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I am somewhat embarrassed, but also relieved to admit that I switched from vim (nvim to be precise) to VSCode (OMG M$FT!) and am very happy about it. I still us

by vvpan 8y ago

I am somewhat embarrassed, but also relieved to admit that I switched from vim (nvim to be precise) to VSCode (OMG M$FT!) and am very happy about it. I still use vim bindings as much as I can, but I guess giving up a bit of ideology can benefit one a lot. Although, that is until I start running out of memory on my personal laptop, then it's back to the terminal!

scrollaway 8y ago
The vscode vim bindings are atrocious. I use them because there's nothing better, but they're bad. Slow, super buggy, and did I mention slow? I hit tab and sometimes instead of inserting a \t, it inserts the letters "<tab>". And it re-runs mypy/flake8/etc whenever I enter or exit insert mode, which I do a ton... so my CPU is constantly pegged. And commands like "2d}" don't delete the correct amount of paragraphs. And one more I forgot: The undo stacks aren't synced between vscode and vscode-vim, so vscode's undo can undo an undo. <sighs> I've reported all these bugs with not much in terms of answers. I've even tried contributing but it's a pretty messy codebase to get into. Ergh.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  Which extension do you use? I don’t use vim mode myself but I vaguely remember seeing a conversation about how, for some reason, the better vim plugin with the most favorites doesn’t appear on the top of the search results, and an inferior one is there instead.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    This one: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevi...
  - collinf 8y ago
    I've tried just about every single one and the best one is still the main one. It gets better just about every release similar to VSCode. Not saying it's perfect, but with all of the other VSCode benefits I find it so much better for productivity than plain Vim.
- platz 8y ago
  i agree with these observations
  - pc86 8y ago
    There is an upvote button so you can convey that appropriately :)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- jamesgeck0 8y ago
  The author of vscodevim is working on a new extension that uses NeoVim's remote UI client protocol. Accuracy and speed will hopefully go way up when that is finished. Unfortunately progress appears to have stalled somewhat. https://github.com/Chillee/VSCodeNeovim https://github.com/Chillee/VSCodeNeovim
  - kristofferc 8y ago
    I went back to "vanilla" NeoVim solely due to the slowness of the VSCode Vim plugin. Been watching the repo you linked a couple of times a month and always disheartened that nothing seems to happen.
- chillee 8y ago
  What's the bug that you have with `2d}`? It seems to work fine for me. There shouldn't be any reason that it reruns save upon entering/exiting insert mode; are you sure you don't have some kind of keybinding/other setting that's autosaving for you? The `<tab>` issue is kind of a pesky race condition that's most likely exacerbated by VSCodeVim running slowly on your computer. Speaking of it running slowly, I would argue against characterizing them as "slow". Some small subset of users seems to have consistently run into this issue, and a decently large subset of those users have realized that the issue is caused by some conflicting plugin, so I'd suggest trying that too. As for the undo issue, I have mixed feelings about it. Perhaps it could be synced with VSCode, but it's definitely true that when it was first implemented, VSCode did not provide the flexibility to do so. Overall, I do agree that there's stuff that can improved, but it kinda hurts to see people call them "atrocious". I suspect your main issue with VSCodeVim is really the "slowness" issue. I would try disabling other plugins and see whether it helps. EDIT: Forgot to mention. Disclaimer: I'm one of the primary maintainers for VSCodeVim.
  - tdfx 8y ago
    I use VSCodeVim every day and I just wanted to say thanks for your work. You made the switch to VSCode a lot easier for a lot of people.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    > Overall, I do agree that there's stuff that can improved, but it kinda hurts to see people call them "atrocious" Sorry :( I hate to be harsh and I don't want this to get you down, because I have a lot of admiration for the work you do (and this goes to any open source work I've ever criticized, really). So, thank you for your work. But... the usability is really bad. They would be completely fine in a vacuum if vim didn't exist, but the point of comparison exists and it's vim and vim is just crazy fast compared to vscode-vim, it's like comparing a racer... to a fighter jet. > What's the bug that you have with `2d}`? That only deletes one paragraph (like 1d}) instead of two. 3d} only deletes two, and so on. It's not consistent with vim. > There shouldn't be any reason that it reruns save upon entering/exiting insert mode shrug, I filed an issue about this a couple weeks ago after a decent bit of debugging. > I suspect your main issue with VSCodeVim is really the "slowness" issue ish, it's definitely the primary pain point but there's also lots of small bugs and inconsistencies with vim. And I understand that competing with vim itself is hard, but the other comparison point is for example pycharm's vim plugin and vscode's is far behind. Edit: And just to echo tdfx's point, without your bindings I wouldn't even be on vscode, so there's that :)
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  I had similar problems. Certain key combinations in vscode would cause the cursor to delete or corrupt large sections of my code and delete the undo history. After losing hours of work a few times, I went back to Vim. I really like the process of customizing my editors and having them work the same on all machines, even remote servers. (Vim for coding, and Emacs/Evil for Org Mode.)
rraval 8y ago
I would really love to ditch more of my nvim setup for vscode, but this bug [1] from 3 months ago absolutely wrecks my productivity. I rely on splits as the primary means to navigate the codebase and having a single cursor position per file is maddening! The vim bindings aren't perfect and are sometimes slow (you can see a macro insert things character by character) but about on-par with IdeaVim for the IntelliJ side feature wise. Maybe oni [2] will catch up before vscode fixes their issues but I eagerly await a decent language server modal editing setup. [1] https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/2688 https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/2688 [2] https://github.com/onivim/oni https://github.com/onivim/oni
- lingz 8y ago
  Yeah VSCode for Vim feels like they are slowly trying to implement a subset for VSCode. This kind of iterative approach doesn't strike me as a way to build something that will finally "feel right", and overcome these limitations. Perhaps some remote vim running actual nvim code with a minimal API bridge into VSCode is more appropriate?
  - jamesgeck0 8y ago
    The maintainer of vscodevim has done a lot of work on a plugin that uses such a bridge. :-)
  - ericmccarthy7 8y ago
    sounds like https://www.onivim.io/ https://www.onivim.io/ to me
- chillee 8y ago
  Ooohhh, this is something that I've been meaning to get back to... There was an atrociously bad "undoing work" issue that I popped out of hiatus to fix, and that bug was the cost of the fix. I meant to add proper support for that, but me not using splits that much (especially for the same file) as well as other commitments have prevented that.
fredsir 8y ago
> can benefit one a lot. What are those benefits? I tried to switch from vim to VSCode, and it just felt like it confined me. To be fair, I don't "run vim", per say, I run a shell with tmux inside, split horizontally in two, with vim on top, and two shells (a vertical split) underneath. The left shell on the bottom being used for miscellaneous things, and the right one running some kind of live code checking (with visual results also inside vim). This setup works great for both c, c++, python, haskell, rust, node and any other programming environment I use. I tried getting something along the lines with VSCode, but it confined me, and it felt like it wanted me to do things "its way", instead of letting me decide what I have found out works through years of experimentation. It's the same with jet brains and xcode and visual studie... It doesn't let me do things "my way" but instead forces me to do things its way, which, if I may say, is highly inferior. I have tried their ways and it's not good. Sorry for the rant.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Could you expand on what "Your way" is? I really really like VSCode for Python and never had the nerve to learn VIM, so I'm wondering what you do that causes it to be a fight.
  - fredsir 8y ago
    Well, the setup I mostly use looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/A9b3izE https://imgur.com/a/A9b3izE I've tried getting something like that going in VSCode, but even just switching between terminals and compiling and so on is just too confining. Whenever I've tried, there's always some part of it that doesn't let me easily do something, because it expects one to use it some other way. With a shell, tmux, vim and other CLI tools, it's all based on basic primitives that all function the same way and you can compose them as you like. It just works. You can't do that with VSCode or any other IDE. They all put limitations on you and if your preference doesn't fit its, you're out of luck.
    - shriek 8y ago
      This is pretty much why I haven't moved fully to VSCode as well. I gave it a try but I realized that my whole workspace is in terminal. Also, like you said the tools I have compliment to one another very well making it very flexible. The only thing I do miss when working in terminal is that whenever I'm working in markdown I wish it had dead simple preview like that in VSCode.

by vvpan 8y ago

scrollaway 8y ago

The vscode vim bindings are atrocious. I use them because there's nothing better, but they're bad. Slow, super buggy, and did I mention slow? I hit tab and sometimes instead of inserting a \t, it inserts the letters "<tab>". And it re-runs mypy/flake8/etc whenever I enter or exit insert mode, which I do a ton... so my CPU is constantly pegged. And commands like "2d}" don't delete the correct amount of paragraphs. And one more I forgot: The undo stacks aren't synced between vscode and vscode-vim, so vscode's undo can undo an undo. <sighs> I've reported all these bugs with not much in terms of answers. I've even tried contributing but it's a pretty messy codebase to get into. Ergh.

Analemma_ 8y ago
Which extension do you use? I don’t use vim mode myself but I vaguely remember seeing a conversation about how, for some reason, the better vim plugin with the most favorites doesn’t appear on the top of the search results, and an inferior one is there instead.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  This one: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevi...
- collinf 8y ago
  I've tried just about every single one and the best one is still the main one. It gets better just about every release similar to VSCode. Not saying it's perfect, but with all of the other VSCode benefits I find it so much better for productivity than plain Vim.
platz 8y ago
i agree with these observations
- pc86 8y ago
  There is an upvote button so you can convey that appropriately :)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
jamesgeck0 8y ago
The author of vscodevim is working on a new extension that uses NeoVim's remote UI client protocol. Accuracy and speed will hopefully go way up when that is finished. Unfortunately progress appears to have stalled somewhat. https://github.com/Chillee/VSCodeNeovim https://github.com/Chillee/VSCodeNeovim
- kristofferc 8y ago
  I went back to "vanilla" NeoVim solely due to the slowness of the VSCode Vim plugin. Been watching the repo you linked a couple of times a month and always disheartened that nothing seems to happen.
chillee 8y ago
What's the bug that you have with `2d}`? It seems to work fine for me. There shouldn't be any reason that it reruns save upon entering/exiting insert mode; are you sure you don't have some kind of keybinding/other setting that's autosaving for you? The `<tab>` issue is kind of a pesky race condition that's most likely exacerbated by VSCodeVim running slowly on your computer. Speaking of it running slowly, I would argue against characterizing them as "slow". Some small subset of users seems to have consistently run into this issue, and a decently large subset of those users have realized that the issue is caused by some conflicting plugin, so I'd suggest trying that too. As for the undo issue, I have mixed feelings about it. Perhaps it could be synced with VSCode, but it's definitely true that when it was first implemented, VSCode did not provide the flexibility to do so. Overall, I do agree that there's stuff that can improved, but it kinda hurts to see people call them "atrocious". I suspect your main issue with VSCodeVim is really the "slowness" issue. I would try disabling other plugins and see whether it helps. EDIT: Forgot to mention. Disclaimer: I'm one of the primary maintainers for VSCodeVim.
- tdfx 8y ago
  I use VSCodeVim every day and I just wanted to say thanks for your work. You made the switch to VSCode a lot easier for a lot of people.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  > Overall, I do agree that there's stuff that can improved, but it kinda hurts to see people call them "atrocious" Sorry :( I hate to be harsh and I don't want this to get you down, because I have a lot of admiration for the work you do (and this goes to any open source work I've ever criticized, really). So, thank you for your work. But... the usability is really bad. They would be completely fine in a vacuum if vim didn't exist, but the point of comparison exists and it's vim and vim is just crazy fast compared to vscode-vim, it's like comparing a racer... to a fighter jet. > What's the bug that you have with `2d}`? That only deletes one paragraph (like 1d}) instead of two. 3d} only deletes two, and so on. It's not consistent with vim. > There shouldn't be any reason that it reruns save upon entering/exiting insert mode shrug, I filed an issue about this a couple weeks ago after a decent bit of debugging. > I suspect your main issue with VSCodeVim is really the "slowness" issue ish, it's definitely the primary pain point but there's also lots of small bugs and inconsistencies with vim. And I understand that competing with vim itself is hard, but the other comparison point is for example pycharm's vim plugin and vscode's is far behind. Edit: And just to echo tdfx's point, without your bindings I wouldn't even be on vscode, so there's that :)
JoshMnem 8y ago
I had similar problems. Certain key combinations in vscode would cause the cursor to delete or corrupt large sections of my code and delete the undo history. After losing hours of work a few times, I went back to Vim. I really like the process of customizing my editors and having them work the same on all machines, even remote servers. (Vim for coding, and Emacs/Evil for Org Mode.)

rraval 8y ago

I would really love to ditch more of my nvim setup for vscode, but this bug [1] from 3 months ago absolutely wrecks my productivity. I rely on splits as the primary means to navigate the codebase and having a single cursor position per file is maddening! The vim bindings aren't perfect and are sometimes slow (you can see a macro insert things character by character) but about on-par with IdeaVim for the IntelliJ side feature wise. Maybe oni [2] will catch up before vscode fixes their issues but I eagerly await a decent language server modal editing setup. [1] https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/2688 https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/2688 [2] https://github.com/onivim/oni https://github.com/onivim/oni

lingz 8y ago
Yeah VSCode for Vim feels like they are slowly trying to implement a subset for VSCode. This kind of iterative approach doesn't strike me as a way to build something that will finally "feel right", and overcome these limitations. Perhaps some remote vim running actual nvim code with a minimal API bridge into VSCode is more appropriate?
- jamesgeck0 8y ago
  The maintainer of vscodevim has done a lot of work on a plugin that uses such a bridge. :-)
- ericmccarthy7 8y ago
  sounds like https://www.onivim.io/ https://www.onivim.io/ to me
chillee 8y ago
Ooohhh, this is something that I've been meaning to get back to... There was an atrociously bad "undoing work" issue that I popped out of hiatus to fix, and that bug was the cost of the fix. I meant to add proper support for that, but me not using splits that much (especially for the same file) as well as other commitments have prevented that.

fredsir 8y ago

> can benefit one a lot. What are those benefits? I tried to switch from vim to VSCode, and it just felt like it confined me. To be fair, I don't "run vim", per say, I run a shell with tmux inside, split horizontally in two, with vim on top, and two shells (a vertical split) underneath. The left shell on the bottom being used for miscellaneous things, and the right one running some kind of live code checking (with visual results also inside vim). This setup works great for both c, c++, python, haskell, rust, node and any other programming environment I use. I tried getting something along the lines with VSCode, but it confined me, and it felt like it wanted me to do things "its way", instead of letting me decide what I have found out works through years of experimentation. It's the same with jet brains and xcode and visual studie... It doesn't let me do things "my way" but instead forces me to do things its way, which, if I may say, is highly inferior. I have tried their ways and it's not good. Sorry for the rant.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Could you expand on what "Your way" is? I really really like VSCode for Python and never had the nerve to learn VIM, so I'm wondering what you do that causes it to be a fight.
- fredsir 8y ago
  Well, the setup I mostly use looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/A9b3izE https://imgur.com/a/A9b3izE I've tried getting something like that going in VSCode, but even just switching between terminals and compiling and so on is just too confining. Whenever I've tried, there's always some part of it that doesn't let me easily do something, because it expects one to use it some other way. With a shell, tmux, vim and other CLI tools, it's all based on basic primitives that all function the same way and you can compose them as you like. It just works. You can't do that with VSCode or any other IDE. They all put limitations on you and if your preference doesn't fit its, you're out of luck.
  - shriek 8y ago
    This is pretty much why I haven't moved fully to VSCode as well. I gave it a try but I realized that my whole workspace is in terminal. Also, like you said the tools I have compliment to one another very well making it very flexible. The only thing I do miss when working in terminal is that whenever I'm working in markdown I wish it had dead simple preview like that in VSCode.