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A major use case this articles misses is having to manipulate files on a remote server. When you’re SSH’ing into your server, VIM is incredibly efficient to ma

by shrumm 7y ago

A major use case this articles misses is having to manipulate files on a remote server. When you’re SSH’ing into your server, VIM is incredibly efficient to make quick edits.

mxschumacher 7y ago
When running large production systems in the cloud, is quick fiddling with files via SSH really such a common occurrence in 2019?
- meddlepal 7y ago
  Making permanent edits? No. For debugging a b0rked system, yes. Unfortunately not every system is always optimally monitored if there are lots of teams so you sometimes need to get to the [Virtual]Machine and poke around.
- freeplay 7y ago
  You try not to but sometimes when stuff is on fire, you have no choice. Making a change to your cookbook/playbook/Dockerfile/<insert other automation verbage>, submitting a PR, waiting on a new build and deploying doesn't always cut it time wise. Once in a while you need to just get in, make the change, and backfill the code changes in your build pipeline.
- itomato 7y ago
  Until such a time as SystemD or Docker replace the standard shell.
- scarecrowbob 7y ago
  Every freekin day. I do a lot of WordPress hosting for large-ish non-software clients running one-off webservers that were setup by who knows years ago. I certainly can and have automated stuff... but when I get a client who already has hosting setup, they just want me to manage it, not rebuild it. As a sibling comment mentions, a lot of that is troubleshooting... But making changes to stuff in /etc is an extremely common case where I just ssh in and use vim. None of these clients have documentation on how the server was setup, much less any sort of way to set one up automatically. So there is a lot of "hey, can you up the max_file_upload for PHP" or "add a link to the hard-coded footer menu in our Drupal install". And even when they want me to setup new stuff, they prefer me to just deploy a new instance and give them notes on whatever I do to it. Since these are 1-off things (like a server running some video conferencing or file management), there's not a lot of utility in build a script in BASH or ansible or whatever to build the server. I'm a dev and the only one at the buisness where I work, so I'd be stoked to hear about some better way of doing work. But really, spending time in an SSH and configin stuff with vim seems like the fast, lightweight path for most of the work I do.
h1d 7y ago
vim is no longer an editor for devs but for system admins. I haven't used it to edit codes for maybe 10 years now that there are better alternatives having been through from SublimeText to Atom to IntelliJ now. (Yeah, missed VS code time.)

by shrumm 7y ago

A major use case this articles misses is having to manipulate files on a remote server. When you’re SSH’ing into your server, VIM is incredibly efficient to make quick edits.

mxschumacher 7y ago

When running large production systems in the cloud, is quick fiddling with files via SSH really such a common occurrence in 2019?

meddlepal 7y ago
Making permanent edits? No. For debugging a b0rked system, yes. Unfortunately not every system is always optimally monitored if there are lots of teams so you sometimes need to get to the [Virtual]Machine and poke around.
freeplay 7y ago
You try not to but sometimes when stuff is on fire, you have no choice. Making a change to your cookbook/playbook/Dockerfile/<insert other automation verbage>, submitting a PR, waiting on a new build and deploying doesn't always cut it time wise. Once in a while you need to just get in, make the change, and backfill the code changes in your build pipeline.
itomato 7y ago
Until such a time as SystemD or Docker replace the standard shell.
scarecrowbob 7y ago
Every freekin day. I do a lot of WordPress hosting for large-ish non-software clients running one-off webservers that were setup by who knows years ago. I certainly can and have automated stuff... but when I get a client who already has hosting setup, they just want me to manage it, not rebuild it. As a sibling comment mentions, a lot of that is troubleshooting... But making changes to stuff in /etc is an extremely common case where I just ssh in and use vim. None of these clients have documentation on how the server was setup, much less any sort of way to set one up automatically. So there is a lot of "hey, can you up the max_file_upload for PHP" or "add a link to the hard-coded footer menu in our Drupal install". And even when they want me to setup new stuff, they prefer me to just deploy a new instance and give them notes on whatever I do to it. Since these are 1-off things (like a server running some video conferencing or file management), there's not a lot of utility in build a script in BASH or ansible or whatever to build the server. I'm a dev and the only one at the buisness where I work, so I'd be stoked to hear about some better way of doing work. But really, spending time in an SSH and configin stuff with vim seems like the fast, lightweight path for most of the work I do.

h1d 7y ago

vim is no longer an editor for devs but for system admins. I haven't used it to edit codes for maybe 10 years now that there are better alternatives having been through from SublimeText to Atom to IntelliJ now. (Yeah, missed VS code time.)