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"Switching" seems like a strong reaction, but there's something to the feeling the author describes. I use vim quite a lot, every day. I also use IntelliJ IDEA

"Switching" seems like a strong reaction, but there's something to the feeling the author describes. I use vim quite a lot, every day. I also use IntelliJ IDEA every day. And yes, there's a bit of mental switching I do, and every now and then I use vim navigation keys while in IDEA, but generally it works for me. Different tools for different jobs. Then again, I have no trouble loading reasonably large documents in vim, so maybe I don't have mine quite as customized as the author. BUT I relate to the feeling of not being quite sure that all of my customization are quite enough, of not using vim to its full potential. Or even 10% of its potential.

cashewchoo 6y ago
I'm the same way. The wires don't really seem to ever get crossed for me. When I'm using intelliJ, I honestly find that I'm not really typing all that much. I'm either reading/navigating code (and therefore ctrl-clicking on identifiers or using shortcuts for finding usages etc), or typing in a pretty linear fashion that is the sort of thing I'd be in insert mode for the entire block anyway. So when I spend most of my time navigating/reading, it feels really good to have a robust first-class experience with the relevant features in your chosen environment. I know vim can do all that stuff, but it's all tacked on and never (IME) doesn't feel tasked on. Whereas the IDE understands the semantics (the AST) in a way that vim/ctags likely never will. Some of this is particularly strong due to the language I use most - Java - where the IDE is nearly bulletproof in terms of finding exactly, only, and all real usages of identifiers (it won't ever get confused by two different identifiers with the same name) which isn't true for pycharm/python (though it does a good job honestly, but you can't blindly trust it like you can with intelliJ). I could see how someone would find pycharm not quite as much of a win over ctags, though IMO it still is. [edit] That said, I still use vim quite a lot. I wouldn't use anything else for editing config files or just examining text content. Especially since you can pipe to it - seldom a day goes by when I don't "| vim -" instead of less or anything else.
- scns 6y ago
  Piping into vim is new to me, thanks for the tip.
  - creata 6y ago
    It's not just vim, either — most command-line tools let you write "-" where you'd usually write a filename, which tells them to use stdin as the file.
jolmg 6y ago
> BUT I relate to the feeling of not being quite sure that all of my customization are quite enough, of not using vim to its full potential. Or even 10% of its potential. There's a lot of built-in features in vim without requiring the installation of plugins. So, you might not need to customize it at all to use more of its potential, just read the manual.

cashewchoo 6y ago

I'm the same way. The wires don't really seem to ever get crossed for me. When I'm using intelliJ, I honestly find that I'm not really typing all that much. I'm either reading/navigating code (and therefore ctrl-clicking on identifiers or using shortcuts for finding usages etc), or typing in a pretty linear fashion that is the sort of thing I'd be in insert mode for the entire block anyway. So when I spend most of my time navigating/reading, it feels really good to have a robust first-class experience with the relevant features in your chosen environment. I know vim can do all that stuff, but it's all tacked on and never (IME) doesn't feel tasked on. Whereas the IDE understands the semantics (the AST) in a way that vim/ctags likely never will. Some of this is particularly strong due to the language I use most - Java - where the IDE is nearly bulletproof in terms of finding exactly, only, and all real usages of identifiers (it won't ever get confused by two different identifiers with the same name) which isn't true for pycharm/python (though it does a good job honestly, but you can't blindly trust it like you can with intelliJ). I could see how someone would find pycharm not quite as much of a win over ctags, though IMO it still is. [edit] That said, I still use vim quite a lot. I wouldn't use anything else for editing config files or just examining text content. Especially since you can pipe to it - seldom a day goes by when I don't "| vim -" instead of less or anything else.

scns 6y ago
Piping into vim is new to me, thanks for the tip.
- creata 6y ago
  It's not just vim, either — most command-line tools let you write "-" where you'd usually write a filename, which tells them to use stdin as the file.

jolmg 6y ago

> BUT I relate to the feeling of not being quite sure that all of my customization are quite enough, of not using vim to its full potential. Or even 10% of its potential. There's a lot of built-in features in vim without requiring the installation of plugins. So, you might not need to customize it at all to use more of its potential, just read the manual.