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> The power of vim is that it lowers a lot of more complex edits to the subconscious level: swapping two lines is three keystrokes, so it's a simple enough proc

> The power of vim is that it lowers a lot of more complex edits to the subconscious level: swapping two lines is three keystrokes, so it's a simple enough process that I don't have to think about it. But it's not. In a modern editor, swapping two lines is ctrl-shift-up for swapping up, or ctrl-shift-down for swapping down. Vim isn't that much more powerful any more compared to modern code editors, it's just weirder. > I've known Notepad++ users who were faster Ruby programmers than me--I could certainly edit faster with vim So were you a faster typer? How was it faster? I find there's two points that get me speed in a code editor: Language specific shortcuts (like go to definition) and multi-cursor editing for editing formulas and the like. But I'm not sure if Notepad++ has multi-cursor. I'm not sure if vim does, either? I know you can do stuff whose result is very similar to as if you were multi-cursor editing, but do you actually get intuitive methods to place multiple cursors in various ways and then interactively edit what's there while seeing it change? Because that's no longer a "nice to have". There's a huge difference between formulating an incantation in your head firing, and seeing if the result is right--that gets really complex with multiple edit points--and doing it interactively. You actually see a block of code grow and unfold interactively as you edit it. And it doesnt involve regular expressions :) (which are cool, but almost never fail to take my mind completely off the problem at hand, I only benefit if it operates on a pretty large chunk of text)

kd5bjo 7y ago
You won’t ever catch me saying that vanilla vim is the best editor out there but it’s sufficient, as are all of the others you named. At some point, the bottleneck becomes thinking up the correct solution and not the data entry. In my opinion, we passed that point at least a decade ago; even if you reduced the amount of data entry effort to zero, it’ll make little difference in my overall efficiency as a programmer.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  Exactly, you said it better than I did.
kerkeslager 7y ago
> But it's not. In a modern editor, swapping two lines is ctrl-shift-up for swapping up, or ctrl-shift-down for swapping down. Sure, if you really hate your hands. ;) > So were you a faster typer? How was it faster? Maybe I just was a faster typist. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to the point: if your text editor gets out of the way enough that text editing isn't your bottleneck, then all time spent optimizing your text editor usage is completely wasted. My argument isn't "vim is better than Notepad++", my argument is "vim in the default configuration is good enough to not be a bottleneck". Notepad++ may be good enough to not be a bottleneck either--I haven't used it enough to have an opinion. > Language specific shortcuts (like go to definition) I would argue that this is more of an IDE feature than a text editor feature. > multi-cursor editing for editing formulas and the like. I'm not sure what you mean here. There's two things I do in vim which might be what you're talking about: splits so I can be in two parts of the same file at once, or splits where I have a REPL open and am editing fragments in one half of the screen while running them in the other half of the screen. But if you're talking about something else, I'd like to understand it so I can learn how to do it in vim. ;)

kd5bjo 7y ago

You won’t ever catch me saying that vanilla vim is the best editor out there but it’s sufficient, as are all of the others you named. At some point, the bottleneck becomes thinking up the correct solution and not the data entry. In my opinion, we passed that point at least a decade ago; even if you reduced the amount of data entry effort to zero, it’ll make little difference in my overall efficiency as a programmer.

kerkeslager 7y ago
Exactly, you said it better than I did.

kerkeslager 7y ago

> But it's not. In a modern editor, swapping two lines is ctrl-shift-up for swapping up, or ctrl-shift-down for swapping down. Sure, if you really hate your hands. ;) > So were you a faster typer? How was it faster? Maybe I just was a faster typist. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to the point: if your text editor gets out of the way enough that text editing isn't your bottleneck, then all time spent optimizing your text editor usage is completely wasted. My argument isn't "vim is better than Notepad++", my argument is "vim in the default configuration is good enough to not be a bottleneck". Notepad++ may be good enough to not be a bottleneck either--I haven't used it enough to have an opinion. > Language specific shortcuts (like go to definition) I would argue that this is more of an IDE feature than a text editor feature. > multi-cursor editing for editing formulas and the like. I'm not sure what you mean here. There's two things I do in vim which might be what you're talking about: splits so I can be in two parts of the same file at once, or splits where I have a REPL open and am editing fragments in one half of the screen while running them in the other half of the screen. But if you're talking about something else, I'd like to understand it so I can learn how to do it in vim. ;)