim is getting really good though, it even reads your vimrc these days.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    Either many many thousands of professionals are blind to the awesome power that is windows plus visual studio or maybe people value different things and having made an informed analysis decided to use other things.
- Retra 10y ago
  As a counterpoint, you shouldn't have to tell anybody about storage solutions and preconfigured configs. Once you start doing that, you're talking about solving problems that don't exist in other editors.
  - saghm 10y ago
    Given that there are quite a few editors where people tend not to like the defaults (Vim, Emacs, VS Code, and Atom come to mind, at least for me), it sounds like what you're saying is "editors that beyond the specific set that have these problems don't have these problems", which doesn't seem terrible informative.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
juandazapata 10y ago
My point is that after the initial investment in the setup, it takes almost no time to maintain them. In my particular case, I invested about 2 weeks tweaking settings here and there until I felt comfortable with it. After that initial setup, it just gets out of your way.
- Touche 10y ago
  I disagree. Plugins breaking or interfering with other plugins is a regular thing.
  - joshuamorton 10y ago
    I'm really intrigued by what all you're doing that you have this kind of problem. I maintain a pretty complex vimrc, and deploying it is normally just a git clone. I've never had any of these issues, and when I started at google (which provides a nice collection of internal vim configs and plugins), combining the two and getting everything set up took me O(hours), not O(days). What are you doing?
    - fakeslimshady 10y ago
      I simply updated mvim and :E stopped working on OSX. I could work around with NERDtree, but its one of those things turned into a timesink when I didn't need it.
      - joshuamorton 10y ago
        Wait, that doesn't sound like a problem with your vim config, it just sounds like you had a broken version of macvim.
  - juandazapata 10y ago
    I guess I must be doing something terribly wrong, because I can't relate to that at all.
    - 10y ago
dp88sdf8 10y ago
I feel like the amount of hassle in terms of time spent is probably more imagined than real. I tried VS Code for a couple months last year. It felt like less of a hassle than vim from 10 years ago. But with pathogen, cloning into .vim/bundle doesn't feel any more burdensome than finding the best plugins on VS Code did. I mean, to each their own.

Why is it weird? You created yours 10 years ago, great. For those of us who didn't it is a bit of a hassle.

by Touche 10y ago

Why is it weird? You created yours 10 years ago, great. For those of us who didn't it is a bit of a hassle.

dmix 10y ago

Pretty much everyone knows the price of admission to using tools like Vim and Emacs is the time investment in config and learning the quirks. What the OP is saying that this doesn't have to be a perpetual state. Once you invest effort early on getting it right you often don't need to touch it, beyond a few tweaks now and then. The maintenance burden definitely declines over time. Then all you need is a storage solution like git and GNU Stow or the various clones (plenty of good ones around or just use a basic dir). There are a few preconfigured configs on github, ala oh my ZSH but for Vim or Emacs. That's one solution. But otherwise if you're not a fan of this config heavy approach then it's not for you. Just like using Linux desktop vs Mac. I love the configurability of Archlinux and I've similarily reached a mature point in my configs where setting up a new machine is zero work and I rarely need to tweak it, nor does it ever 'break' (which is a side effect of constant change).

doktrin 10y ago
> Pretty much everyone knows the price of admission to using tools like Vim and Emacs is the time investment in config and learning the quirks. To me, the real hurdle to vim (or emacs) isn't configuration : it's learning vim (or emacs). That muscle memory doesn't come from a .vimrc file, and it doesn't come overnight. Is that what you meant by "quirks"?
- Barrin92 10y ago
  It's the same story with the muscle memory though. Build it up once, then the effort of learning new things is not very large. I don't think anybody doubts that there's a steep learning curve and some investment required to get set up, but you get a completely custom user experience out of it. And if you stick with it for years you're definitely getting your investment back.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  This can be said about anything, though. You still have to develop muscle memory for shortcuts and menu paths in other applications.
  - doktrin 10y ago
    It can be said about anything, but it obviously applies more to CLI based editors since literally everything requires specialized muscle memory. Take a super simple example : Unless I've literally never used a computer before, I don't need new muscle memory to copy or cut out a block of text with VS Code, or Sublime, or Atom.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- pera 10y ago
  Muscle memory only comes after using your editor of choice for a considerable amount of time. With Vim, as a mnemonic, internally talking with the editor is the best way to go: for instance, if you need to change the content of a string literal like "hello world" just think Change Inside ". To me learning Vim is essentially learning a live programming language.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
noam87 10y ago
Honestly, I learned to code with vim, and it never struck me as particularly complicated. The commands follow a pretty consistent logic... the defaults aren't great but it took me one google search to find out what a vimrc file is. emacs on the other hand, even as an experienced programmer, I found near unusable in its default and after a week of frustration with all the inconsistencies and oddities gave up on it. Which is a shame because obviously it is the more powerful of the two. I wish someone would create a modern editor in the spirit of emacs.
- thinbeige 10y ago
  Agree on Emacs. Tried to get into Emacs few times because I am not the biggest fan of VimScript (I use it quite often though). So, I thought that it's worth learning Emacs with a proper Lisp underneath. But I failed everytime and getting back to Vim felt just natural and as easy as turning on my PS4. One thing with emacs is that some Alt bindings do not work over remote connections. Maybe it was my fault but I could not get all Alt bindings to work.
  - saghm 10y ago
    > One thing with emacs is that some Alt bindings do not work over remote connections. Maybe it was my fault but I could not get all Alt bindings to work. Were you connecting from a Mac to Linux? Emacs on OS X has Esc as meta by default, which means you need to redefine the meta key to be Alt or else it's basically unusable.
- phaedrix 10y ago
  Recommend you checkout http://spacemacs.org/ http://spacemacs.org/ It's an emacs with sane defaults and built around Evil (emacs vim plugin)
- dp88sdf8 10y ago
  I get the feeling Emacs is where things like Atom and VS Code are looking for a lot of inspiration. Unfortunately, they used bloated Electron framework. Little over a year ago I began sketching out a native Mac OS editor, taking ideas from xiki, ia writer, emacs. The core API was mostly fleshed out. I just got wrapped up in personal life stuff. Might have to take another look at that soon.
ruleabidinguser 10y ago
No matter how much you tweak it, you will never even start to scratch an experience like Visual Studio. Vim is a fundamentally weaker platform.
- Tenhundfeld 10y ago
  Meh. I've used both and disagree. Visual Studio is a better IDE. Vim is a better text editor.
  - yamaneko 10y ago
    Has anyone tried VsVim [1]? It is the best vim experience I've had in any other editor. And I've already tried Sublime's, VSCode's, and others. Most of the vim functions I use are there, but it's been a while since the last time I used VisualStudio, so I don't recall the ones with problem. You can even plug in relative line numbers [2]. [1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=JaredParMSFT.VsVim https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=JaredPar... [2]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ZoltanKlinger.RelativeLineNumbers https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ZoltanKl...
    - flukus 10y ago
      The biggest issue is you're still tied to the real crappy windowing of VS, not the much better ones of vim or tmux. VsVim is getting really good though, it even reads your vimrc these days.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Either many many thousands of professionals are blind to the awesome power that is windows plus visual studio or maybe people value different things and having made an informed analysis decided to use other things.
Retra 10y ago
As a counterpoint, you shouldn't have to tell anybody about storage solutions and preconfigured configs. Once you start doing that, you're talking about solving problems that don't exist in other editors.
- saghm 10y ago
  Given that there are quite a few editors where people tend not to like the defaults (Vim, Emacs, VS Code, and Atom come to mind, at least for me), it sounds like what you're saying is "editors that beyond the specific set that have these problems don't have these problems", which doesn't seem terrible informative.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

juandazapata 10y ago

My point is that after the initial investment in the setup, it takes almost no time to maintain them. In my particular case, I invested about 2 weeks tweaking settings here and there until I felt comfortable with it. After that initial setup, it just gets out of your way.

Touche 10y ago
I disagree. Plugins breaking or interfering with other plugins is a regular thing.
- joshuamorton 10y ago
  I'm really intrigued by what all you're doing that you have this kind of problem. I maintain a pretty complex vimrc, and deploying it is normally just a git clone. I've never had any of these issues, and when I started at google (which provides a nice collection of internal vim configs and plugins), combining the two and getting everything set up took me O(hours), not O(days). What are you doing?
  - fakeslimshady 10y ago
    I simply updated mvim and :E stopped working on OSX. I could work around with NERDtree, but its one of those things turned into a timesink when I didn't need it.
    - joshuamorton 10y ago
      Wait, that doesn't sound like a problem with your vim config, it just sounds like you had a broken version of macvim.
- juandazapata 10y ago
  I guess I must be doing something terribly wrong, because I can't relate to that at all.
  - 10y ago

dp88sdf8 10y ago

I feel like the amount of hassle in terms of time spent is probably more imagined than real. I tried VS Code for a couple months last year. It felt like less of a hassle than vim from 10 years ago. But with pathogen, cloning into .vim/bundle doesn't feel any more burdensome than finding the best plugins on VS Code did. I mean, to each their own.