6 ms·

> don't find Vim offering any huge productivity boost Really? I feel so much faster with Vim bindings. Watching other people try to edit text even with OS or o

> don't find Vim offering any huge productivity boost Really? I feel so much faster with Vim bindings. Watching other people try to edit text even with OS or other-editor bindings, let alone just selecting text with a mouse, is very frustrating. I know other editors have bookmarks, and I imagine they might work as well as in Vim. But, besides Emacs, in what other editors can you 'delete everything up to the next `=`' or 'delete everything from the current cursor position to the start of the third word (to the right)'. Gah – even cutting and pasting more than a line or two is so much easier in Vim than anything else. And that's just editing text. Editing code is even harder for me! Trying to remove a 'word' in a long camelCase variable without being able to jump to a letter or a search pattern consists of hitting way too many arrow keys.

jnordwick 9y ago
> in what other editors can you 'delete everything up to the next `=` And how does being able to edit text a few seconds faster contribute to development speed and quality. Not a single bit. While it may let you feel cool, it really doesn't add anything to the bottom line.
- ludston 9y ago
  Vim gives the ability to refactor large amounts of code rapidly. This doesn't make it so your typing speed is significantly faster, but it removes obstacles to refactoring large amounts of code which means that as a developer you will have more choices available to tackling some problems. This can only really be shown via examples. Let's say, a lazy person has created a 3000 line file containing the declarations of a datastructure, and you would like to modify the constructors to each have an additional shared parameter. In order to add this parameter you could add some behaviour to the constructor definition. With vim you have a new choice open to you: you can define a macro that to find and modify all of the constructors in your declaration file in 20 seconds. Now you can choose how you would like the constructors to look, rather than the choice being made for you by the existing code. There are of course other ways to bulk-update text files, but the advantage of learning vim is that it is context-free. The same commands used to modify C# are fine to use for modifying javascript or XML. (i.e. you don't have to use parsing libraries)
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >Vim gives the ability to refactor large amounts of code rapidly. It gives the ability to edit large amounts of code rapidly. Refactoring implies design, coming with the right structure, applying some design pattern, etc -- which is the slow part, and not affected by your choice of editor. If we're talking about "automated refactorings" (of the trivial variety, e.g. extract method, etc) then an IDE is an even better candidate than Vim. >With vim you have a new choice open to you: you can define a macro that to find and modify all of the constructors in your declaration file in 20 seconds. Or you know, I can do the same in any other editor with macros. Or use a regex, with almost all editors support and do it in 5 seconds.
    - ludston 9y ago
      I wrote a different reply to your post, but on replection you and I think vim is a different thing. For me, vim is not my editor - It is a plugin that I install into all of my editors/ides (emacs, visual studio, etc.) so that the keybindings are familar and all of the normal tools (regex, macros, multiple clipboards) all work the same way.
coldtea 9y ago
>Really? I feel so much faster with Vim bindings. I never felt typing speed or special text transformation shortcuts being my limiting factor. At the end of a day, I'd have at most written 200 or 500 lines of code, and removed as much. Most days less. And I don't write, re-edit and discard 10,000 lines in the process of crafting those new ones. Speed of navigating between files (which is even better in ST than in Vim, vim, at least on the Mac, takes more 100s of ms to open a file, and NerdTree is crap) and finding the stuff I want matters more to me. >I know other editors have bookmarks, and I imagine they might work as well as in Vim. But, besides Emacs, in what other editors can you 'delete everything up to the next `=`' or 'delete everything from the current cursor position to the start of the third word (to the right)'. That a find at best a slight convenience of marginal utility. My problem while coding is rarely "if I could delete until the next = more easily" but "what algorithm should I use", "What was the person who wrote this smoking" and "where's the documentation for this API". I also don't buy the "but doing it with a shortcut/motor skills frees my mind from having to think about editing etc". As I've said, I've used Vim for 15+ years (still do, a decade after every time I'm in a shell). I've known all these shortcuts, used them, etc. Haven't seen it make any great difference in that respect. I'd take better code navigation, linting support, etc over text wrangling features any day. (Besides I can do it just fine in ST anyway with Vintageous/Six/etc).
- deong 9y ago
  I think he probably chose his words fairly carefully: "feel so much faster". I don't think anyone argues that they can ship a piece of software noticeably faster using Vim or Emacs. Like you said, we're never limited by editing speed. But it's also true that you're not figuring out what code to write one character at a time. You spend most of your time looking at the code, figuring out what to do next. But once you've decided that, there is a little burst of activity during which the limiting factor actually is the motor skill of executing that desired action. In theory, all the little savings might add up, but again, I don't think anyone seriously argues that. I think it's much more that that microburst of activity felt less frustrating while they were doing it.
- splintercell 9y ago
  > I never felt typing speed or special text transformation shortcuts being my limiting factor. You don't because the purpose of all the actions you take while editing text is to not think about it. As a non-vim users, you have trained yourself to not think about the time you spent editing text. You want to move an object of options from one file to another file and move it to another object (something which I did moments ago), then the moment you come to the conclusion that you need to make that change, you start using your mouse, select the object, Ctrl-C, then move to the other file, Ctrl-V, and press the shortcut to auto format. But you don't think about it any more than you think about switching windows when moving from one app to the other. In vim too I probably think about it no more than you do about your own text editing, but with vim, I don't press modifier keys, I don't reach out for mouse, and opening a file is the same speed as IntelliJ (an editor my coworkers use), using Ctrl-P, if not faster. Traversing files is much faster. Splitting screen and navigating is a billion times faster than what you can achieve on any of these editors. All without using the mouse or modifiers. But these are only small benefits when compared to the biggest difference I've seen between Vim/Emacs users vs non-Vim/Emacs users. Take for instance, few minutes ago I was doing pair programming with my coworkers, and I noticed that there were thousands of productivity shortcuts that he wouldn't use, and he is not the only one, majority of non-vim using people I've met, fail to make use of these productivity enhancements. * Pressing Ctrl-C/X without selecting text just cut/copy the whole line. * Pressing double click on a line selects the word, triple click selects the whole line (or paragraph in text) * Using Alt-Tab to switch windows * Ctrl-Backspace deletes the whole word/token * Ctrl+Arrow key for navigation * Split Screen, nearly all their editors support split screen functionality, but opening multiple files in multiple panes is like crazy person talk Even with this minor experience I have with their editors, I look like a magician using their IDE. Not to mention how slow their editor is while trying to help me by auto-completing. I was done typing the name of the class before their auto-completion kicked in. You call that slight convenience of marginal utility, but to My point is that, productivity enhancements is a desire people have, which makes these people to move towards Vim/Emacs. For the people who don't even use Ctrl-A to select the whole text, they fail to see what they're really capable of doing on their editor. > As I've said, I've used Vim for 15+ years (still do, a decade after every time I'm in a shell). I've known all these shortcuts, used them, etc. Haven't seen it make any great difference in that respect. Considering you complaint about speed of navigating between files, I highly doubt that you know "all these shortcuts", because even if you do, the philosophy of vim is to keep optimizing your workflow, so you create a shortcut for shortcuts. I think it would be a cool idea to hold competitions where two people are given a codebase, and their own completely configured editor on the same machine with same processes running and then they are asked to do a number of tasks, like open UserController.js, UserView.html, UserService.js and refactor a variable and change some data.
SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
Vim makes writing and editing text faster, that's true. But writing and editing text is a small portion of the time of a programmer. Planning what to write takes up far more time. I suppose it depends on language though: I tend towards low-level (VHDL, ASM, C) and so tend to need to think things out in more detail just to get working code. But even high-level programming should have plenty of planning, otherwise it tends to become bug-ridden very quickly. Worrying about the time spent editing text is premature optimization in the vast majority of cases. I still like vim, I just don't think that argument is very convincing.
- flukus 9y ago
  It may differ for you but coding is (sadly) not where the majority of my time is spent. A lot of it is in data files, logs, sql scripts, etc. For a lot of those tasks fast editing makes a big difference. Sql in particular is verbose and repetative yet fairly unstructured, a vim macro is a great way to do bulk updates. Another would be something like adding a parameter to a function called in many places, the repeat command is a fantastic way to apply it everywhere.
todd8 9y ago
I've touch typed for over 50 years, but I've never gotten really fast like some other software developers. However, this doesn't feel limiting, the thinking part is the limiting factor. On the other hand, being really fluent in an editor (once upon a time in Vi, now Emacs) keeps me in a flow state. I think of code and it appears on the screen without interruption of the deep thoughts.

jnordwick 9y ago

> in what other editors can you 'delete everything up to the next `=` And how does being able to edit text a few seconds faster contribute to development speed and quality. Not a single bit. While it may let you feel cool, it really doesn't add anything to the bottom line.

ludston 9y ago
Vim gives the ability to refactor large amounts of code rapidly. This doesn't make it so your typing speed is significantly faster, but it removes obstacles to refactoring large amounts of code which means that as a developer you will have more choices available to tackling some problems. This can only really be shown via examples. Let's say, a lazy person has created a 3000 line file containing the declarations of a datastructure, and you would like to modify the constructors to each have an additional shared parameter. In order to add this parameter you could add some behaviour to the constructor definition. With vim you have a new choice open to you: you can define a macro that to find and modify all of the constructors in your declaration file in 20 seconds. Now you can choose how you would like the constructors to look, rather than the choice being made for you by the existing code. There are of course other ways to bulk-update text files, but the advantage of learning vim is that it is context-free. The same commands used to modify C# are fine to use for modifying javascript or XML. (i.e. you don't have to use parsing libraries)
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Vim gives the ability to refactor large amounts of code rapidly. It gives the ability to edit large amounts of code rapidly. Refactoring implies design, coming with the right structure, applying some design pattern, etc -- which is the slow part, and not affected by your choice of editor. If we're talking about "automated refactorings" (of the trivial variety, e.g. extract method, etc) then an IDE is an even better candidate than Vim. >With vim you have a new choice open to you: you can define a macro that to find and modify all of the constructors in your declaration file in 20 seconds. Or you know, I can do the same in any other editor with macros. Or use a regex, with almost all editors support and do it in 5 seconds.
  - ludston 9y ago
    I wrote a different reply to your post, but on replection you and I think vim is a different thing. For me, vim is not my editor - It is a plugin that I install into all of my editors/ides (emacs, visual studio, etc.) so that the keybindings are familar and all of the normal tools (regex, macros, multiple clipboards) all work the same way.

coldtea 9y ago

>Really? I feel so much faster with Vim bindings. I never felt typing speed or special text transformation shortcuts being my limiting factor. At the end of a day, I'd have at most written 200 or 500 lines of code, and removed as much. Most days less. And I don't write, re-edit and discard 10,000 lines in the process of crafting those new ones. Speed of navigating between files (which is even better in ST than in Vim, vim, at least on the Mac, takes more 100s of ms to open a file, and NerdTree is crap) and finding the stuff I want matters more to me. >I know other editors have bookmarks, and I imagine they might work as well as in Vim. But, besides Emacs, in what other editors can you 'delete everything up to the next `=`' or 'delete everything from the current cursor position to the start of the third word (to the right)'. That a find at best a slight convenience of marginal utility. My problem while coding is rarely "if I could delete until the next = more easily" but "what algorithm should I use", "What was the person who wrote this smoking" and "where's the documentation for this API". I also don't buy the "but doing it with a shortcut/motor skills frees my mind from having to think about editing etc". As I've said, I've used Vim for 15+ years (still do, a decade after every time I'm in a shell). I've known all these shortcuts, used them, etc. Haven't seen it make any great difference in that respect. I'd take better code navigation, linting support, etc over text wrangling features any day. (Besides I can do it just fine in ST anyway with Vintageous/Six/etc).

deong 9y ago
I think he probably chose his words fairly carefully: "feel so much faster". I don't think anyone argues that they can ship a piece of software noticeably faster using Vim or Emacs. Like you said, we're never limited by editing speed. But it's also true that you're not figuring out what code to write one character at a time. You spend most of your time looking at the code, figuring out what to do next. But once you've decided that, there is a little burst of activity during which the limiting factor actually is the motor skill of executing that desired action. In theory, all the little savings might add up, but again, I don't think anyone seriously argues that. I think it's much more that that microburst of activity felt less frustrating while they were doing it.
splintercell 9y ago
> I never felt typing speed or special text transformation shortcuts being my limiting factor. You don't because the purpose of all the actions you take while editing text is to not think about it. As a non-vim users, you have trained yourself to not think about the time you spent editing text. You want to move an object of options from one file to another file and move it to another object (something which I did moments ago), then the moment you come to the conclusion that you need to make that change, you start using your mouse, select the object, Ctrl-C, then move to the other file, Ctrl-V, and press the shortcut to auto format. But you don't think about it any more than you think about switching windows when moving from one app to the other. In vim too I probably think about it no more than you do about your own text editing, but with vim, I don't press modifier keys, I don't reach out for mouse, and opening a file is the same speed as IntelliJ (an editor my coworkers use), using Ctrl-P, if not faster. Traversing files is much faster. Splitting screen and navigating is a billion times faster than what you can achieve on any of these editors. All without using the mouse or modifiers. But these are only small benefits when compared to the biggest difference I've seen between Vim/Emacs users vs non-Vim/Emacs users. Take for instance, few minutes ago I was doing pair programming with my coworkers, and I noticed that there were thousands of productivity shortcuts that he wouldn't use, and he is not the only one, majority of non-vim using people I've met, fail to make use of these productivity enhancements. * Pressing Ctrl-C/X without selecting text just cut/copy the whole line. * Pressing double click on a line selects the word, triple click selects the whole line (or paragraph in text) * Using Alt-Tab to switch windows * Ctrl-Backspace deletes the whole word/token * Ctrl+Arrow key for navigation * Split Screen, nearly all their editors support split screen functionality, but opening multiple files in multiple panes is like crazy person talk Even with this minor experience I have with their editors, I look like a magician using their IDE. Not to mention how slow their editor is while trying to help me by auto-completing. I was done typing the name of the class before their auto-completion kicked in. You call that slight convenience of marginal utility, but to My point is that, productivity enhancements is a desire people have, which makes these people to move towards Vim/Emacs. For the people who don't even use Ctrl-A to select the whole text, they fail to see what they're really capable of doing on their editor. > As I've said, I've used Vim for 15+ years (still do, a decade after every time I'm in a shell). I've known all these shortcuts, used them, etc. Haven't seen it make any great difference in that respect. Considering you complaint about speed of navigating between files, I highly doubt that you know "all these shortcuts", because even if you do, the philosophy of vim is to keep optimizing your workflow, so you create a shortcut for shortcuts. I think it would be a cool idea to hold competitions where two people are given a codebase, and their own completely configured editor on the same machine with same processes running and then they are asked to do a number of tasks, like open UserController.js, UserView.html, UserService.js and refactor a variable and change some data.

SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago

Vim makes writing and editing text faster, that's true. But writing and editing text is a small portion of the time of a programmer. Planning what to write takes up far more time. I suppose it depends on language though: I tend towards low-level (VHDL, ASM, C) and so tend to need to think things out in more detail just to get working code. But even high-level programming should have plenty of planning, otherwise it tends to become bug-ridden very quickly. Worrying about the time spent editing text is premature optimization in the vast majority of cases. I still like vim, I just don't think that argument is very convincing.

flukus 9y ago
It may differ for you but coding is (sadly) not where the majority of my time is spent. A lot of it is in data files, logs, sql scripts, etc. For a lot of those tasks fast editing makes a big difference. Sql in particular is verbose and repetative yet fairly unstructured, a vim macro is a great way to do bulk updates. Another would be something like adding a parameter to a function called in many places, the repeat command is a fantastic way to apply it everywhere.

todd8 9y ago

I've touch typed for over 50 years, but I've never gotten really fast like some other software developers. However, this doesn't feel limiting, the thinking part is the limiting factor. On the other hand, being really fluent in an editor (once upon a time in Vi, now Emacs) keeps me in a flow state. I think of code and it appears on the screen without interruption of the deep thoughts.