5 ms·

The best feature of vim is its ubiquity; I feel at home on almost any computer. I find myself shying away from anything too specialized that could become a cru

by magoon 9y ago

The best feature of vim is its ubiquity; I feel at home on almost any computer. I find myself shying away from anything too specialized that could become a crutch, maybe to my detriment.

equalunique 9y ago
Same here. That is, until I find out that only vi's there and not full-on vim. While vi is smaller and even more ubiquitous, it pains me that it lacks visual mode.
- chongli 9y ago
  Visual mode is a crutch! I'm used to vi so I never use it. There are faster, more flexible ways of doing anything you'd do in visual mode with plain vi commands.
  - lp251 9y ago
    How can you insert text in a column-wise fashion? Not using a macro or some such. In vim, it's: (navigate to column) Ctrl+v 10j (or whatever) Shift-I (insert text) Escape
    - chongli 9y ago
      With the substitute command and an appropriate range. This sort of operation is extremely rare, though, so it's not the sort of thing you worry about when you're using a limited environment that has vi with no ability to install vim. Besides, it's far more common that you'd want to do an operation like this but the columns happen to be misaligned. Then you're reaching for substitute anyway. Might as well master the more flexible tool.
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    How do you compare two pieces of code side-by-side? I suppose you could create terminals and arrange then how you like but that's not much different than vim. I use gtk emacs with three frames arranged side-by-side on a 40" monitor. Not being able to compare code this way would really slow me down.
    - chongli 9y ago
      I use tmux. It works extremely well with vi. It's no problem at all to arrange 3 panes side by side in tmux. You're not even restricted to that, of course. You could be tailing a log file in one of the panes, reading a man page in another, and coding in the middle one.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
k_bx 9y ago
emacs-nox (apt install emacs24-nox usually) is also surprisingly feature-full and comfort to work with for emacsers
- metaobject 9y ago
  What's the difference between emacs-nox and "emacs -nw"?
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    Just that nox doesn't have all the gtk/x deps built in, functionally mostly the same as far as I have been able to tell.
  - k_bx 9y ago
    No need to pass -nw :) I usually install it in docker containers on servers. It's quite small (well, I think it's around 28M to install usually), since it's just an emacs built without gui support.
captainmuon 9y ago
I wish this or a similar editor was written in a language like Nim. Then you could just compile it on an older version of CentOS, link statically, and cp it anywhere you need it. Or something that supports simple ./configure && make.
- ilaksh 9y ago
  Does the install script fail or take too long?
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Some systems you can't install anything; they're locked down. So, knowing VIM and nano is very helpful. Actually, this is the major reason I never try other editors; I have to work with legacy, locked down systems (on occasion), so it is easier for me to just stay with one editor that I know.
seanwilson 9y ago
How often are you in situations where you can't run the editor/IDE you want? I haven't encountered this for years except the rare times I'm forced to do some editing over SSH (which is far too low-level for server management than I'd like).
- jcoffland 9y ago
  If you have to edit over SSH then you can do an sshfs mount instead. sshfs <user>@<server>:<path> ≤mountpt≥
  - ht85 9y ago
    Almost every time I have to edit text over SSH, it is to change configuration files that aren't writable for my SSH user. Can you sudo over sshfs somehow without logging as root?
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Note the user field in the above command. Desktop file managers can do this too.
      - ht85 9y ago
        I explicitly said "without logging as root". SSH as root is almost never allowed on production servers. I was wondering if there is a way to write protected files when SSHing as a user who only has write permission through sudo.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Tramp mode in emacs is what I use.
- 35bge57dtjku 9y ago
  Maybe not often for your average Nodejs dev, but I've had jobs where I had to edit files on special laptops all the time.

by magoon 9y ago

The best feature of vim is its ubiquity; I feel at home on almost any computer. I find myself shying away from anything too specialized that could become a crutch, maybe to my detriment.

equalunique 9y ago

Same here. That is, until I find out that only vi's there and not full-on vim. While vi is smaller and even more ubiquitous, it pains me that it lacks visual mode.

chongli 9y ago
Visual mode is a crutch! I'm used to vi so I never use it. There are faster, more flexible ways of doing anything you'd do in visual mode with plain vi commands.
- lp251 9y ago
  How can you insert text in a column-wise fashion? Not using a macro or some such. In vim, it's: (navigate to column) Ctrl+v 10j (or whatever) Shift-I (insert text) Escape
  - chongli 9y ago
    With the substitute command and an appropriate range. This sort of operation is extremely rare, though, so it's not the sort of thing you worry about when you're using a limited environment that has vi with no ability to install vim. Besides, it's far more common that you'd want to do an operation like this but the columns happen to be misaligned. Then you're reaching for substitute anyway. Might as well master the more flexible tool.
- jcoffland 9y ago
  How do you compare two pieces of code side-by-side? I suppose you could create terminals and arrange then how you like but that's not much different than vim. I use gtk emacs with three frames arranged side-by-side on a 40" monitor. Not being able to compare code this way would really slow me down.
  - chongli 9y ago
    I use tmux. It works extremely well with vi. It's no problem at all to arrange 3 panes side by side in tmux. You're not even restricted to that, of course. You could be tailing a log file in one of the panes, reading a man page in another, and coding in the middle one.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

k_bx 9y ago

emacs-nox (apt install emacs24-nox usually) is also surprisingly feature-full and comfort to work with for emacsers

metaobject 9y ago
What's the difference between emacs-nox and "emacs -nw"?
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  Just that nox doesn't have all the gtk/x deps built in, functionally mostly the same as far as I have been able to tell.
- k_bx 9y ago
  No need to pass -nw :) I usually install it in docker containers on servers. It's quite small (well, I think it's around 28M to install usually), since it's just an emacs built without gui support.

captainmuon 9y ago

I wish this or a similar editor was written in a language like Nim. Then you could just compile it on an older version of CentOS, link statically, and cp it anywhere you need it. Or something that supports simple ./configure && make.

ilaksh 9y ago
Does the install script fail or take too long?
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Some systems you can't install anything; they're locked down. So, knowing VIM and nano is very helpful. Actually, this is the major reason I never try other editors; I have to work with legacy, locked down systems (on occasion), so it is easier for me to just stay with one editor that I know.

seanwilson 9y ago

How often are you in situations where you can't run the editor/IDE you want? I haven't encountered this for years except the rare times I'm forced to do some editing over SSH (which is far too low-level for server management than I'd like).

jcoffland 9y ago
If you have to edit over SSH then you can do an sshfs mount instead. sshfs <user>@<server>:<path> ≤mountpt≥
- ht85 9y ago
  Almost every time I have to edit text over SSH, it is to change configuration files that aren't writable for my SSH user. Can you sudo over sshfs somehow without logging as root?
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Note the user field in the above command. Desktop file managers can do this too.
    - ht85 9y ago
      I explicitly said "without logging as root". SSH as root is almost never allowed on production servers. I was wondering if there is a way to write protected files when SSHing as a user who only has write permission through sudo.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Tramp mode in emacs is what I use.
35bge57dtjku 9y ago
Maybe not often for your average Nodejs dev, but I've had jobs where I had to edit files on special laptops all the time.