3 ms·

As someone who has wasted like 30 years off and on learning how to edit like it's 1979 in vim, I recommend you do not do get peer-pressured into that. Take a l

by ilaksh 6y ago

As someone who has wasted like 30 years off and on learning how to edit like it's 1979 in vim, I recommend you do not do get peer-pressured into that. Take a look at micro or TextAdept or use gedit with sshfs or VSCode or.. just something from recent decades.

weaksauce 6y ago
you don't need to eschew model editing if you go to something like vscode... there's a great neovim plugin for vscode that gives you full vim in the background but also has a nicer vscode interface for the frontend.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  I just suspect that people who advocate for modal editing and hjkl etc. think that those things are some grand UX secret that only real nerds know about. But really they are just artifacts of that particular historical circumstance. http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_hardware_and_key_choices.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_hardware_and_key_choices.htm... "How did vi's mode switching idea came from? Back in 1970s, terminal screen are 80 columns by 24 lines. There's no real-time editing. You edit by typing a command, then call another command to have the screen update to show the result of your command. Vi's “modal editing” is evolved from this. This is also why emacs's manual calls itself “Real Time Display Editor”. Emacs is the first or one of the first “Real Time Display” editor. Why vi uses j k h l for cursor movement? Unix vi's use of j k h i for cursor movement, and the choice of Escape key for mode switching, came from the keyboard it was developed on, the ADM-3A terminal."
  - weaksauce 6y ago
    > I just suspect that people who advocate for modal editing and hjkl etc. think that those things are some grand UX secret that only real nerds know about. But really they are just artifacts of that particular historical circumstance. while it's true that it was born of historical necessity and the decisions for it were partly due to keyboard constraints and the other constraints, I disagree vehemently with the assertion that it's not a more efficient way to edit code. writing a screenplay? maybe not but programming? yes... especially in the context of a larger ide.
    - ilaksh 6y ago
      What makes it more efficient? Have there been any studies? I disagree vehemently with your vehement disagreement. I just don't believe you are really saving that much time. Again, saying that as someone who has used vim for 30 years. Among other editors.
indigodaddy 6y ago
Sure, but if someone is trying to get into *nix SA, or even cloudy/devopsy/CI stuff, you really do need to learn vi/m.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  Why? It's just as easy to install micro as it is vim. sudo apt install micro or curl https://getmic.ro https://getmic.ro | bash Or just download the binary from github.
  - indigodaddy 6y ago
    *nix system administration at many companies means that there are 1000s of RHEL or CentOS or older Solaris servers that you may very often need to edit a file if there is no config management (which is often the case). What all these servers will have to do that will be vi (or vim if you’re lucky). In most cases you can’t just go install some random other text editor that you happen to like better or be more proficient in. That means you have to be at least somewhat functional in vi to be able to perform basic tasks.
    - ilaksh 6y ago
      If you literally have to log into an ssh session on 1000s of machines running discontinued operating systems to manually edit files and can never install new tools for editing or anything else in those machines, then you deserve to go out of business.
      - indigodaddy 6y ago
        But aren’t you talking about sshing into a machine and manually editing with Micro? If we’re going to talk apples, let’s stick with talking apples.
  - theonemind 6y ago
    In my experience, that's not a real option in large, professional system admin settings. You wouldn't dare do that on a production machine without your change management process, and your team of admins won't care about installing micro on the thousands of machines you have to manage. You'd have to do a pull request to some kind of config management repo, and no one will agree your pet editor merits a deploy, and your boss will think you're wasting everyone's time. I'm not covering half of it. Trust me, it is just generally not an option for system administration in the large.

by ilaksh 6y ago

weaksauce 6y ago

you don't need to eschew model editing if you go to something like vscode... there's a great neovim plugin for vscode that gives you full vim in the background but also has a nicer vscode interface for the frontend.

ilaksh 6y ago
I just suspect that people who advocate for modal editing and hjkl etc. think that those things are some grand UX secret that only real nerds know about. But really they are just artifacts of that particular historical circumstance. http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_hardware_and_key_choices.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_hardware_and_key_choices.htm... "How did vi's mode switching idea came from? Back in 1970s, terminal screen are 80 columns by 24 lines. There's no real-time editing. You edit by typing a command, then call another command to have the screen update to show the result of your command. Vi's “modal editing” is evolved from this. This is also why emacs's manual calls itself “Real Time Display Editor”. Emacs is the first or one of the first “Real Time Display” editor. Why vi uses j k h l for cursor movement? Unix vi's use of j k h i for cursor movement, and the choice of Escape key for mode switching, came from the keyboard it was developed on, the ADM-3A terminal."
- weaksauce 6y ago
  > I just suspect that people who advocate for modal editing and hjkl etc. think that those things are some grand UX secret that only real nerds know about. But really they are just artifacts of that particular historical circumstance. while it's true that it was born of historical necessity and the decisions for it were partly due to keyboard constraints and the other constraints, I disagree vehemently with the assertion that it's not a more efficient way to edit code. writing a screenplay? maybe not but programming? yes... especially in the context of a larger ide.
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    What makes it more efficient? Have there been any studies? I disagree vehemently with your vehement disagreement. I just don't believe you are really saving that much time. Again, saying that as someone who has used vim for 30 years. Among other editors.

indigodaddy 6y ago

Sure, but if someone is trying to get into *nix SA, or even cloudy/devopsy/CI stuff, you really do need to learn vi/m.

ilaksh 6y ago
Why? It's just as easy to install micro as it is vim. sudo apt install micro or curl https://getmic.ro https://getmic.ro | bash Or just download the binary from github.
- indigodaddy 6y ago
  *nix system administration at many companies means that there are 1000s of RHEL or CentOS or older Solaris servers that you may very often need to edit a file if there is no config management (which is often the case). What all these servers will have to do that will be vi (or vim if you’re lucky). In most cases you can’t just go install some random other text editor that you happen to like better or be more proficient in. That means you have to be at least somewhat functional in vi to be able to perform basic tasks.
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    If you literally have to log into an ssh session on 1000s of machines running discontinued operating systems to manually edit files and can never install new tools for editing or anything else in those machines, then you deserve to go out of business.
    - indigodaddy 6y ago
      But aren’t you talking about sshing into a machine and manually editing with Micro? If we’re going to talk apples, let’s stick with talking apples.
- theonemind 6y ago
  In my experience, that's not a real option in large, professional system admin settings. You wouldn't dare do that on a production machine without your change management process, and your team of admins won't care about installing micro on the thousands of machines you have to manage. You'd have to do a pull request to some kind of config management repo, and no one will agree your pet editor merits a deploy, and your boss will think you're wasting everyone's time. I'm not covering half of it. Trust me, it is just generally not an option for system administration in the large.