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Constructive criticism: As a Vim user, this website contains nothing that would convince me to actually try Amp. The only thing mentioned on there that does not

Constructive criticism: As a Vim user, this website contains nothing that would convince me to actually try Amp. The only thing mentioned on there that does not apply to my Vim setup is "written in Rust". And as much as I love Rust, "written in Rust" is not a sufficient argument to get me to give up a tool that I've been living and breathing for over a decade. If, on the other hand, I'm not the target audience, the website should make that clear, e.g. "Amp is a Vi-like editor designed for people who find Vim too hard to get started with" or whatever.

otikik 6y ago
I am a Vim user too, but I am very different from you. Vim is my main editor. I have used it daily for years. At the beginning I didn't like it. Then I spent time on it. Configured it. Installed plugins. And I still don't like it. But then I try other editors and either I miss one feature or I start pressing j to go down or whatever. I'm Vim's hostage. This editor seems to target me personally.
- atoav 6y ago
  Afaik what the world really needs is a vim like editor with sane defaults, partly overhauled shortcuts that are closer to other tools and some common scenarios solved in less steps (e.g. exiting the editor, multicursor stuff, ...)
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    What would you do to shorten exiting vim? <esc> :wq Is the longest it's ever been for me and :q Is the norm if I'm in visual mode and haven't edited the buffer.
    - hojjat12000 6y ago
      I think most people don't know that instead of :wq or :q! they can just ZZ and ZQ
      - cassepipe 6y ago
        or just :x
    - ckw 6y ago
      Space is my leader key, save is mapped to <leader>w, exit is mapped to <leader>q, and <esc> is mapped to jk. So nominally exiting from insert mode in an unsaved buffer (jk<space>w<space>q) is the same number of key presses as <esc><shift>;wq<return>, but in practice, in my opinion, jk is superior to <esc>, <space>w is superior to <shift>;w<return>, <space>q is superior to <shift>;q<return>, and <space>w<space>q is superior to <shift>;wq<return>.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    While I agree with most of this... Who has trouble with ":x"? It's no more keystrokes than any other editor uses. I guess if you are in insert mode it's `esc :x`. I suppose you could bind a single keystroke in normal mode, but it's not that big a deal. Multicursor would be fantastic. Macro goes pretty far to supporting what you do with multi cursor but falls a little short.
    - anand-bala 6y ago
      As an ex-Sublime and ex-VSCode user, I realized that macros and Visual Block mode covers all my use cases for multicursor functionality.
  - HKH2 6y ago
    Kakoune is aimed at multicursor stuff and has relatively sane defaults. It shows help dialogues when pressing key combos too.
    - rapind 6y ago
      Genuinely curious why multicursor is a big deal?
      - joelellis 6y ago
        Multi-cursor editing is the fastest way to accurately modify large amounts of text, especially repetitive text. It's well worth learning for your respective editor. Most other editing methods don't come close, especially in terms of speed.
        rapind 6y ago
        But it’s still just search and replace right, like renaming a variable or function, or am I missing something?
        sullyj3 6y ago
        The difference is the interactivity and instantaneous feedback. I don't want to have to blindly write a regex substitution when I could instead be seeing what is happening at each step, right in front of me.
        sagarm 6y ago
        Neovim gives you a preview of the result of your regex replacement, and with the ability to reference capture groups it's a pretty powerful.
        sullyj3 6y ago
        Yeah, I'm a neovim user, and I enjoy that feature. There are just times when multiple cursors would be ever so slightly more ergonomic.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    y and p are better suited to vim usage than control c v I'm not sure what shortcuts you want similar to other tools. Leaving vim is easy :x if you want to save your work :q if you don't need to :q! if you want to discard all changes to a file These are 3 different operations with the 2 common cases taking 2 characters. Ultimately if you just wanted different defaults you could trivially provide it as a plugin to vim.
  - timothylaurent 6y ago
    I've been using https://spacevim.org/ https://spacevim.org/ for this purpose for some time, though Vim per-se isn't my daily editor -- I use PyCharm with VIM emulation. It lazy loads everything and supports most languages, has help throughout, and a responsive community for any issue you may encounter.
- envp 6y ago
  What seems to be the difference between the two of you? Better yet, what about amp appeals to you, and what about vim makes you dislike it but still be held hostage? Personally, I use vim because: - Most of the time I live on the server and running vscode (or any gui based editor) over X feels kinda useless. - I don't like the sftp/sshfs based solutions - (neo)vim is light enough that I can install anywhere (I have permissions) if its not already present
  - woah 6y ago
    VS Code now has a "Remote SSH" plugin which installs the editor and all of its plugins on a remote server with one command, giving you an editor and file browser on that server almost instantly
    - CoastalCoder 6y ago
      I was never able to get VS Code's Remote SSH functionality to work. IIRC the server-side code indexing hung indefinitely. I'm still curious what was special about my environment, since it seems to work for most people.
- zabzonk 6y ago
  Is this the right place to go into a vim war? Perhaps we could restrict this to a discussion of the "amp" editor.
  - cjaybo 6y ago
    Is a discussion of "Who is the audience for the 'amp' editor" not a discussion of the amp editor?
- Majestic121 6y ago
  I've been using Pycharm with the IdeaVim plugin for several years, and I found that it matches 99% of my expectations. The extremely rare missing vim feature (to be honest none comes to mind) is more than balanced by the features from Pycharm and sane defaults. Best part is that I'm not disoriented when I end up on a server with nothing but vi : it's still the same keystrokes.
  - Scarbutt 6y ago
    Surprisingly IdeaVim, has become pretty good.
- justusthane 6y ago
  Maybe give https://kakoune.org/ https://kakoune.org/ a try?
  - dejj 6y ago
    Do you perhaps have some awesome-kakoune cheatsheet for it, which you can recommend?
    - justusthane 6y ago
      Unfortunately I don't! Unlike GP I like vim, so I haven't had a reason to try switching to Kakoune, but I thought it might meet their needs.
    - ezluckyfree 6y ago
      I found https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html helpful.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    I've spent a few hours so far learning to use and setup Kakoune. It seems very thoughtfully designed, extremely flexible, great LSP integration, and ofc it's fast. The community is very helpful. They have a reasonably active Discourse and Discord server which has been extremely tolerant of my inane questions. For me, a mediocre programmer, there are a couple issues that have made it harder to switch to: 1. I wish someone would package of version of Kakoune that has all the quality-of-life stuff already in there. Setting up this editor feels like getting a whole new hobby. I just wanna work more effectively. 1b. It's very UNIX-y. Probably many people will love this aspect, but like, it does exactly one thing and that is edit text. You need to call out to other programs or plugins for any other functionality. You can absolutely configure it to interoperate with many other UNIX programs to get something IDE-like, and looking through the setups of other users, many people do this. However, I would like a canonical way to do IDE things, rather than 100 different options. When adopting a new workflow, I just want to be able to function with it before I optimize it for my specific preferences. 2. The teaching infrastructure that exists for vim isn't there yet. Kakoune uses a different language. Rather than just the list of functions, it should really start with the most common things to workflow and then get deeper in the weeds. Anyway, it's a very cool and good FOSS project and everyone reading this comment should look into it. If you're more competent than me you will probably like it. I found this[1] blog post helpful. [1] https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  I was a Vim user for years, tried out Kakoune and never went back. I think for many Vim users there are many possible improvements. Hell, even as a Kakoune user i'd still like to see tweaks. But, i agree with the GP comment - i don't see anything on this intro page that tells me why i'd want to use it.
  - bccdee 6y ago
    I was a huge kakoune fan for a little while. What eventually dragged me back to vim was (a) proper async LSP support and (b) I wanted the same keybindings between my terminal editor and vscode, and the vscode vim keybindings are pretty good.
    - adkadskhj 6y ago
      I keep trying to switch back to Vim but the selection-first workflows and multicursor really keep me Kakoune. I really want to like Vim again though, for Onivim (2). Looks so pretty.
      - bccdee 6y ago
        ah fuck you're making me miss kakoune yeah there's nothing like it. but vim is just so polished and the vim-keybinding ecosystem is so big.
- golergka 6y ago
  > or I start pressing j to go down Doesn't any modern browser or IDE have a VIM emulation plugin? I mean, the input modes ARE the main reason to use Vim. I haven't used Vim as a main editor for almost 5 years now, but all the basic commands are still on the tips of my fingers, because in every editor or IDE I move to, Vim emulation is the first thing I install. It's the most productive developer tool that I've ever learned, and it's like a passport of a country that gives you ability to live in any country in the world, to the point where you don't ever return home.
- wuxb 6y ago
  You're not a VIM's hostage. You're just following a very natural way of navigation--it's very easy to learn and you don't easily forget it. A very different story is using some other shortcuts like "F5" for single step and "F6" for continue etc.. I always forget about these after 2 weeks not using it.
cassepipe 6y ago
I don't think amp point is that Vim is too hard but that some commons scenarios are not staightforward in Vim (make easy things easy, and more difficult things a little bit harder). I think the aim is really to have a battery included terminal modal text editor (with some common Vi bindings)
jedisct1 6y ago
It's written in Rust.
chapium 6y ago
I think its pretty common to mention which language a project is using. I don't see anything on that website embellishing it unnecessarily. Looking at another project, sqlite, it mentions the language used in the first line of its home page. Interestingly, vim.org mentions nowhere what language its based on, but google hilites that it is based on C.
- saurik 6y ago
  sqlite is a programming library, with an API for C: what language it is written in/for is one of the most important things about its existence... probably second only to what it does.
eschneider 6y ago
This isn't an app I'm likely to use much (Team EMACS :) but as someone learning Rust, it's great to see the code for a full application out there. Kudos to the authors. :)

otikik 6y ago

I am a Vim user too, but I am very different from you. Vim is my main editor. I have used it daily for years. At the beginning I didn't like it. Then I spent time on it. Configured it. Installed plugins. And I still don't like it. But then I try other editors and either I miss one feature or I start pressing j to go down or whatever. I'm Vim's hostage. This editor seems to target me personally.

atoav 6y ago
Afaik what the world really needs is a vim like editor with sane defaults, partly overhauled shortcuts that are closer to other tools and some common scenarios solved in less steps (e.g. exiting the editor, multicursor stuff, ...)
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  What would you do to shorten exiting vim? <esc> :wq Is the longest it's ever been for me and :q Is the norm if I'm in visual mode and haven't edited the buffer.
  - hojjat12000 6y ago
    I think most people don't know that instead of :wq or :q! they can just ZZ and ZQ
    - cassepipe 6y ago
      or just :x
  - ckw 6y ago
    Space is my leader key, save is mapped to <leader>w, exit is mapped to <leader>q, and <esc> is mapped to jk. So nominally exiting from insert mode in an unsaved buffer (jk<space>w<space>q) is the same number of key presses as <esc><shift>;wq<return>, but in practice, in my opinion, jk is superior to <esc>, <space>w is superior to <shift>;w<return>, <space>q is superior to <shift>;q<return>, and <space>w<space>q is superior to <shift>;wq<return>.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  While I agree with most of this... Who has trouble with ":x"? It's no more keystrokes than any other editor uses. I guess if you are in insert mode it's `esc :x`. I suppose you could bind a single keystroke in normal mode, but it's not that big a deal. Multicursor would be fantastic. Macro goes pretty far to supporting what you do with multi cursor but falls a little short.
  - anand-bala 6y ago
    As an ex-Sublime and ex-VSCode user, I realized that macros and Visual Block mode covers all my use cases for multicursor functionality.
- HKH2 6y ago
  Kakoune is aimed at multicursor stuff and has relatively sane defaults. It shows help dialogues when pressing key combos too.
  - rapind 6y ago
    Genuinely curious why multicursor is a big deal?
    - joelellis 6y ago
      Multi-cursor editing is the fastest way to accurately modify large amounts of text, especially repetitive text. It's well worth learning for your respective editor. Most other editing methods don't come close, especially in terms of speed.
      - rapind 6y ago
        But it’s still just search and replace right, like renaming a variable or function, or am I missing something?
        sullyj3 6y ago
        The difference is the interactivity and instantaneous feedback. I don't want to have to blindly write a regex substitution when I could instead be seeing what is happening at each step, right in front of me.
        sagarm 6y ago
        Neovim gives you a preview of the result of your regex replacement, and with the ability to reference capture groups it's a pretty powerful.
        sullyj3 6y ago
        Yeah, I'm a neovim user, and I enjoy that feature. There are just times when multiple cursors would be ever so slightly more ergonomic.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  y and p are better suited to vim usage than control c v I'm not sure what shortcuts you want similar to other tools. Leaving vim is easy :x if you want to save your work :q if you don't need to :q! if you want to discard all changes to a file These are 3 different operations with the 2 common cases taking 2 characters. Ultimately if you just wanted different defaults you could trivially provide it as a plugin to vim.
- timothylaurent 6y ago
  I've been using https://spacevim.org/ https://spacevim.org/ for this purpose for some time, though Vim per-se isn't my daily editor -- I use PyCharm with VIM emulation. It lazy loads everything and supports most languages, has help throughout, and a responsive community for any issue you may encounter.
envp 6y ago
What seems to be the difference between the two of you? Better yet, what about amp appeals to you, and what about vim makes you dislike it but still be held hostage? Personally, I use vim because: - Most of the time I live on the server and running vscode (or any gui based editor) over X feels kinda useless. - I don't like the sftp/sshfs based solutions - (neo)vim is light enough that I can install anywhere (I have permissions) if its not already present
- woah 6y ago
  VS Code now has a "Remote SSH" plugin which installs the editor and all of its plugins on a remote server with one command, giving you an editor and file browser on that server almost instantly
  - CoastalCoder 6y ago
    I was never able to get VS Code's Remote SSH functionality to work. IIRC the server-side code indexing hung indefinitely. I'm still curious what was special about my environment, since it seems to work for most people.
zabzonk 6y ago
Is this the right place to go into a vim war? Perhaps we could restrict this to a discussion of the "amp" editor.
- cjaybo 6y ago
  Is a discussion of "Who is the audience for the 'amp' editor" not a discussion of the amp editor?
Majestic121 6y ago
I've been using Pycharm with the IdeaVim plugin for several years, and I found that it matches 99% of my expectations. The extremely rare missing vim feature (to be honest none comes to mind) is more than balanced by the features from Pycharm and sane defaults. Best part is that I'm not disoriented when I end up on a server with nothing but vi : it's still the same keystrokes.
- Scarbutt 6y ago
  Surprisingly IdeaVim, has become pretty good.
justusthane 6y ago
Maybe give https://kakoune.org/ https://kakoune.org/ a try?
- dejj 6y ago
  Do you perhaps have some awesome-kakoune cheatsheet for it, which you can recommend?
  - justusthane 6y ago
    Unfortunately I don't! Unlike GP I like vim, so I haven't had a reason to try switching to Kakoune, but I thought it might meet their needs.
  - ezluckyfree 6y ago
    I found https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html helpful.
- ezluckyfree 6y ago
  I've spent a few hours so far learning to use and setup Kakoune. It seems very thoughtfully designed, extremely flexible, great LSP integration, and ofc it's fast. The community is very helpful. They have a reasonably active Discourse and Discord server which has been extremely tolerant of my inane questions. For me, a mediocre programmer, there are a couple issues that have made it harder to switch to: 1. I wish someone would package of version of Kakoune that has all the quality-of-life stuff already in there. Setting up this editor feels like getting a whole new hobby. I just wanna work more effectively. 1b. It's very UNIX-y. Probably many people will love this aspect, but like, it does exactly one thing and that is edit text. You need to call out to other programs or plugins for any other functionality. You can absolutely configure it to interoperate with many other UNIX programs to get something IDE-like, and looking through the setups of other users, many people do this. However, I would like a canonical way to do IDE things, rather than 100 different options. When adopting a new workflow, I just want to be able to function with it before I optimize it for my specific preferences. 2. The teaching infrastructure that exists for vim isn't there yet. Kakoune uses a different language. Rather than just the list of functions, it should really start with the most common things to workflow and then get deeper in the weeds. Anyway, it's a very cool and good FOSS project and everyone reading this comment should look into it. If you're more competent than me you will probably like it. I found this[1] blog post helpful. [1] https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html https://cosine.blue/2019-09-06-kakoune.html
adkadskhj 6y ago
I was a Vim user for years, tried out Kakoune and never went back. I think for many Vim users there are many possible improvements. Hell, even as a Kakoune user i'd still like to see tweaks. But, i agree with the GP comment - i don't see anything on this intro page that tells me why i'd want to use it.
- bccdee 6y ago
  I was a huge kakoune fan for a little while. What eventually dragged me back to vim was (a) proper async LSP support and (b) I wanted the same keybindings between my terminal editor and vscode, and the vscode vim keybindings are pretty good.
  - adkadskhj 6y ago
    I keep trying to switch back to Vim but the selection-first workflows and multicursor really keep me Kakoune. I really want to like Vim again though, for Onivim (2). Looks so pretty.
    - bccdee 6y ago
      ah fuck you're making me miss kakoune yeah there's nothing like it. but vim is just so polished and the vim-keybinding ecosystem is so big.
golergka 6y ago
> or I start pressing j to go down Doesn't any modern browser or IDE have a VIM emulation plugin? I mean, the input modes ARE the main reason to use Vim. I haven't used Vim as a main editor for almost 5 years now, but all the basic commands are still on the tips of my fingers, because in every editor or IDE I move to, Vim emulation is the first thing I install. It's the most productive developer tool that I've ever learned, and it's like a passport of a country that gives you ability to live in any country in the world, to the point where you don't ever return home.
wuxb 6y ago
You're not a VIM's hostage. You're just following a very natural way of navigation--it's very easy to learn and you don't easily forget it. A very different story is using some other shortcuts like "F5" for single step and "F6" for continue etc.. I always forget about these after 2 weeks not using it.

cassepipe 6y ago

I don't think amp point is that Vim is too hard but that some commons scenarios are not staightforward in Vim (make easy things easy, and more difficult things a little bit harder). I think the aim is really to have a battery included terminal modal text editor (with some common Vi bindings)

jedisct1 6y ago

It's written in Rust.

chapium 6y ago

I think its pretty common to mention which language a project is using. I don't see anything on that website embellishing it unnecessarily. Looking at another project, sqlite, it mentions the language used in the first line of its home page. Interestingly, vim.org mentions nowhere what language its based on, but google hilites that it is based on C.

saurik 6y ago
sqlite is a programming library, with an API for C: what language it is written in/for is one of the most important things about its existence... probably second only to what it does.

eschneider 6y ago

This isn't an app I'm likely to use much (Team EMACS :) but as someone learning Rust, it's great to see the code for a full application out there. Kudos to the authors. :)