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i see people struggling, fighting with Intelli-J every day. I wish I could give them vim as a gift. All the extra stuff you think you can't possibly give up you

i see people struggling, fighting with Intelli-J every day. I wish I could give them vim as a gift. All the extra stuff you think you can't possibly give up you don't need. I'm a professional text file editor. Vim is like playing the piano. I guess what I'm saying is learn to play the piano for real, and don't spend your life in a piano-player-helper IDE thing.

mda 8y ago
Sure, but I bet Intellij is a bit better when it comes to debugging java applications. A good IDE beats the crap out of Vim for a lot of tasks.
- flukus 8y ago
  > Sure, but I bet Intellij is a bit better when it comes to debugging java applications. I don't know about intelliJ specifically, but a good debugger beats the crap off the limited interface an IDE provides to them. It looks like IntelliJ only offers basic breakpoint/step through, etc. For a quick overview of what you're missing out on checkout "Give me 15 minute and I'll change you min on GDB": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PorfLSr3DDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PorfLSr3DDI (hopefully the right video, can't check at work)
chimpburger 8y ago
We have this and it works very well https://github.com/JetBrains/ideavim https://github.com/JetBrains/ideavim Plain Vim does not have the semantic / refactoring capabilities of a real IDE. This plugin gives the best of both worlds.
greysonp 8y ago
Vim is a fantastic text editor, but it is not an IDE replacement. Here's just a few IntelliJ features I use daily that Vim doesn't have: Go to declaration, find usages, rename method/class, change method signature, auto-import, shortcut to override method, easy-to-configure style rules, really good code completion, quick access to javadoc. I could keep going. Again, not hating on Vim. I use Vim keybindings in IntelliJ! I just don't think it's the best tool for working in large codebases.
- perryao 8y ago
  I think the future on this front is looking pretty bright. I use the awesome vim-go plugin which has support for the features you mentioned. And it's getting better as gopls (the language server) gets finalized. As the Language Server Protocol and the Build Server Protocol develop, I think we'll start to see Vim more closely resemble an IDE for many languages. I use Vim because I love the history behind it and love knowing that investing my time in learning it is unlikely ever to go to waste. It's a solid editor and also helps keep me as close to understanding the ins and outs of my system and build tools. And for better or worse I just enjoy figuring out the best way to configure things exactly how I want them.
- chimpburger 8y ago
  Vim was designed for editing _text_. It was not designed for semantic analysis of _code_. The semantic plugins for Vim are hacky addons. Having Vim bindings in IntelliJ is indeed the best of both worlds.
  - ephimetheus 8y ago
    How do you get IntelliJ to not shred your CPU to pieces while indexing all the time?
    - chimpburger 8y ago
      It should not be indexing all the time. Only when you load a new project.
- 6keZbCECT2uB 8y ago
  I imagine there are probably IDEs out there with low-friction searching, highlighting, diffing, replacing, block operations, and convenient macros, but I never ran into those features in the IDEs that I've used. I also expect there are probably IDEs out there that don't crash on code bases larger than a GB and code bases which can't be compiled locally, but I haven't used those ones. >> Here's just a few IntelliJ features I use daily that Vim doesn't have: vim is intended to work with an operating system. The following assumes C or C++ since that's what I use. Maybe someone will find this list of equivalents useful? 1. Go to declaration: I use ctags which is built into vim. clangd can do better, but I've never bothered. 2. find usages: ctags also has support for this I think. 3. rename method/class: I haven't needed to rename something that wasn't exclusively in one file yet, but I expect clang-rename works well. 4. change method signature: not sure what this does. If it's just changing the declaration of the function, that seems pretty easy. ci( 5. auto-import: This one seems harder to get, but I never noticed it wasn't there. For in-project stuff, I just jump to definition. For standard library stuff, it's standard library. 6. shortcut to override method: I don't do much inheritance, so I never really noticed. This seems pretty easy to do a hack job with a macro and jump to definition. 7. easy-to-configure style rules: clang-format 8. really good code completion: basic autocomplete is built into vim. clangd is probably pretty good, but I don't usually need autocomplete. 9. quick access to javadoc: cppman is pretty good. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2272759/looking-up-c-documentation-inside-of-vim https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2272759/looking-up-c-doc... Maybe the state of tooling for Java isn't as openly accessible outside of an IDE and isn't as good for vim as C++? If using an IDE works well for you, great. I like using vim because it's lightweight, has good support for different file endings and large files, scales to any size code base I've encountered, and it gets out of my way. I feel like it's optimized enough that my brain is the limiter.

mda 8y ago

Sure, but I bet Intellij is a bit better when it comes to debugging java applications. A good IDE beats the crap out of Vim for a lot of tasks.

flukus 8y ago
> Sure, but I bet Intellij is a bit better when it comes to debugging java applications. I don't know about intelliJ specifically, but a good debugger beats the crap off the limited interface an IDE provides to them. It looks like IntelliJ only offers basic breakpoint/step through, etc. For a quick overview of what you're missing out on checkout "Give me 15 minute and I'll change you min on GDB": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PorfLSr3DDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PorfLSr3DDI (hopefully the right video, can't check at work)

chimpburger 8y ago

We have this and it works very well https://github.com/JetBrains/ideavim https://github.com/JetBrains/ideavim Plain Vim does not have the semantic / refactoring capabilities of a real IDE. This plugin gives the best of both worlds.

greysonp 8y ago

Vim is a fantastic text editor, but it is not an IDE replacement. Here's just a few IntelliJ features I use daily that Vim doesn't have: Go to declaration, find usages, rename method/class, change method signature, auto-import, shortcut to override method, easy-to-configure style rules, really good code completion, quick access to javadoc. I could keep going. Again, not hating on Vim. I use Vim keybindings in IntelliJ! I just don't think it's the best tool for working in large codebases.

perryao 8y ago
I think the future on this front is looking pretty bright. I use the awesome vim-go plugin which has support for the features you mentioned. And it's getting better as gopls (the language server) gets finalized. As the Language Server Protocol and the Build Server Protocol develop, I think we'll start to see Vim more closely resemble an IDE for many languages. I use Vim because I love the history behind it and love knowing that investing my time in learning it is unlikely ever to go to waste. It's a solid editor and also helps keep me as close to understanding the ins and outs of my system and build tools. And for better or worse I just enjoy figuring out the best way to configure things exactly how I want them.
chimpburger 8y ago
Vim was designed for editing _text_. It was not designed for semantic analysis of _code_. The semantic plugins for Vim are hacky addons. Having Vim bindings in IntelliJ is indeed the best of both worlds.
- ephimetheus 8y ago
  How do you get IntelliJ to not shred your CPU to pieces while indexing all the time?
  - chimpburger 8y ago
    It should not be indexing all the time. Only when you load a new project.
6keZbCECT2uB 8y ago
I imagine there are probably IDEs out there with low-friction searching, highlighting, diffing, replacing, block operations, and convenient macros, but I never ran into those features in the IDEs that I've used. I also expect there are probably IDEs out there that don't crash on code bases larger than a GB and code bases which can't be compiled locally, but I haven't used those ones. >> Here's just a few IntelliJ features I use daily that Vim doesn't have: vim is intended to work with an operating system. The following assumes C or C++ since that's what I use. Maybe someone will find this list of equivalents useful? 1. Go to declaration: I use ctags which is built into vim. clangd can do better, but I've never bothered. 2. find usages: ctags also has support for this I think. 3. rename method/class: I haven't needed to rename something that wasn't exclusively in one file yet, but I expect clang-rename works well. 4. change method signature: not sure what this does. If it's just changing the declaration of the function, that seems pretty easy. ci( 5. auto-import: This one seems harder to get, but I never noticed it wasn't there. For in-project stuff, I just jump to definition. For standard library stuff, it's standard library. 6. shortcut to override method: I don't do much inheritance, so I never really noticed. This seems pretty easy to do a hack job with a macro and jump to definition. 7. easy-to-configure style rules: clang-format 8. really good code completion: basic autocomplete is built into vim. clangd is probably pretty good, but I don't usually need autocomplete. 9. quick access to javadoc: cppman is pretty good. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2272759/looking-up-c-documentation-inside-of-vim https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2272759/looking-up-c-doc... Maybe the state of tooling for Java isn't as openly accessible outside of an IDE and isn't as good for vim as C++? If using an IDE works well for you, great. I like using vim because it's lightweight, has good support for different file endings and large files, scales to any size code base I've encountered, and it gets out of my way. I feel like it's optimized enough that my brain is the limiter.