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(Incoming controversial anti-Vim comment. Down voting because you disagree is a poor show and a poor argument. Convince me otherwise with words, good sirs and m
by movedx 9y ago
(Incoming controversial anti-Vim comment. Down voting because you disagree is a poor show and a poor argument. Convince me otherwise with words, good sirs and madams.)
Vim, beyond the very basics for server side administrative tasks, isn't worth your time.
Vim isn't worth the investment in time for me, as an average programmer, and I doubt it's worth the time of most other (average) developers as well. It's a big investment in retraining muscle memory and rethinking about how your editor works for, frankly, little gain.
"It speeds you up" - no it doesn't. It gives you access to keyboard shortcuts for moving around your buffer that other editors give you. It has a cool way of looking at text and once understood, you can do cool shit. I never could find a need for any of that stuff, even after spending a week or so learning it and adjusting muscle memory. After moving to VSCode, I've never missed that stuff neither. That says a lot about my personal use case I'll admit, but my use case in very common as an everyday programmer.
Funny enough, most editors have plugins to enable Vim modes and keyboard weirdness anyway.
So I've tried moving to Vim from Sublime, and I'm thankful for the time I invested, but I quickly realised that Vim (and Sublime, actually) fall short compared to VSCode or a serious IDEs. And yes, I'm aware you can make Vim behave like an IDE - I did it. I get it. It's not worth the time.
With modern, graphical editors and IDEs like VSCode, Atom, Eclipse, the IntelliJ family like IDEs, and so on, you get up and running straight away. You can extend them very quickly using a built in plugin system - you don't even have to leave the software.
I use VSCode, and I've found that I haven't had to leave the editor or install anything outside of VSCode plugins to make it operate as a Java IDE, Go IDE (OK, I had to install Delve), or Python IDE. It has saved me a lot of time tinkering and allowed me to just get going. It even PROMPTED me when I opened a Python, Go, or JavaScript file for the first and offered to install plugins for making the file easier to work with... YES PLEASE! And yes I know Vim can do these things (using external, third party plugins.) I did it. I get it. It's not worth the time.
I'm also aware that Vim uses kilobytes, perhaps megabytes, of RAM to operate and VSCode uses hundreds. And that's a problem how? I have 16GB of RAM on a system running a single VM for Docker and a browser. I'm the first person you'll find who will complain about how bloated and heavy applications are in this day and age, believing that us programmers are getting lazy due to an ever increase in resources, but a few hundred MBs of RAM for massive time savings and a great UI is worth it.
It's simply not worth the time invested. The basics allow you to do quick server side stuff and you'll be thankful for the knowledge, but beyond that use something designed for the job, even if it does eat RAM for breakfast.
- foo101 9y ago> It gives you access to keyboard shortcuts for moving around ... Your whole comment can be dismissed easily because of this one gross misunderstanding. Vim is not a bunch of weird keyboard shortcuts. If one approaches Vim as an editor that uses keyboard shortcuts that are inconsistent with every other editor out there, then one is simply setting themselves up for pain and unproductivity. Vim is not a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. It is an interactive editing language! For more, see this excellent comment on StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118/1175080 https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118/1175080 (a very well written answer!).
- movedx 9y agoIt's an interactive editing language... that I'll never use and still be as productive as you.
- foo101 9y agoGood luck living in your comfortable bubble!
- movedx 9y agoThanks. I do, and will continue to :)
- asmdev 9y agoNo, you won't be as productive as me. The fact that you were not aware how Vim is different than other editor (editing language vs. keyboard shortcuts) shows that you use your current editor as a macro for keyboard shortcuts rather than something you can talk to with little verbs and nouns and combine them into complex editing instructions with ease. There is no way you can match my speed and productivity of editing and refactoring code with that kind of approach to editors.
- nitemice 9y agoI'm happy you like VSCode so much. I do too, but I don't think it really qualify as a IDE. Same goes for Atom. Unless you consider Sublime an IDE as well. It has all the features they do, mainly because they ripped it off to gain them. Putting that aside, I totally understand what you're saying about Vim. I felt the same way when I started out with it. But I didn't have a choice at the time because the company I work at only supported Vim, and there weren't too many other options around at the time. Atom was just new and ran like a dog. We were told we couldn't use Sublime unless we bought a license, so I was stuck with Vim. And now, after 3 years of learning, and tweaking, and practising, I get Vim. I'm not a hardcore user; I don't use hjkl, I rarely use any register apart from ", but that doesn't mean I'm not getting any benefit from Vim. There are definitely some features in those other editors that are also attractive, but I've managed to find ways to replicate them in Vim, either using plugins or by mapping commands. That said, at home I still use Sublime, but it has been pretty awkward because my hands are so use to certain Vim things, that I find myself pressing keys, doing things I didn't intend a lot. Installing a Vim-mode plugin to one of those editors doesn't fix that.