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Even if you are very good at vim, it's still debatable. The thing is, vim forces you to do a lot of stuff that the machine could do for you. E.G: you need to r

Even if you are very good at vim, it's still debatable. The thing is, vim forces you to do a lot of stuff that the machine could do for you. E.G: you need to remember states and how to transition between those states. Plus the human mind sucks at context switching. All in all, this adds up, and there is a limit to the cognitive load you can accumulate. You only have one brain and you need to share it between all tasks, including solving the problem at hand and using tools to do so. Half of my income comes from training professionals on site. Experience taugh me that every time somebody uses vim, 4 things will happen: - the person will be one of the best of the team - the person will have some weird bug/config problem/compat issue at some point and will waste time fixing it at least once during the training, swearing it never happens (also the person with vim usually has a very custom setup so this compounds) - at the end of each day, the person will be one of the most exhausted, and will make way more mistakes than the others compare to the morning baseline - at equal technical level, the person with vscode/sublime/jetbrain will be faster on average. Maybe not the first hour. But it will come. So, yes. Vim may be fun. It may suit your workflow and ecosystem, and even your sense of aesthetic. But I don't buy the productivity boost.

appleiigs 8y ago
Do you have examples of the bug/config/compat issues? I get those problems with an IDE, not Vim. IDE is always trying to lint, debug, run stuff... mix that with virtual environments and what a mess. With vim being on every system, i don't really carry much baggage around. I have my vim settings file in cloud storage. And maybe one pluggin (NERDTree) on my main machine.
- sametmax 8y ago
  No, I never, ever look at the source of the problem nor the solution. I've used vim for 15 years, but I don't have time for this, so I don't customize anything, and if somebody has a problem, the person is responsible for fixing it. I'm not even waiting on people with Vim problems anymore during the lectures. I just go on, they will catch up.
nickjj 8y ago
OP here. What I'm noticing is that Vim kind of helps you not have to switch contexts. For example, let's say you want to put the cursor next to a specific word in a sentence. If you use the mouse, now you need to stop writing, goto the mouse, find your mouse pointer, look at the mouse pointer, then move the mouse to the word you want to be at, click the mouse and start typing again. I'm an avid gamer. I'm super used to this. I can move my mouse at pixel precision and do it very quickly, but even if it's fast, it's still a context switch. With Vim, it almost feels like Vim itself is another input device that's almost a mind control device. I can just direct my eyes to the word I want to move to, hit 3 keys and then have my cursor jump directly to it (by using vim-sneak and pressing any 2 characters of the word). Even if doing this is only equal speed to the mouse, it's still a win in my book because it feels less of a context switch. Plus if you want to talk about mistakes, looking at the word you want to jump to instead of your mouse cursor forces you to look at the word, so you have 1 more chance of avoiding a spelling mistake -- although to be fair, most editors including Vim can visually show you these errors.
- p1esk 8y ago
  by using vim-sneak and pressing any 2 characters of the word wow, that's pretty cool!
astrobe_ 8y ago
I have trouble making work together "one of the best of the team" and "one of the most exhausted". It seems weird to me that the "best" persons use a tool that so obviously drag them down (don't they realize they are more exhausted, slower and make more mistakes at the end of the day?) I believe that there may be some post hoc, ergo propter hoc at play here. For instance did you include the age of the persons in your observations? It wouldn't be surprising that the persons choosing vim are a bit older on average, and then one could think that they have a bit less stamina and are exhaust faster? Or maybe they are actually doing more, like spending part of their energy helping others? That's also a pattern you can see often in group training sessions. Also, you mentioned that you won't help them with the "weird issues" they usually have with vim. Do you apply the same treatment to non-vim users?
- sametmax 8y ago
  Here is HN for you: if you don't agree with somebody experience, ask the person to provide a study.
  - flocial 8y ago
    The dreaded "show me your sources" question. Of course this can lead to non-specialists trading flawed studies based on skimming the abstract which adds marginal value. That being said one person's anecdote supporting a highly subjective opinion deserves to be torn to shreds without ample evidence or at least better context.
  - astrobe_ 8y ago
    I simply asked three questions on your experience. Why this defensive stance?
learc83 8y ago
Unless you're keeping a written log of who is using what editor and comparing it to some kind of objective metric, this is almost definitely a case of confirmation bias. There's no way that literally every person using vim is having these kinds of problems. Even if the correlation is real, there's just no way that difference between using vim and using something else is so great that it's causing people to exhaust themselves, so best case scenario there's some hidden variable causing it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kolme 8y ago
> vim forces you to do a lot of stuff that the machine could do for you. I don't think that makes any sense at all. If anything Vim does a lot for me because it's programmable. When doing heavy editing, the whole point is the automation does the heavy lifting. Switching modes doesn't have any cognitive load effects that I can notice. The cursor changes the shape for example, so you instantly know what to do. It's pretty much second nature. What you're describing is a novice or clumsy Vim user. I don't know what "compatibility problems" should have a text editor, but I haven't had any in many years. > So, yes. Vim may be fun. [...] But I don't buy the productivity boost. Kind of condescending, really. Thinking that Vim is a toy and all users are using it for the heck of it, when they could be more productive otherwise.
hajile 8y ago
vi is a set of controls -- NOT a specific editor. Emacs, vi, vim, neovim, <misc_vi_clone>, sublime, intelliJ, kate, VS Code, etc all have vi controls. Give me VS Code with the Vim plugin and I'll code circles around someone using the standard controls simply because it takes so little effort to do most complex things and if a mouse actually makes things faster, I can use that too.

appleiigs 8y ago

Do you have examples of the bug/config/compat issues? I get those problems with an IDE, not Vim. IDE is always trying to lint, debug, run stuff... mix that with virtual environments and what a mess. With vim being on every system, i don't really carry much baggage around. I have my vim settings file in cloud storage. And maybe one pluggin (NERDTree) on my main machine.

sametmax 8y ago
No, I never, ever look at the source of the problem nor the solution. I've used vim for 15 years, but I don't have time for this, so I don't customize anything, and if somebody has a problem, the person is responsible for fixing it. I'm not even waiting on people with Vim problems anymore during the lectures. I just go on, they will catch up.

nickjj 8y ago

OP here. What I'm noticing is that Vim kind of helps you not have to switch contexts. For example, let's say you want to put the cursor next to a specific word in a sentence. If you use the mouse, now you need to stop writing, goto the mouse, find your mouse pointer, look at the mouse pointer, then move the mouse to the word you want to be at, click the mouse and start typing again. I'm an avid gamer. I'm super used to this. I can move my mouse at pixel precision and do it very quickly, but even if it's fast, it's still a context switch. With Vim, it almost feels like Vim itself is another input device that's almost a mind control device. I can just direct my eyes to the word I want to move to, hit 3 keys and then have my cursor jump directly to it (by using vim-sneak and pressing any 2 characters of the word). Even if doing this is only equal speed to the mouse, it's still a win in my book because it feels less of a context switch. Plus if you want to talk about mistakes, looking at the word you want to jump to instead of your mouse cursor forces you to look at the word, so you have 1 more chance of avoiding a spelling mistake -- although to be fair, most editors including Vim can visually show you these errors.

p1esk 8y ago
by using vim-sneak and pressing any 2 characters of the word wow, that's pretty cool!

astrobe_ 8y ago

I have trouble making work together "one of the best of the team" and "one of the most exhausted". It seems weird to me that the "best" persons use a tool that so obviously drag them down (don't they realize they are more exhausted, slower and make more mistakes at the end of the day?) I believe that there may be some post hoc, ergo propter hoc at play here. For instance did you include the age of the persons in your observations? It wouldn't be surprising that the persons choosing vim are a bit older on average, and then one could think that they have a bit less stamina and are exhaust faster? Or maybe they are actually doing more, like spending part of their energy helping others? That's also a pattern you can see often in group training sessions. Also, you mentioned that you won't help them with the "weird issues" they usually have with vim. Do you apply the same treatment to non-vim users?

sametmax 8y ago
Here is HN for you: if you don't agree with somebody experience, ask the person to provide a study.
- flocial 8y ago
  The dreaded "show me your sources" question. Of course this can lead to non-specialists trading flawed studies based on skimming the abstract which adds marginal value. That being said one person's anecdote supporting a highly subjective opinion deserves to be torn to shreds without ample evidence or at least better context.
- astrobe_ 8y ago
  I simply asked three questions on your experience. Why this defensive stance?

learc83 8y ago

Unless you're keeping a written log of who is using what editor and comparing it to some kind of objective metric, this is almost definitely a case of confirmation bias. There's no way that literally every person using vim is having these kinds of problems. Even if the correlation is real, there's just no way that difference between using vim and using something else is so great that it's causing people to exhaust themselves, so best case scenario there's some hidden variable causing it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kolme 8y ago

> vim forces you to do a lot of stuff that the machine could do for you. I don't think that makes any sense at all. If anything Vim does a lot for me because it's programmable. When doing heavy editing, the whole point is the automation does the heavy lifting. Switching modes doesn't have any cognitive load effects that I can notice. The cursor changes the shape for example, so you instantly know what to do. It's pretty much second nature. What you're describing is a novice or clumsy Vim user. I don't know what "compatibility problems" should have a text editor, but I haven't had any in many years. > So, yes. Vim may be fun. [...] But I don't buy the productivity boost. Kind of condescending, really. Thinking that Vim is a toy and all users are using it for the heck of it, when they could be more productive otherwise.

hajile 8y ago

vi is a set of controls -- NOT a specific editor. Emacs, vi, vim, neovim, <misc_vi_clone>, sublime, intelliJ, kate, VS Code, etc all have vi controls. Give me VS Code with the Vim plugin and I'll code circles around someone using the standard controls simply because it takes so little effort to do most complex things and if a mouse actually makes things faster, I can use that too.