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I am a developer for almost 15 years now. My primary operating system is windows. I have used Linux but only sparingly. I have used many IDEs. I have never ev

I am a developer for almost 15 years now. My primary operating system is windows. I have used Linux but only sparingly. I have used many IDEs. I have never ever felt the need to use vim. Is it fair to say, because VSCode does not have a "vim mode", it is somehow inferior as an editor? I seriously don't get it. I have used VSCode almost from day one. It is a fantastic editor and quite a capable tool. I seriously love it.

jagged-chisel 5y ago
VSCode does little out of the box. You install plugins to get what you want. Including vim mode.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  Exactly my point. Everyone gets a customized flavour. Everyone can use it as its meant to be, a great tool platform that has a great community of plugins and support.
- dleslie 5y ago
  Indeed, vscode is more an emacs competitor than vim competitor.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
I have never used vim in my life (20 years in dev. including on linux and used linux since the late 90s). Many people talk about vim lately, probably the most I've seen and I'm still not sure why. That said, VSCode is very good. But I don't believe in a web-based IDE and in remote Github repos. That's a recipe for disaster and unescapable vendor lock-in, and in any case it's only an option for web dev., really. Edit: Since some people always take things literally: I have of course tried vim, like most people who ever worked with Unix/Linux I suppose, but never got beyond that. I am surprised that it seems to have become so "fashionable" lately. There are many alternatives to vi/vim and many IDEs. My experience is that vi has always suffered from its interface and has struggled to expand beyond "bearded Unix gurus"...
- castis 5y ago
  Well of course you're "still not sure why"; you've "never used vim". How does one understand something they've never experienced?
- dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  How have you avoided vim this long? What did you edit config files with? I guess maybe if you mean you just used vi instead
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    You can use graphical editors over SSH. I personally tend to install micro, or use nano if that's not possible.
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      If I just need to do a quick edit of a text file from the CLI I usually use nano, as well. For dev. I use an graphical editor, usually VSCode these days. I used emacs at some point a long time ago. The good thing with git and al is that there is no need to access a remote repo., and that's one of the points, so there is usually no need to edit source files remotely.
      - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
        I had to google, I didn't realize nano was around 20 years ago. I didn't know it existed until about 2012, but I guess that makes sense then.
- TooKool4This 5y ago
  > Many people talk about vim lately, probably the most I've seen and I'm still not sure why. Extrapolating from personal experience, I think this might be down to Covid WFH where more people have had to ssh into remote machines and may need to edit files so might choose to use vim as it’s easily available. And vim is something that I find is better learned progressively where you pick up 1 or 2 tricks every week or something so those people might have been able to pick it up over the last year or so and are now evangelizing it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jasonjayr 5y ago
VSCode does have a vim mode. See this plugin here: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim It works surprisingly well.
- lucis 5y ago
  Indeed, they have done such an amazing work! I usually find my self using the best of Vim and VSCode at the same time. I also enjoy the emulated plugins (vim-surround mostly).
- jpeeler 5y ago
  I haven't run this long enough to definitely say that it's better, but this in theory should offer more correct vim behavior: https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim
  - city41 5y ago
    I've been using it for a couple months now as my main editor. Overall I really like it. It's just a touch laggy. So for example if you press esc then try to do a normal mode command, sometimes your key presses still go into insert mode.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  It's pretty good, although I've found it a bit funky with copy/paste/yanking.
  - rattray 5y ago
    That part of the codebase needs a big overhaul and could use finding!
  - lucis 5y ago
    Try adding "vim.useSystemClipboard": true to your VSCode's settings. Works mostly fine for me...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ayushnix 5y ago
> Is it fair to say, because VSCode does not have a "vim mode", it is somehow inferior as an editor? Is VSCode an inferior editor compared to Vim/Neovim? Absolutely, it is. Is Vim/NeoVim an inferior IDE experience compared to VSCode despite the ongoing evangelism by NeoVim fundamentalists? Most likely, yes. Here's an example before I start getting flak — NeoVim doesn't have stable indent visualization lines and stable and sensible code folding support. Try writing serious Markdown documentation or Python code in NeoVim and then in VSCode. The NeoVim website also mentions that being like an IDE is not one of its goals. I already know the responses I'm gonna get - it's open source, submit patches or shut up, it's personal taste, those features are irrelevant etc etc. > I seriously don't get it. I have used VSCode almost from day one. It is a fantastic editor and quite a capable tool. I seriously love it. You should keep using it. Don't get swayed by people proselytising Neovim.
- konart 5y ago
  >NeoVim doesn't have stable indent visualization lines https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/ https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/
  - ayushnix 5y ago
    https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/issues/172 https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/issue...
azalemeth 5y ago
I'm someone who also writes code for a living. Linux and MacOS are my primary OSes (in that order). I've used Windows, but only sparingly. I've written a lot of C, a lot of scripting languages, and a bit of C++. I've used many IDEs. For me, the "command line" workflow of Makefiles, vim & gdb are really, well, great. When I was a graduate student, I did a lot of pair-programming with a vim wizard who showed me just how insanely fast one can be with it -- it's small, but extensible. Sufficiently intelligent that you can open a 10 GB+ text file in it, jump to a certain line, make a change and exit; all before VS/VSCode would have opened. It's an add on to an IDE. Sometimes, for me, it replaces it. I've never ever felt the need to use VS, or VSCode. I know other devs love VS for C++, but I love vim – VS feels like a big, bloated IDE where you have to memorise the location of 4e6 different GUI positions and take your hands continually off the keyboard to do anything. Intellisense (and, to a lesser extent, Windows as a whole) deeply irritates me. Vim has a weird, esoteric language with a learning cliff rather than a learning curve -- but I've used it almost from day one. It lets me feel incredibly powerful; it's light, yet has more features than I will ever need. You and I are different. We've got different interests, different application areas in mind, and different preferences for how to write code and debug it. And that's okay! The key to being productive is accepting that people are different, work differently under different circumstances, and have different strengths, skills, and preferences. It's much better to be accommodating of them, rather than stifle them, and leave a proportion of your staff frustrated. I'm just very slightly peeved that your preferences are being chosen by Github as a defacto default $EDITOR, but that there is no option whatsoever for mine – despite the fact that javascript vim / emacs "modes" are recognised as being almost religious, with highly developed FOSS javascript libraries nearly offering both keybindings and an implementation for either editor at a click of a button [e.g. 1] that have been around for >10 years. On top of that, I can't help but notice that Github is usually very accommodating with individual developers' preferences -- to the extent there are often multiple ways of doing things as a result. The fact that, now, both Github and VSCode are both Microsoft products -- and that Microsoft famously likes people to use its "infrastructure", which is often orthogonal to the rest of the world -- just makes a little tiny bit of me feel like this is a change being pushed upon us, as originally explained in their "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy. I get it, it's a neat feature in beta, and it'll directly benefit some large proportion of their users. But if they're going to deploy fully equipped editors to the web, I'd like to have the ability to chose mine -- and give you the freedom to choose yours. I can't help but think that if this feature was developed prior to their acquisition by Microsoft, it wouldn't be VSCode that was deployed. [1] https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace
whitepaint 5y ago
What if you ssh into a server? What if you want to quickly edit some file while you are on a terminal?
- Kiro 5y ago
  It's not like you can't use vim ever just because VSCode is your primary editor.
- tlrobinson 5y ago
  It’s essential to know the basics of a terminal editor (vim, nano/pico, whatever), but for heavy lifting VSCode has a remote SSH plugin. It’s good enough I often use it for developing on a Linux box from my macOS machine. There’s also a “code” command that will open a file or directory in VS Code.

jagged-chisel 5y ago

VSCode does little out of the box. You install plugins to get what you want. Including vim mode.

kumarvvr 5y ago
Exactly my point. Everyone gets a customized flavour. Everyone can use it as its meant to be, a great tool platform that has a great community of plugins and support.
dleslie 5y ago
Indeed, vscode is more an emacs competitor than vim competitor.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

I have never used vim in my life (20 years in dev. including on linux and used linux since the late 90s). Many people talk about vim lately, probably the most I've seen and I'm still not sure why. That said, VSCode is very good. But I don't believe in a web-based IDE and in remote Github repos. That's a recipe for disaster and unescapable vendor lock-in, and in any case it's only an option for web dev., really. Edit: Since some people always take things literally: I have of course tried vim, like most people who ever worked with Unix/Linux I suppose, but never got beyond that. I am surprised that it seems to have become so "fashionable" lately. There are many alternatives to vi/vim and many IDEs. My experience is that vi has always suffered from its interface and has struggled to expand beyond "bearded Unix gurus"...

castis 5y ago
Well of course you're "still not sure why"; you've "never used vim". How does one understand something they've never experienced?
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
How have you avoided vim this long? What did you edit config files with? I guess maybe if you mean you just used vi instead
- nicoburns 5y ago
  You can use graphical editors over SSH. I personally tend to install micro, or use nano if that's not possible.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    If I just need to do a quick edit of a text file from the CLI I usually use nano, as well. For dev. I use an graphical editor, usually VSCode these days. I used emacs at some point a long time ago. The good thing with git and al is that there is no need to access a remote repo., and that's one of the points, so there is usually no need to edit source files remotely.
    - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
      I had to google, I didn't realize nano was around 20 years ago. I didn't know it existed until about 2012, but I guess that makes sense then.
TooKool4This 5y ago
> Many people talk about vim lately, probably the most I've seen and I'm still not sure why. Extrapolating from personal experience, I think this might be down to Covid WFH where more people have had to ssh into remote machines and may need to edit files so might choose to use vim as it’s easily available. And vim is something that I find is better learned progressively where you pick up 1 or 2 tricks every week or something so those people might have been able to pick it up over the last year or so and are now evangelizing it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jasonjayr 5y ago

VSCode does have a vim mode. See this plugin here: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim It works surprisingly well.

lucis 5y ago
Indeed, they have done such an amazing work! I usually find my self using the best of Vim and VSCode at the same time. I also enjoy the emulated plugins (vim-surround mostly).
jpeeler 5y ago
I haven't run this long enough to definitely say that it's better, but this in theory should offer more correct vim behavior: https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim
- city41 5y ago
  I've been using it for a couple months now as my main editor. Overall I really like it. It's just a touch laggy. So for example if you press esc then try to do a normal mode command, sometimes your key presses still go into insert mode.
whimsicalism 5y ago
It's pretty good, although I've found it a bit funky with copy/paste/yanking.
- rattray 5y ago
  That part of the codebase needs a big overhaul and could use finding!
- lucis 5y ago
  Try adding "vim.useSystemClipboard": true to your VSCode's settings. Works mostly fine for me...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ayushnix 5y ago

> Is it fair to say, because VSCode does not have a "vim mode", it is somehow inferior as an editor? Is VSCode an inferior editor compared to Vim/Neovim? Absolutely, it is. Is Vim/NeoVim an inferior IDE experience compared to VSCode despite the ongoing evangelism by NeoVim fundamentalists? Most likely, yes. Here's an example before I start getting flak — NeoVim doesn't have stable indent visualization lines and stable and sensible code folding support. Try writing serious Markdown documentation or Python code in NeoVim and then in VSCode. The NeoVim website also mentions that being like an IDE is not one of its goals. I already know the responses I'm gonna get - it's open source, submit patches or shut up, it's personal taste, those features are irrelevant etc etc. > I seriously don't get it. I have used VSCode almost from day one. It is a fantastic editor and quite a capable tool. I seriously love it. You should keep using it. Don't get swayed by people proselytising Neovim.

konart 5y ago
>NeoVim doesn't have stable indent visualization lines https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/ https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/
- ayushnix 5y ago
  https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/issues/172 https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/issue...

azalemeth 5y ago

I'm someone who also writes code for a living. Linux and MacOS are my primary OSes (in that order). I've used Windows, but only sparingly. I've written a lot of C, a lot of scripting languages, and a bit of C++. I've used many IDEs. For me, the "command line" workflow of Makefiles, vim & gdb are really, well, great. When I was a graduate student, I did a lot of pair-programming with a vim wizard who showed me just how insanely fast one can be with it -- it's small, but extensible. Sufficiently intelligent that you can open a 10 GB+ text file in it, jump to a certain line, make a change and exit; all before VS/VSCode would have opened. It's an add on to an IDE. Sometimes, for me, it replaces it. I've never ever felt the need to use VS, or VSCode. I know other devs love VS for C++, but I love vim – VS feels like a big, bloated IDE where you have to memorise the location of 4e6 different GUI positions and take your hands continually off the keyboard to do anything. Intellisense (and, to a lesser extent, Windows as a whole) deeply irritates me. Vim has a weird, esoteric language with a learning cliff rather than a learning curve -- but I've used it almost from day one. It lets me feel incredibly powerful; it's light, yet has more features than I will ever need. You and I are different. We've got different interests, different application areas in mind, and different preferences for how to write code and debug it. And that's okay! The key to being productive is accepting that people are different, work differently under different circumstances, and have different strengths, skills, and preferences. It's much better to be accommodating of them, rather than stifle them, and leave a proportion of your staff frustrated. I'm just very slightly peeved that your preferences are being chosen by Github as a defacto default $EDITOR, but that there is no option whatsoever for mine – despite the fact that javascript vim / emacs "modes" are recognised as being almost religious, with highly developed FOSS javascript libraries nearly offering both keybindings and an implementation for either editor at a click of a button [e.g. 1] that have been around for >10 years. On top of that, I can't help but notice that Github is usually very accommodating with individual developers' preferences -- to the extent there are often multiple ways of doing things as a result. The fact that, now, both Github and VSCode are both Microsoft products -- and that Microsoft famously likes people to use its "infrastructure", which is often orthogonal to the rest of the world -- just makes a little tiny bit of me feel like this is a change being pushed upon us, as originally explained in their "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy. I get it, it's a neat feature in beta, and it'll directly benefit some large proportion of their users. But if they're going to deploy fully equipped editors to the web, I'd like to have the ability to chose mine -- and give you the freedom to choose yours. I can't help but think that if this feature was developed prior to their acquisition by Microsoft, it wouldn't be VSCode that was deployed. [1] https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace

whitepaint 5y ago

What if you ssh into a server? What if you want to quickly edit some file while you are on a terminal?

Kiro 5y ago
It's not like you can't use vim ever just because VSCode is your primary editor.
tlrobinson 5y ago
It’s essential to know the basics of a terminal editor (vim, nano/pico, whatever), but for heavy lifting VSCode has a remote SSH plugin. It’s good enough I often use it for developing on a Linux box from my macOS machine. There’s also a “code” command that will open a file or directory in VS Code.