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After years of using vim, I switched to visual studio code because it feels like a plain text editor but has all the features of IDEs that matter to me: intelli

by hasenj 9y ago

After years of using vim, I switched to visual studio code because it feels like a plain text editor but has all the features of IDEs that matter to me: intellisence.

fgonzag 9y ago
Vim mode in VS Code kinda sucks though. Not nearly as good as the ones found in IntelliJ IDEA or Visual Studio. Once it gets better I'll probably switch to VS Code for my standard text editor though.
- chillee 9y ago
  Speaking as somebody who's contributed to the extension, what issues did you have with it? I think it's pretty good, personally (although definitely not as good as VSVim).
  - fgonzag 9y ago
    Right off the cuff, I can't get the :s command to work properly. Find ('/') command is sometimes funky too. Other things I've noticed is the buffer system (copy and paste) doesn't work correctly much of the time. Other than that, I seem to remember having problems with some movement commands (screen forward I think), though that was probably due to the keybindings more than the extension itself. I've scripted and dabbled in VIMs code before, your comment just motivitated me to actually submit bugs to the tracker and to try and fix them self!
    - chillee 9y ago
      At least for me, :%s/foo/bar seems to work fine, as does the find command. I think that registers should mostly work pretty well too ("ayy and then "ap work fine for me). I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but we have some ctrl+d/ctrl+u bugs that have to wait for upstream changes :/ https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/1348 https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/1348 I saw that you said you'll submit bugs to the tracker, so I'll see those then :) We've been pretty active about adding features/fixing bugs: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/releases https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/releases
nlawalker 9y ago
In my years of pretty much working only in Visual Studio/C#, I've occasionally poked around in vim for a few things and always immediately turned back. It was just weird. I didn't see the benefit of giving up all of the features and familiarity. Recently, I've found occasion to work in other languages, and after dabbling in vim for a little while, I switched to VS Code. After gaining a little bit of enlightenment about what a comfortable developer workflow looks and feels like outside of the C# ecosystem, I've had three key insights: - I actually appreciate the transparency and flexibility of delegating so many tasks to command line tools that can be run via scripts and task runners. Thing still aren't quite as discoverable as they are in VS, but I have enough general dev experience that I know what to Google for. - I still don't care for vim. Maybe someday, when I want to invest time in becoming a keyboard Jedi. - Most importantly: it turns out the only feature I really, really missed leaving Visual Studio was IntelliSense. Not just semi-intelligent word completion, but real IntelliSense, with inline documentation, snippets and parameter info. I don't know why anyone who has ever taken advantage of it would go without it if given the option - it is a bicycle for the programmer's mind at every skill level, from early discovery of a language's syntax and standard libraries to extreme proficiency.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  When you brought up the bicycle metaphor, the first thing that came to mind was training wheels. Training wheels aren't bad when you start, but training wheels quickly get in the way of really mastering riding a bike.
  - nlawalker 9y ago
    I've heard this before, and I've also seen IntelliSense labelled as a crutch. I don't understand this - how does IntelliSense prevent mastery of a language? Does it make a difference if someone's mastery of a language involves them using IntelliSense?
  - hasenj 9y ago
    That sounds like an excuse for not doing proper intellisence in a text editor. Intellisence never gets in the way in my experience. Rather the lack of it gets in the way.
arjie 9y ago
Depends on the language. With neovim, neoplete, and vim-go, Golang is quite pleasant on vim.
Eridrus 9y ago
Do people just not use debuggers? There's piles of marginally useful stuff in IDEs, but I don't understand how this entire thread hasn't mentioned debuggers or continuous type checking. I know you can setup vim to do a lot, but this comes out of the box in IDEs.
- falcolas 9y ago
  If you're using Vim, there's a good chance you're doing it in a terminal. In which case you have all of the debugging tools you could ever need right inside the same terminal. That's why I (and many others, I'm sure) don't mind that I don't have a debugger built into vim - it's just in another tab. As for constant type checking, it too is available via plugins.

by hasenj 9y ago

After years of using vim, I switched to visual studio code because it feels like a plain text editor but has all the features of IDEs that matter to me: intellisence.

fgonzag 9y ago

Vim mode in VS Code kinda sucks though. Not nearly as good as the ones found in IntelliJ IDEA or Visual Studio. Once it gets better I'll probably switch to VS Code for my standard text editor though.

chillee 9y ago
Speaking as somebody who's contributed to the extension, what issues did you have with it? I think it's pretty good, personally (although definitely not as good as VSVim).
- fgonzag 9y ago
  Right off the cuff, I can't get the :s command to work properly. Find ('/') command is sometimes funky too. Other things I've noticed is the buffer system (copy and paste) doesn't work correctly much of the time. Other than that, I seem to remember having problems with some movement commands (screen forward I think), though that was probably due to the keybindings more than the extension itself. I've scripted and dabbled in VIMs code before, your comment just motivitated me to actually submit bugs to the tracker and to try and fix them self!
  - chillee 9y ago
    At least for me, :%s/foo/bar seems to work fine, as does the find command. I think that registers should mostly work pretty well too ("ayy and then "ap work fine for me). I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but we have some ctrl+d/ctrl+u bugs that have to wait for upstream changes :/ https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/1348 https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/1348 I saw that you said you'll submit bugs to the tracker, so I'll see those then :) We've been pretty active about adding features/fixing bugs: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/releases https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/releases

nlawalker 9y ago

In my years of pretty much working only in Visual Studio/C#, I've occasionally poked around in vim for a few things and always immediately turned back. It was just weird. I didn't see the benefit of giving up all of the features and familiarity. Recently, I've found occasion to work in other languages, and after dabbling in vim for a little while, I switched to VS Code. After gaining a little bit of enlightenment about what a comfortable developer workflow looks and feels like outside of the C# ecosystem, I've had three key insights: - I actually appreciate the transparency and flexibility of delegating so many tasks to command line tools that can be run via scripts and task runners. Thing still aren't quite as discoverable as they are in VS, but I have enough general dev experience that I know what to Google for. - I still don't care for vim. Maybe someday, when I want to invest time in becoming a keyboard Jedi. - Most importantly: it turns out the only feature I really, really missed leaving Visual Studio was IntelliSense. Not just semi-intelligent word completion, but real IntelliSense, with inline documentation, snippets and parameter info. I don't know why anyone who has ever taken advantage of it would go without it if given the option - it is a bicycle for the programmer's mind at every skill level, from early discovery of a language's syntax and standard libraries to extreme proficiency.

WillPostForFood 9y ago
When you brought up the bicycle metaphor, the first thing that came to mind was training wheels. Training wheels aren't bad when you start, but training wheels quickly get in the way of really mastering riding a bike.
- nlawalker 9y ago
  I've heard this before, and I've also seen IntelliSense labelled as a crutch. I don't understand this - how does IntelliSense prevent mastery of a language? Does it make a difference if someone's mastery of a language involves them using IntelliSense?
- hasenj 9y ago
  That sounds like an excuse for not doing proper intellisence in a text editor. Intellisence never gets in the way in my experience. Rather the lack of it gets in the way.

arjie 9y ago

Depends on the language. With neovim, neoplete, and vim-go, Golang is quite pleasant on vim.

Eridrus 9y ago

Do people just not use debuggers? There's piles of marginally useful stuff in IDEs, but I don't understand how this entire thread hasn't mentioned debuggers or continuous type checking. I know you can setup vim to do a lot, but this comes out of the box in IDEs.

falcolas 9y ago
If you're using Vim, there's a good chance you're doing it in a terminal. In which case you have all of the debugging tools you could ever need right inside the same terminal. That's why I (and many others, I'm sure) don't mind that I don't have a debugger built into vim - it's just in another tab. As for constant type checking, it too is available via plugins.