8 ms·

> My current theory is vim users are like vegans/gluten free/paleo/etc, in that its a personal choice that some are public about. This is not a good theory. Su

by gtsop 6y ago

> My current theory is vim users are like vegans/gluten free/paleo/etc, in that its a personal choice that some are public about. This is not a good theory. Surely, this effect appears wherever you've got conflicting choices about what is best, but there are always reasonable arguments on why you should do X over Y. And you know, there are always people who respect other's choices. I am a vim user and I 100% understand why others don't want to get into it. I don't bully them, I will explain only once why I think it is a better environment and then they are free to carry on with their lives and so am i. People who are extremely attached to their choices are (to me) unable to understand that every tool is for a job && different people have different needs. This shouldn't lead us to label a group of users and ignoring the pros and cons of smth

greggman3 6y ago
I am curious if any vim user has ever been able to see the benefits of other environments. I know I have never been able to see the benefits of vim. Part of me wants to give a try for 3-6 months just to prove to myself that it's all bullshit and that vim is just another editor. In any case. For a long time I was a fan of my editor of choice, slickedit. It definitely has a few features I use for which I don't know the analogs in most other editors. Features like versions backups. Undo of multi-file search and replace. Also once had someone show me IntelliJ for C++ and was fairly impressed with its refactoring features. Enough that I thought I should look more into it. I have yet to see a feature for vim that makes it clear win over any other major editor. I have read articles that make me understand why others might like it but seriously. I think you're all deluding yourselves. Just as an example, lately I mostly do JavaScript and a little typescript. I'm 100% sure that the VSCode experience there out of the box is superior to vim for the same purpose. VSCode is node aware, browser aware, npm aware, eslint aware, typescript aware out of the box. I have no idea how much configuration I'd have to do in vim to get it to match and I find all of that invaluable. I'm not saying vim can't do it but I am saying if I tried to start using vim today on the projects I'm working on the experience would be seriously inferior. I don't know what language I'd have to be using to change that.
- alvarosevilla95 6y ago
  You should read about the language server protocol. As it continues to become the standard vim will match most IDE-specific features while keeping all the benefits of using vim, which if you can't see I won't bother listing here. I'm already working on java 100% from vim and I don't miss a thing from intellij
  - HowTheStoryEnds 6y ago
    Would you mind elaborating a bit on that for those of us not in the loop, like myself? Which plugins are you using?
    - gen220 6y ago
      Not the OP, but the plugins you want to look up are ALE and coc. I've used ALE for a while and love it, but coc is the new kid on the block that often shows up in discussions of LSP. ALE is very tunable, so it's good for us performance-nuts who don't want anything slowing down their editor without their permission. coc takes a more batteries-included approach, and will allow you to hit the ground running / see the light sooner.
- theonemind 6y ago
  I got pretty good with vim. I'd say it was the fastest I could ever edit text. It really can be insanely fast for editing text but ultimately, I don't like vim. I don't spend that much time literally editing text, like a copy editor. I spend much more time typing and thinking, and very little editing. I can touch type both QWERTY and Dvorak. I usually type Dvorak, and the longer I type QWERTY, the more I get this mental fatigue of continually overriding what my fingers wanted to do. Using vim gives me a tinge of that feeling, that I wouldn't recognize as a hint of that feeling if I didn't know how the bigger version of the feeling feels after a day of typing QWERTY. It has something to do with the impedance mismatch of hitting keys in the wrong mode/forgetting what mode you're in (humans are terrible at moded interfaces) and throwing around a minilanguage for text editing in my head besides the actual task I need to do. Saving 2 or 3 minutes of text editing a day isn't worth the aggravation. I would say you can feel like you have a godlike sense of power over the text, like you're playing Age of Empires. Some people probably like that, and equate it with productivity and time-savings. It's optimizing for the wrong thing.

by gtsop 6y ago

greggman3 6y ago

I am curious if any vim user has ever been able to see the benefits of other environments. I know I have never been able to see the benefits of vim. Part of me wants to give a try for 3-6 months just to prove to myself that it's all bullshit and that vim is just another editor. In any case. For a long time I was a fan of my editor of choice, slickedit. It definitely has a few features I use for which I don't know the analogs in most other editors. Features like versions backups. Undo of multi-file search and replace. Also once had someone show me IntelliJ for C++ and was fairly impressed with its refactoring features. Enough that I thought I should look more into it. I have yet to see a feature for vim that makes it clear win over any other major editor. I have read articles that make me understand why others might like it but seriously. I think you're all deluding yourselves. Just as an example, lately I mostly do JavaScript and a little typescript. I'm 100% sure that the VSCode experience there out of the box is superior to vim for the same purpose. VSCode is node aware, browser aware, npm aware, eslint aware, typescript aware out of the box. I have no idea how much configuration I'd have to do in vim to get it to match and I find all of that invaluable. I'm not saying vim can't do it but I am saying if I tried to start using vim today on the projects I'm working on the experience would be seriously inferior. I don't know what language I'd have to be using to change that.

alvarosevilla95 6y ago
You should read about the language server protocol. As it continues to become the standard vim will match most IDE-specific features while keeping all the benefits of using vim, which if you can't see I won't bother listing here. I'm already working on java 100% from vim and I don't miss a thing from intellij
- HowTheStoryEnds 6y ago
  Would you mind elaborating a bit on that for those of us not in the loop, like myself? Which plugins are you using?
  - gen220 6y ago
    Not the OP, but the plugins you want to look up are ALE and coc. I've used ALE for a while and love it, but coc is the new kid on the block that often shows up in discussions of LSP. ALE is very tunable, so it's good for us performance-nuts who don't want anything slowing down their editor without their permission. coc takes a more batteries-included approach, and will allow you to hit the ground running / see the light sooner.
theonemind 6y ago
I got pretty good with vim. I'd say it was the fastest I could ever edit text. It really can be insanely fast for editing text but ultimately, I don't like vim. I don't spend that much time literally editing text, like a copy editor. I spend much more time typing and thinking, and very little editing. I can touch type both QWERTY and Dvorak. I usually type Dvorak, and the longer I type QWERTY, the more I get this mental fatigue of continually overriding what my fingers wanted to do. Using vim gives me a tinge of that feeling, that I wouldn't recognize as a hint of that feeling if I didn't know how the bigger version of the feeling feels after a day of typing QWERTY. It has something to do with the impedance mismatch of hitting keys in the wrong mode/forgetting what mode you're in (humans are terrible at moded interfaces) and throwing around a minilanguage for text editing in my head besides the actual task I need to do. Saving 2 or 3 minutes of text editing a day isn't worth the aggravation. I would say you can feel like you have a godlike sense of power over the text, like you're playing Age of Empires. Some people probably like that, and equate it with productivity and time-savings. It's optimizing for the wrong thing.