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It's a good question. I'm very critical of my tools and I'm a 10+ year vim user, so I've thought a lot about this. vim's "killer feature" is its text editing l

It's a good question. I'm very critical of my tools and I'm a 10+ year vim user, so I've thought a lot about this. vim's "killer feature" is its text editing language and modality. But plenty of other editors and IDEs offer vim emulation to varying degrees of success. So this can't be the reason to use (neo)vim-the-binary as my editor over, e.g., VSCode. So for me the real advantage of vim is in its flexibility. I can make vim into whatever I want depending on the context. Because of this, I'm able to use the same vim in many different contexts, instead of having different tools for different tasks. Ironically, this is kind of like the emacs culture of doing everything inside of emacs. For example, vim is my code editor, of course. But I also have a keybinding to pop up my wiki and immediately start editing a note in vim. I have another keybinding I use when I'm writing a long piece of text in a textbox (like now) -- the binding drops me into vim, I write my text, and when I exit the contents of the buffer are immediately copied to the clipboard for pasting into the textbox. In each of these contexts, I have access to the same familiar environment with all of my configuration, keybindings, etc. I could probably wrangle VSCode into doing each of these things, but it would be clunky. Vim owes much of its flexibility to its lightweight terminal interface. I wouldn't want to open VSCode every time I want to write a quick note, for instance.

majkinetor 5y ago
You can do that literary everywhere and with any editor, and even without editor. I created this when I was using vim: https://github.com/majkinetor/vim-omnipresence https://github.com/majkinetor/vim-omnipresence and this to be used with any OS control: https://github.com/majkinetor/isense-x https://github.com/majkinetor/isense-x (here used for AHK intelisense but that is just 1 usecase) The real benefit of vim vs any editor is modality and there is AFAIK nothing similar in any editor even with emulators. Editing/moving over text is just way faster with vim then any other editor (not just slightly faster, light years faster). I use vscode now because vim requires A LOT of setup and even when automated its pain in the ass. VScode and its plugin sync on the other hand makes it very fast to install anywhere with your config and keys so it compensate for slower editing to me since I need to have my editor EVERYWHERE (literary hundreds of computers).
- curriculum 5y ago
  Sure, you can make a hotkey to launch any editor, but not every editor is as "pathologically configurable" as vim. The combination of vim being terminal-based, highly-configurable, and lightweight makes it nice to use in a variety of contexts.
  - majkinetor 5y ago
    Its not lightweight.
    - gorjusborg 5y ago
      It is, compared to pretty much any currently in-use editor.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Editing/moving over text is just way faster with vim then any other editor (not just slightly faster, light years faster). Text? Yes. Code? No. Since editing moving code is a subset of refactoring, and Vim has no knowledge about code.
  - majkinetor 5y ago
    Well, this update is all about that so I guess... solved ?
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      It's on its way there, true :)
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> vim's "killer feature" is its text editing language and modality. But plenty of other editors and IDEs offer vim emulation to varying degrees of success. So this can't be the reason to use (neo)vim-the-binary as my editor over, e.g., VSCode. "varying degrees of success" is rather short of "sufficiently to not cause problems"; in my experience they're only good enough to get into the uncanny valley of "will this work" hesitation before every keystroke outside the most common.
dmitriid 5y ago
> y. I can make vim into whatever I want depending on the context. Because of this, I'm able to use the same vim in many different contexts, instead of having different tools for different tasks. Better to have specialised tools for whatever they are good at than a tool that's isn't good at any, and you have to spend time cmolding it to be a pale imitation of specialised tools. > I wouldn't want to open VSCode every time I want to write a quick note, for instance. Why would you open VSCode? You open a note-taking app.

majkinetor 5y ago

You can do that literary everywhere and with any editor, and even without editor. I created this when I was using vim: https://github.com/majkinetor/vim-omnipresence https://github.com/majkinetor/vim-omnipresence and this to be used with any OS control: https://github.com/majkinetor/isense-x https://github.com/majkinetor/isense-x (here used for AHK intelisense but that is just 1 usecase) The real benefit of vim vs any editor is modality and there is AFAIK nothing similar in any editor even with emulators. Editing/moving over text is just way faster with vim then any other editor (not just slightly faster, light years faster). I use vscode now because vim requires A LOT of setup and even when automated its pain in the ass. VScode and its plugin sync on the other hand makes it very fast to install anywhere with your config and keys so it compensate for slower editing to me since I need to have my editor EVERYWHERE (literary hundreds of computers).

curriculum 5y ago
Sure, you can make a hotkey to launch any editor, but not every editor is as "pathologically configurable" as vim. The combination of vim being terminal-based, highly-configurable, and lightweight makes it nice to use in a variety of contexts.
- majkinetor 5y ago
  Its not lightweight.
  - gorjusborg 5y ago
    It is, compared to pretty much any currently in-use editor.
dmitriid 5y ago
> Editing/moving over text is just way faster with vim then any other editor (not just slightly faster, light years faster). Text? Yes. Code? No. Since editing moving code is a subset of refactoring, and Vim has no knowledge about code.
- majkinetor 5y ago
  Well, this update is all about that so I guess... solved ?
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    It's on its way there, true :)

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

> vim's "killer feature" is its text editing language and modality. But plenty of other editors and IDEs offer vim emulation to varying degrees of success. So this can't be the reason to use (neo)vim-the-binary as my editor over, e.g., VSCode. "varying degrees of success" is rather short of "sufficiently to not cause problems"; in my experience they're only good enough to get into the uncanny valley of "will this work" hesitation before every keystroke outside the most common.

dmitriid 5y ago

> y. I can make vim into whatever I want depending on the context. Because of this, I'm able to use the same vim in many different contexts, instead of having different tools for different tasks. Better to have specialised tools for whatever they are good at than a tool that's isn't good at any, and you have to spend time cmolding it to be a pale imitation of specialised tools. > I wouldn't want to open VSCode every time I want to write a quick note, for instance. Why would you open VSCode? You open a note-taking app.