6 ms·

That's basically it; you get LSP, Treesitter, completion, snippets, ... all setup and ready to go. I've been using it for a few weeks now and it's pretty nice.

by muhmud 5y ago

That's basically it; you get LSP, Treesitter, completion, snippets, ... all setup and ready to go. I've been using it for a few weeks now and it's pretty nice. If you want to try it, use the rolling branch.

extr 5y ago
So, I just gave it a shot. Seems pretty nice, definitely pretty syntax highlighting and basic autocomplete was simple to get up and running. However, I think this project has the same issue as basic VIM/NVIM, in that if you're coming from something like VS Code it's not super obvious what plugins account for what functionality, or how you can replicate your workflow. For example, I had to google "Treesitter", which seems to be an AST parser. Okay, that's awesome that they have that, but what exactly do that do for me? On top of that, immediately ran into issues with the autocomplete not picking up my venv, not completing function signatures, etc etc. And diving into the config now apparently means I need to learn the lua language. Sorry don't mean to rant to you specifically. Just secretly wish I was one of these 20 year VIM guys with perfectly honed configs, but not enough time in the day.
- hossbeast 5y ago
  As a 20 year VIM guy, my configs are not perfectly honed, I still regularly learn new tricks, and I still feel like there's a ton I don't know.
  - askonomm 5y ago
    And will you, on your deathbed, not regret all the time put under making a coding environment work to your liking? I personally can't imagine putting so much of my most valuable asset under what is essentially just editor config. But then again I'm a millennial so what do I know.
    - thih9 5y ago
      The idea is to configure your editor so that it enhances your productivity. E.g. you spend 1 hour on editor config, but then you finish 8h of work in 6h because you work faster. More likely the improvement is minimal and it’s recovered across many sessions. But still, the net result is supposed to be positive by a large margin.
    - Lio 5y ago
      "The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life." It's a bit like trying to write the perfect piece of software. Some people wouldn't bother with the effort and would instead use something written by others, I mean we all do that to some extent. It comes down to, why do anything? If you do want to make anything or do anything, it's never a wasted effort, even though you'll never succeed in doing that perfectly.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/ Over a 5 year time frame something that saves one second per day is worth about half an hour of time. Something that saves 5 seconds 20 times a day is worth 50 hours of work. Over 20 years its worth 2 hours and 200 hours respectively. It's probably pretty easy to find optimizations in any environment that are trivially a positive investment of what you correctly note is your most valuable asset.
    - hossbeast 5y ago
      It's like asking a carpenter why he bothers to sharpen his tools. You can't code effectively if you don't spend time optimizing your workflow, and there's no single thing as important for that as the environment you're actually typing the code into.
- linsomniac 5y ago
  Treesitter gives you fast, accurate syntax highlighting, indentation, and selection based on object type. As far as the 20 year vim guys, I'm a 30 year vi guy and looking to get out of maintaining that mess that my vimrc has become. Trying lunarvim and kakoune.
  - cassepipe 5y ago
    Check out Helix. It's based on Kakoune and integrates TreeSitter. It's only 04 though for now. Worth keeping an eye on I think https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/
- inDigiNeous 5y ago
  I feel the same way after diving into the NVIM world a while ago. I put in the hours, spent like 10 hours trying to setup the environment to my liking, and ran into the same issues as you, autocomplete being a pain in the ass, having to figure out what these all plugins are etc.. But at least I found out I can just clone my vim plugins from git repositories with vim-plug, which was an improvement over my previous pathogen setup. VSCode is just killing it with the feeling of having a complete setup and everything actually working, vs having to spend days figuring out how to setup a VIM environment these days.
  - toxik 5y ago
    On the other side of the fence, I tried VSCode and the heaps of issues I faced with basic editing was so off putting. Even basic IntelliSense stuff like suggesting local variable names reliably and timely. Just give me my dumb trusty keyword completion.
- chrisatmachine 5y ago
  weird that venv didn't work. I know conda does. Did you run `:LspInstall python`?
- kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
  I'm one of those 20 year VIM guys. After about 2 years I had a config that I haven't touched since. I could easily go without it, too, and frequently find myself on servers that I forgot to copy it over and didn't even notice. I usually only notice when I start trying to paste things (pastetoggle). You need to learn VIM itself, not the configuration. Just leave the config alone unless you are trying to do anything with tab spacing, or shut off some annoying feature, really. My config is ~40 lines long and just sets some basic things, and uses zero plugins. I think the problem is that people are focused too much on tooling than work/coding. This is true of almost every developer that I've noticed. Leave the tool (mostly) alone, just use it. Tooling creates so much wasted time.
  - foxtacles 5y ago
    This is my experience as well. I've witnessed colleagues and other developers boast about their vim configurations and plugin ecosystems (and supposed gains in productivity) non-stop ever since I started working as a software engineer professionally. Yet here I am with an almost out-of-the-box configuration, not a single plugin and my productivity/output is usually considered (far) superior to those of my peers. I've never understood this widespread obsession with tooling. It's virtually never been the bottleneck for me in any software project I was involved in. The main obstacles I've found are usually of social and/or organizational nature, followed by sometimes (far off) the involved technologies. Tooling isn't a concern.
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      I don't see the connection between the two things that you seem to be making: namely between having a bare setup and an increased productivity. We only have your word for it and it doesn't look factual to me at all. F.ex. in Spacemacs the ability to fuzzy-find file names and file contents has saved me a lot of hours in the last several years. I absolutely don't see how I would work faster on those 1000+ files projects if I didn't have that functionality. Want to elaborate on that point in particular? How does a naked editor help you in this scenario? Or will you claim that you know what's where in every single file in the projects you're working on? Sorry to be a bit flippant but IMO you and your parent ventured way too deep into the "let's pat each other on the back about how minimalistic our environments are and how productive are we as a result" territory. Or "those crazy youngsters making their lives harder for no reason at all, am I right?" one.
- brabel 5y ago
  > if you're coming from something like VS Code it's not super obvious what plugins account for what functionality How do you know what plugins account for what functionality in VSCode?
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    Open the plugin-manager and read their documentation. But usually you need to install them yourself anyway. And because it's a GUI, discovering things is very easy. Just click and read.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      > But usually you need to install them yourself anyway. So, not unlike VIM?
      - extr 5y ago
        Yes, very unlike VIM. Have you ever used VS Code? The second you open a file with an type you haven't used before, the application is like "Do you want to install the extension for this?". Like 2 more clicks and it's done. VIM plugin discoverability literally could not be worse.
        dotancohen 5y ago
        I see, thanks. Maybe I'll write up a page with one-line summaries of the most useful VIM plugins - not only the IDE plugins - to help people find what they need. Any ideas for plugins or information to include welcome.
    - brabel 5y ago
      I'd thought you were referring to after you've installed a plugin (or it got installed for you) and you wanted to know which plugin was doing a particular task. This is actually a problem in vim and emacs, but to my knowledge it's exactly the same problem in VSCode. If you're talking about discoverability of plugins for certain functionalities that you're looking for, then yeah, it's easier in IDEs like VSCode because plugins tend to do lots of things (e.g. you don't install a plugin with the Java debugger, another with Java syntax highlighting, another to run tests .... it's just THE JAVA PLUGIN). Spacemacs solves that for emacs by creating "layer"s which essentially bundle a bunch of emacs packages together so that you only need to install THE JAVA LAYER instead of the 10 packages you actually need. Not sure if NeoVim or LunarVim do that, but should be pretty simple to do.

by muhmud 5y ago

extr 5y ago

So, I just gave it a shot. Seems pretty nice, definitely pretty syntax highlighting and basic autocomplete was simple to get up and running. However, I think this project has the same issue as basic VIM/NVIM, in that if you're coming from something like VS Code it's not super obvious what plugins account for what functionality, or how you can replicate your workflow. For example, I had to google "Treesitter", which seems to be an AST parser. Okay, that's awesome that they have that, but what exactly do that do for me? On top of that, immediately ran into issues with the autocomplete not picking up my venv, not completing function signatures, etc etc. And diving into the config now apparently means I need to learn the lua language. Sorry don't mean to rant to you specifically. Just secretly wish I was one of these 20 year VIM guys with perfectly honed configs, but not enough time in the day.

hossbeast 5y ago
As a 20 year VIM guy, my configs are not perfectly honed, I still regularly learn new tricks, and I still feel like there's a ton I don't know.
- askonomm 5y ago
  And will you, on your deathbed, not regret all the time put under making a coding environment work to your liking? I personally can't imagine putting so much of my most valuable asset under what is essentially just editor config. But then again I'm a millennial so what do I know.
  - thih9 5y ago
    The idea is to configure your editor so that it enhances your productivity. E.g. you spend 1 hour on editor config, but then you finish 8h of work in 6h because you work faster. More likely the improvement is minimal and it’s recovered across many sessions. But still, the net result is supposed to be positive by a large margin.
  - Lio 5y ago
    "The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life." It's a bit like trying to write the perfect piece of software. Some people wouldn't bother with the effort and would instead use something written by others, I mean we all do that to some extent. It comes down to, why do anything? If you do want to make anything or do anything, it's never a wasted effort, even though you'll never succeed in doing that perfectly.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/ Over a 5 year time frame something that saves one second per day is worth about half an hour of time. Something that saves 5 seconds 20 times a day is worth 50 hours of work. Over 20 years its worth 2 hours and 200 hours respectively. It's probably pretty easy to find optimizations in any environment that are trivially a positive investment of what you correctly note is your most valuable asset.
  - hossbeast 5y ago
    It's like asking a carpenter why he bothers to sharpen his tools. You can't code effectively if you don't spend time optimizing your workflow, and there's no single thing as important for that as the environment you're actually typing the code into.
linsomniac 5y ago
Treesitter gives you fast, accurate syntax highlighting, indentation, and selection based on object type. As far as the 20 year vim guys, I'm a 30 year vi guy and looking to get out of maintaining that mess that my vimrc has become. Trying lunarvim and kakoune.
- cassepipe 5y ago
  Check out Helix. It's based on Kakoune and integrates TreeSitter. It's only 04 though for now. Worth keeping an eye on I think https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/
inDigiNeous 5y ago
I feel the same way after diving into the NVIM world a while ago. I put in the hours, spent like 10 hours trying to setup the environment to my liking, and ran into the same issues as you, autocomplete being a pain in the ass, having to figure out what these all plugins are etc.. But at least I found out I can just clone my vim plugins from git repositories with vim-plug, which was an improvement over my previous pathogen setup. VSCode is just killing it with the feeling of having a complete setup and everything actually working, vs having to spend days figuring out how to setup a VIM environment these days.
- toxik 5y ago
  On the other side of the fence, I tried VSCode and the heaps of issues I faced with basic editing was so off putting. Even basic IntelliSense stuff like suggesting local variable names reliably and timely. Just give me my dumb trusty keyword completion.
chrisatmachine 5y ago
weird that venv didn't work. I know conda does. Did you run `:LspInstall python`?
kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
I'm one of those 20 year VIM guys. After about 2 years I had a config that I haven't touched since. I could easily go without it, too, and frequently find myself on servers that I forgot to copy it over and didn't even notice. I usually only notice when I start trying to paste things (pastetoggle). You need to learn VIM itself, not the configuration. Just leave the config alone unless you are trying to do anything with tab spacing, or shut off some annoying feature, really. My config is ~40 lines long and just sets some basic things, and uses zero plugins. I think the problem is that people are focused too much on tooling than work/coding. This is true of almost every developer that I've noticed. Leave the tool (mostly) alone, just use it. Tooling creates so much wasted time.
- foxtacles 5y ago
  This is my experience as well. I've witnessed colleagues and other developers boast about their vim configurations and plugin ecosystems (and supposed gains in productivity) non-stop ever since I started working as a software engineer professionally. Yet here I am with an almost out-of-the-box configuration, not a single plugin and my productivity/output is usually considered (far) superior to those of my peers. I've never understood this widespread obsession with tooling. It's virtually never been the bottleneck for me in any software project I was involved in. The main obstacles I've found are usually of social and/or organizational nature, followed by sometimes (far off) the involved technologies. Tooling isn't a concern.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    I don't see the connection between the two things that you seem to be making: namely between having a bare setup and an increased productivity. We only have your word for it and it doesn't look factual to me at all. F.ex. in Spacemacs the ability to fuzzy-find file names and file contents has saved me a lot of hours in the last several years. I absolutely don't see how I would work faster on those 1000+ files projects if I didn't have that functionality. Want to elaborate on that point in particular? How does a naked editor help you in this scenario? Or will you claim that you know what's where in every single file in the projects you're working on? Sorry to be a bit flippant but IMO you and your parent ventured way too deep into the "let's pat each other on the back about how minimalistic our environments are and how productive are we as a result" territory. Or "those crazy youngsters making their lives harder for no reason at all, am I right?" one.
brabel 5y ago
> if you're coming from something like VS Code it's not super obvious what plugins account for what functionality How do you know what plugins account for what functionality in VSCode?
- slightwinder 5y ago
  Open the plugin-manager and read their documentation. But usually you need to install them yourself anyway. And because it's a GUI, discovering things is very easy. Just click and read.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    > But usually you need to install them yourself anyway. So, not unlike VIM?
    - extr 5y ago
      Yes, very unlike VIM. Have you ever used VS Code? The second you open a file with an type you haven't used before, the application is like "Do you want to install the extension for this?". Like 2 more clicks and it's done. VIM plugin discoverability literally could not be worse.
      - dotancohen 5y ago
        I see, thanks. Maybe I'll write up a page with one-line summaries of the most useful VIM plugins - not only the IDE plugins - to help people find what they need. Any ideas for plugins or information to include welcome.
  - brabel 5y ago
    I'd thought you were referring to after you've installed a plugin (or it got installed for you) and you wanted to know which plugin was doing a particular task. This is actually a problem in vim and emacs, but to my knowledge it's exactly the same problem in VSCode. If you're talking about discoverability of plugins for certain functionalities that you're looking for, then yeah, it's easier in IDEs like VSCode because plugins tend to do lots of things (e.g. you don't install a plugin with the Java debugger, another with Java syntax highlighting, another to run tests .... it's just THE JAVA PLUGIN). Spacemacs solves that for emacs by creating "layer"s which essentially bundle a bunch of emacs packages together so that you only need to install THE JAVA LAYER instead of the 10 packages you actually need. Not sure if NeoVim or LunarVim do that, but should be pretty simple to do.