5 ms·

I’ve been using Vim professionally for like ten years now and I can’t tell you what benefits do I get out it exactly. I still use a mouse and I don’t see what’s

I’ve been using Vim professionally for like ten years now and I can’t tell you what benefits do I get out it exactly. I still use a mouse and I don’t see what’s so bad about it.the whole home row argument has never been convincing.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
If you’ve been using Vim for 10 years, and still use the mouse, then you haven’t really been taking advantage of the power of Vim. Perhaps that’s why you don’t see much personal benefit?
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  No, I’ve been posting here for that long too. I haven’t been living under a rock. I got my own vimrc and everything, it’s just not that useful in practice.
pengaru 6y ago
This is like someone saying they've used a DSLR professionally for a decade and couldn't say what benefits they get out of it over a point and shoot because they've never done anything other than leave it in automatic mode. You owe it to yourself to explore and embrace the power of your tools as a professional. Vi(m) in particular requires a deliberate effort from the user to learn its features, because of how it stays out of the way by design. It's not trying to be discoverable at the expense of experienced users. Decades ago I tutored someone taking a C++ course who claimed to know vi and insisted on using it for the sessions. They knew how to use vi enough to be a notepad replacement, it was brutal to watch how much time they wasted neglecting to use any of vi's features at their fingertips. If you're navigating with a mouse or arrow keys, and treating vi as no more capable than notepad, you're not really using vi.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  I’m pretty good at using vim, There’s really nothing I don’t know, and I’ve watched tons of courses and read tons of tutorials. I got my own vimrc like plenty of people. But People still use macvim, and hit Apple S, and Use the mouse, I’m hardly the only one. See Yehudas “everyone who tried to teach me to use vim was wrong” When I was younger I cared more about it, but it’s all just yak shaving. What there isn’t are obvious benefits to keeping your fingers in the home row, just vastly overhyped anecdotes. By the way expert photographers will tell you that it’s not about the tools and that today’s phones are good enough. That’s one of the things that are annoying, I’m the dumb one for putting a dissenting opinion, but no one is willing to explain why using the mouse is worse, and definitely not in a way that satisfies me
  - aspaceman 6y ago
    Hey just wanna let you know that I'm a fellow Vim user that uses the mouse for practically everything. I like using Vim for editing, but my brain still likes to do the "context switch" where I dig into menus and such.
    - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
      That’s good to hear. Everyone’s pretending like any criticism of vim is obviously coming from incompetence.
slim 6y ago
do you use backspace to delete things ?
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  Cw, dw, I’m not dumb or unwilling to learn. It’s just not that useful day-to-day
aspaceman 6y ago
I really like how Vim is set up, even if I don't personally use the home row stuff. I just like the stability of the interface, its simplicity, and performance especially. I used to get really obsessed with editor stuff, then I realized I was wasting my time and that Vim was already installed on every machine - no additional install ever needed to set up the environment. I usually only ever add one or two lines to my vimrc (jj -> Esc). I like that it just works. If I ever need to do refactoring I'll download CLion and get the engine running and fans spinning. But I do more debugging and reading code than refactoring it.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  But just installing VSCode is simple too and in practice, it’s universal. I feel like people are self handicapping, specifically because the bottleneck in development is understanding, and not input speed. If I was to say what do I like about Vim is the modal interface, and really because to me if feels right, I cant say that it’s objectively better

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago

If you’ve been using Vim for 10 years, and still use the mouse, then you haven’t really been taking advantage of the power of Vim. Perhaps that’s why you don’t see much personal benefit?

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
No, I’ve been posting here for that long too. I haven’t been living under a rock. I got my own vimrc and everything, it’s just not that useful in practice.

pengaru 6y ago

This is like someone saying they've used a DSLR professionally for a decade and couldn't say what benefits they get out of it over a point and shoot because they've never done anything other than leave it in automatic mode. You owe it to yourself to explore and embrace the power of your tools as a professional. Vi(m) in particular requires a deliberate effort from the user to learn its features, because of how it stays out of the way by design. It's not trying to be discoverable at the expense of experienced users. Decades ago I tutored someone taking a C++ course who claimed to know vi and insisted on using it for the sessions. They knew how to use vi enough to be a notepad replacement, it was brutal to watch how much time they wasted neglecting to use any of vi's features at their fingertips. If you're navigating with a mouse or arrow keys, and treating vi as no more capable than notepad, you're not really using vi.

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
I’m pretty good at using vim, There’s really nothing I don’t know, and I’ve watched tons of courses and read tons of tutorials. I got my own vimrc like plenty of people. But People still use macvim, and hit Apple S, and Use the mouse, I’m hardly the only one. See Yehudas “everyone who tried to teach me to use vim was wrong” When I was younger I cared more about it, but it’s all just yak shaving. What there isn’t are obvious benefits to keeping your fingers in the home row, just vastly overhyped anecdotes. By the way expert photographers will tell you that it’s not about the tools and that today’s phones are good enough. That’s one of the things that are annoying, I’m the dumb one for putting a dissenting opinion, but no one is willing to explain why using the mouse is worse, and definitely not in a way that satisfies me
- aspaceman 6y ago
  Hey just wanna let you know that I'm a fellow Vim user that uses the mouse for practically everything. I like using Vim for editing, but my brain still likes to do the "context switch" where I dig into menus and such.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    That’s good to hear. Everyone’s pretending like any criticism of vim is obviously coming from incompetence.

slim 6y ago

do you use backspace to delete things ?

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
Cw, dw, I’m not dumb or unwilling to learn. It’s just not that useful day-to-day

aspaceman 6y ago

I really like how Vim is set up, even if I don't personally use the home row stuff. I just like the stability of the interface, its simplicity, and performance especially. I used to get really obsessed with editor stuff, then I realized I was wasting my time and that Vim was already installed on every machine - no additional install ever needed to set up the environment. I usually only ever add one or two lines to my vimrc (jj -> Esc). I like that it just works. If I ever need to do refactoring I'll download CLion and get the engine running and fans spinning. But I do more debugging and reading code than refactoring it.

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
But just installing VSCode is simple too and in practice, it’s universal. I feel like people are self handicapping, specifically because the bottleneck in development is understanding, and not input speed. If I was to say what do I like about Vim is the modal interface, and really because to me if feels right, I cant say that it’s objectively better