23 ms·

Happy birthday Vim (2020)

326 points by lockjawh 5y ago

nineplay 5y ago
OK, today is the day I donate to the children in Uganda. If I'd donated a penny every time I'd seen the vim splash screen, I'd have probably donated tens of thousands of dollars by now. Thank you Bram.
- mempko 5y ago
  You commented prompted me to donate too. Vim is my most used piece of software. Hope others join!
vlunkr 5y ago
It's pretty amazing that vim has remained relevant for that long, outliving so many other editors. On top of that, it continues to evolve. Even in the ~5 years that I've used it, huge progress has been made. The fact that coc.nvim works so well, even in vanilla vim, is crazy.
artificialLimbs 5y ago
Been working with vim for 2 or 3 years. Now, when I don’t have it on any kind of text entry fields I get a bit disappointed. Happy birthday you revolutionary odyssey.
eh9 5y ago
I know it’s silly, but Vim is single-handedly responsible for people thinking I “code fast” in interviews. I always chuckle when someone notes how fast I can manipulate code and I think about the learning-wall I hit when first picking up Vim.
- resonious 5y ago
  I get the same kinds of reactions when coworkers watch me over my shoulder. They're always like "what is going on??" Some people like to say that coding/typing speed is an insignificant portion of overall productivity, but I wonder how true that really is.
  - jrumbut 5y ago
    Vim is at its best reading text files,perhaps moreso than for editing them. I have to use an IDE or notebook environment a lot now, but when I'm trying to make sense of a folder full of source files I always break out vim. This is where the mouse-free operation (though modern vim has OK mouse integration) and the close relationship with bash/sh/zsh shine.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  If you take the time to invest in building a rock solid foundation, it looks like nothing's happening for a long time. Critics complain. "Why aren't they doing anything?" "This is taking too long." "We're paying you to build a skyscraper, not dig a hole!" Then suddenly, a skyscraper shoots up in what seems like no time at all. Too many people want the penthouse without committing the required time to dig deep into the Earth and pour a solid foundation. It almost never works.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Or I can code to within 95% of the speed of a Vim expert in any other editor and my skills are transferrable to almost any platform. And, as is always mentioned and then always brushed off by the Vim avout, code manipulation/editing is almost never the bottleneck for anything but the most trivial of problems.
    - hermanradtke 5y ago
      This is definitely not true. I regularly type fast enough that some major editors lag behind by seconds. There may be a subset of editors where this can be true, but definitely not “any other editor”.
    - tambourine_man 5y ago
      Since we’re not typists, of course the speed of text input is not the bottleneck, but thinking, getting motivated, etc. But that’s not what Vim is (only) about. Editing text with Vim a pleasurable experience unlike any other. See the parent’s comment on that as well. It is, however, the steepest wall I’ve had to climb usability wise. Probably akin to Blender, where everything is different from what you would expect at first, but, hopefully, for a good reason.
    - II2II 5y ago
      People use vim for purposes other than code editing. Being able to think about a document in terms of it's logical structure is often beneficial, may that be the structure of a sentence in prose or fields of a record in a CSV file. If you are only developing software, vim isn't the best program for the job. By default, it is missing important features of an IDE. Customizing it to fill those gaps is difficult. Yet if you're working of different types of text files, the skills that you learn in one domain are transferrable to another domain. If you are proficient at editing documentation and data files in vim, you're probably going to prefer it for editing code since you are building upon pre-existing skills.
- ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
  I have to be honest, seeing some content on YouTube and noticing some folks presumably putting things on the screen in the same speed as they were thinking is what got me into it. I've had a TREMENDOUSLY DIFFICULT time getting fully up and running with it in terms of workflow, but the text navigation alone has absolutely made me code not necessarily faster, but in a MUCH more enjoyable way. After a while it became difficult to imagine navigating a piece of code without some of VIM's core ideas, even if in my case it is down to mostly the feature-set related to easily navigating a file. Alas, for me then the VScode-Vim extension is doing the trick, but since you mentioned the learning wall, curious if you know any resources or can suggest a path to move past it nowadays.
  - yoyohello13 5y ago
    Definitely agree about the enjoyable part. I don’t necessarily think vim has made me more efficient than normal keyboard+mouse, but I definitely find text editing a lot more enjoyable. It makes a really big difference in my state of mind during the day.
  - dharmab 5y ago
    For me it was a combination of: - Reading through vimtutor - Disabling my arrow key bindings and unplugging my mouse for a week (as part of a combined vim/i3/vimiuim learning experience/experiment) - Playing Vim Adventures, a puzzle game based on Vim's controls The three days of godawful productivity has paid off a thousandfold- especially when I later became temporarily disabled (broken bones in both arms) and couldn't use a mouse for a while.
  - edge17 5y ago
    Is the vim-vscode extension good? I love vim on the terminal but I tried thr extension once and felt like I was trying to shovel one system into another system. Maybe I was just doing it wrong...?
    - lc9er 5y ago
      Note that I haven’t used it in two years, but this is the same problem I had with the extension and experimenting with things like evil mode in emacs. There was also a problem where VSCode would update and the vim extension would break or get laggy until the extension devs caught up. It may be better now, but both experiences drove home the fact the I really just felt more comfortable in vim.
- hk1337 5y ago
  And 90% of your typing was probably trying to figure out how to exit?
37ef_ced3 5y ago
I've been working inside vim for decades. I wanted a tattoo of the vim logo but my wife said no.
- rektide 5y ago
  i started using dtach so i could abandon tmux & use vim as my outtermost multiplexer, as my container. one of the only things i havent dug into is how to leave a :term open without keeping a window open. this is more porblematic because im not a vim tabs user. so i end up with a bunch of super mini-sized splits eith a couple random terminals. but in general- never going back. the way on is through. these other tools just murky it up, vim is better. switching threads, recently reflected on my lifelong idlings of perhaps getting a debian tattoo. still has great appeal. but even now feels like debianistas are pretty closed ranks. that the boundary between insider & outsider is very high. & that don't jive well.
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    Are you not using 'set hidden'? Or am I misunderstanding? You can keep a terminal active and not visible.
- RyJones 5y ago
  I want my headstone to read :wq!
  - function_seven 5y ago
    And rest for an eternity as nerds stroll by and snort, "Hmpf, [Shift]ZZ uses fewer keystrokes."? Ha, no thanks!
    - Jenk 5y ago
      :x - less strain on the pinky.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    Wait, saving is an option? I want to reload!
xtracto 5y ago
This was on Nov 2nd no?
axegon_ 5y ago
I've always loved vim but I always assumed I was the younger one in our relationship... Turns out I am 3 years older. That's depressing...
- davidbanham 5y ago
  Just tell yourself that vim is really actually vi wearing a snazzy new hat, and that you’re the spring chicken in a romance with a distinguished yet energetic 45 year old partner.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Yeah I remember using vi in the 80s. Still use it now over vim or eMacs for the simple reason that vi is always installed.
    - Anthony-G 5y ago
      On most GNU/Linux systems, vi is usually Vim running in vi-compatible mode (it also has an Ex mode if you’d like even less bells and whistles).
      - gnubison 5y ago
        Honestly, ex mode would be such a good idea … if it didn’t clear the entire goddamn screen when it started up! The whole point of using a line editor is that it shouldn’t take up the entire screen.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
      I’ve never understood that argument. That’s like saying you prefer to walk everywhere because your car (which you already own) might not always have a full tank of gas.
      - easton 5y ago
        Much of the reason Vi(m) is still in use today is because it’s guaranteed to be on pretty much any *nix box. When it’s 3AM and you’re trying to rewrite /etc/lstab from scratch and the network won’t come up… there’s no way you’re installing emacs or nano.
sonofhans 5y ago
If programmers paid for computer time by the keystroke, everyone would use vim.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > If programmers paid for computer time by the keystroke, everyone would use vim. No, they’d use editors with mousing-heavy interfaces.
  - earthscienceman 5y ago
    A lesson on intent vs impact, ladies and gentlepeople
raman162 5y ago
I've only used vim for three years and it's been a fantastic experience. Every time I'm in a normal editor I long for vim. I think the most important video I watched about vim was about text completion in a thoughtbot meetup [0]. There I learned about ctags, the jumplist and ways to complete words, sentences, lines and blocks of code. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TX3kV3TICU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TX3kV3TICU
- farisjarrah 5y ago
  The thoughtbot series on vim is great. I'm really glad I found this video early in my Vim career. I've got a very minimal vimrc as a result and just try to lean into the vim builtins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM&list=RDCMUCUR1pFG_3XoZn3JNKjulqZg&index=9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM&list=RDCMUCUR1pF...
clircle 5y ago
I've never used Vim, but I use Evil mode and vim bindings everywhere. I'd have a much poorer relationship with my computer without vim modes.
imran-iq 5y ago
What a great piece of software. It's amazing how many features it has in such a small size.
francislata 5y ago
Doing less work on Xcode and working more on servers made me appreciate vim alot! I don't use any plugins (tried it back then with neovim and found the editor itself slow to load) and make me memorize folder structure a whole lot more since I'm using tmux alongside it. I love the fact that I can hop on any system that has vim and I'm ready to go. Happy birthday, vim!!!
- sprkwd 5y ago
  that's the biggest draw for me.
JonathanBuchh 5y ago
I’m grateful to Vim because it taught me that I can write plain text. Previously, I was under the assumption that I need to create a Word or Google Doc. I wonder how many others are in the same situation I was in…
- raman162 5y ago
  I never thought about this until you mentioned it but my love for markdown only came after I learned vim. Vim is easily my most used application; I use it for my task list, to write notes when learning new topics and even to journal my personal thoughts. Prior to this I used applications like evernote, google keep, google docs etc. I think the only advantage of those tools had was easy sync notes between devices but I solved that with syncthing[0]. [0]:https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
  - JonathanBuchh 5y ago
    I was opposite with Markdown—I started using it with Obsidian, then fell in love with vim. Now I love Markdown even more and use vimwiki instead of Obsidian. > I solved that with syncthing syncthing is great!
    - jackthetab 5y ago
      > vimwiki I've been looking for a Personal Knowledge Base (?) for a while and have started using Obsidian. I love the idea of the tags, backlinks, and Graph view but the editor itself leaves much to be desired (besides the fact that it's not vi(m)); whoever came up with the default color scheme (medium/light grey on dark grey) needs to be shot. So how do they compare? If I can do everything I want with vim(wiki) I won't bother with Obsidian. I hear that VSCode is going to incorporate backlinks and will be a better Obsidian than Obsidian is.
      - r6203 5y ago
        Well it occurred to me after reading this thread that I could edit my Obsidian vault via vim. Of course, that's only for basic text editing capabilities everything else has to happen inside Obsidian.
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emptyparadise 5y ago
I once tried out my modern vimrc with Vim 7.0 and only had to add feature checks to three lines or so. Powerful software!
hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
I’ve always wanted to learn vim but the keying for Dvorak users is chaos. Interested to hear from Dvorak users who use vim effectively!
- scns 5y ago
  I use neo2. The keys for hjkl are totally scattered and left and right switched. Still, working in qwerty or without vimbindings seems like hell. Keep at it, it will become muscle memory.
  - manx 5y ago
    I also use neo2 and am using the neo arrow keys and Esc on layer 4. Works like a charm. Fun thing with neo: You have additional keys free for keybindings: hjkläöüß I'm using ä, ö and ü to save, close buffer and quit vim. I'm very happy with that.
    - scns 5y ago
      Can you use those layer 4 keys in macros though? Great idea to reuse äöüß!
      - manx 5y ago
        Yes, layer 4 keys (like arrow keys) in macros are working well. Here are my üöä bindings: https://github.com/fdietze/dotfiles/blob/83455c587ccdacaf68165c2acdc1bad5fd4eec7e/.vimrc_keybindings#L41 https://github.com/fdietze/dotfiles/blob/83455c587ccdacaf681...
- arp242 5y ago
  Vim ships with a "dvorak" plugin; you can load it with ":packadd dvorak". Curiously, this is not documented unless I'm missing something; after loading you can enable "dvorak mode" with ",d" (w/o quotes), and disable it with ",q". It just maps some keys, see: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/pack/dist/opt/dvorak/dvorak/enable.vim https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/pack/dist/opt... Hasn't been updated in 6 years, and there may be better plugins/ways. I'm sure you're not the only person.
mrlonglong 5y ago
Still rocking vim since 1997 and love it. But old age's getting to me and I'm now finding myself reaching for either Visual Studio or JetBrains CLion for my coding more and more these days.
- gizdan 5y ago
  Both of those have vim plugins. Highly recommend it. It gives you the power of an IDE, with the speed and much of the flexibility of Vim.
fred256 5y ago
What blows my mind is that vim is now twice as old as vi was when vim was released.
isoskeles 5y ago
Happy birthday, Vim! Thanks to everyone who has worked on that project. I've used vim for a while now, although not a power user I'm certainly capable. One of my favorite experiences with vim was remote pairing about a decade ago with another developer. He lived a couple of states over, and we paired by sshing into the other person's machine and using vim on a byobu session. It was also fun because both of us had different habits using vim and got to learn some stuff from each other.
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imglorp 5y ago
And vi is 45. Thanks, Bill!
nojs 5y ago
One of the best things about PyCharm and friends is the vim bindings. They are much closer to actual vim than other IDE plugins. This is the main reason reason I made the switch to using an IDE for Python development.
mountainriver 5y ago
There’s a really fun online emulator that lets you use the original vim https://bit.ly/3k7vKDi https://bit.ly/3k7vKDi
- Galanwe 5y ago
  Nice one :D
travisgriggs 5y ago
Possibly the best foundational tool I learned all those years ago. Every time I see someone have to use Nano or the like, I just feel sorry.
rickreynoldssf 5y ago
I went to the party and I can't leave.
v1g1l4nt3 5y ago
Happy Birthday Vim! This page helped me learn all the important Vim keys. https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/ Been meaning to try out Neovim after watching this episode of Dev Tool Time: https://srcgr.ph/the-primeagen https://srcgr.ph/the-primeagen
otterpro 5y ago
I first started using vi in late 80's at the university on a shared multics mainframe. Then I stopped using vi after graduating, only to pick Vim in 2012. How times have changed, running vi from a dumb vt100 terminal to now running vim on a pc with nearly infinite processing power, with gobs of cores, memory, and storage that was considered unimaginable in the 80's. Vi and vim has stood the test of time (along with C, emacs, Linux, etc)
User23 5y ago
Vim is a wonderful editor, but let’s not forget that ed is the standard editor[1]. [1] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html
sciencesama 5y ago
and i still dont know how to search and replace in VIM !!
- artogahr 5y ago
  :%s/firstpattern/secondpattern/g g for global, or to match all the found ones, not just the next one you can also add c for confirm to the end, which will make vim ask for confirmation for each replace, so you can pick-and-choose
sciencesama 5y ago
and i still dont know how to find and replace in vim !!
- colordrops 5y ago
  Within a single file it's not that bad, :%s/<search>/<replace>/gc (with several variations on this) Now across multiple files, that's a whole different story.. 'm a seasoned vim user and still need to look it up whenever I do it.
  - jonathf 5y ago
    :bufdo! %s/<search>/<replace>/gc to multi-buffer search-replace. But depending on your starting point though, you might need need a vim $(grep -l <filter>) to get all relevant files into buffers.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
I am a vim user, but I use it like an amateur. How can I go to the next level?
- nouveaux 5y ago
  https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/
vram22 5y ago
Happy birthday, Vim. I'll just leave this here: https://mobile.twitter.com/vasudevram/status/1248583566897762304 https://mobile.twitter.com/vasudevram/status/124858356689776... It's a plug for my vi quickstart tutorial that I first wrote for two Windows sysadmin friends of mine. They had been asked to additionally manage a few Unix boxes, and had asked me to make a small tutorial that could help them quickly learn enough vi to get by on Unix. After using it, they told me it was helpful for that purpose.
lockjawh 5y ago
I'm glad that this post led to the group of you all that took the opportunity to donate! Didn't think it would get that much traction, so it's especially nice to see some good come from it.
hyperstar 5y ago
VIm is to other editors what touch typing is to hunt-and-peck.
wrapupandkeepit 5y ago
Vim is what got me into using terminal emulators, the shell, and linux. I started trying to use it because a mentor of mine said "it makes coding fun again." It's the reason I moved from Windows to WSL, and from WSL to Linux. It's the reason why I started learning about core utils. When using vim, it feels natural (and even inevitable) to use the shell and cli tools.

326 points by lockjawh 5y ago

OK, today is the day I donate to the children in Uganda. If I'd donated a penny every time I'd seen the vim splash screen, I'd have probably donated tens of thousands of dollars by now. Thank you Bram.

mempko 5y ago
You commented prompted me to donate too. Vim is my most used piece of software. Hope others join!

vlunkr 5y ago

It's pretty amazing that vim has remained relevant for that long, outliving so many other editors. On top of that, it continues to evolve. Even in the ~5 years that I've used it, huge progress has been made. The fact that coc.nvim works so well, even in vanilla vim, is crazy.

artificialLimbs 5y ago

Been working with vim for 2 or 3 years. Now, when I don’t have it on any kind of text entry fields I get a bit disappointed. Happy birthday you revolutionary odyssey.

eh9 5y ago

I know it’s silly, but Vim is single-handedly responsible for people thinking I “code fast” in interviews. I always chuckle when someone notes how fast I can manipulate code and I think about the learning-wall I hit when first picking up Vim.

resonious 5y ago
I get the same kinds of reactions when coworkers watch me over my shoulder. They're always like "what is going on??" Some people like to say that coding/typing speed is an insignificant portion of overall productivity, but I wonder how true that really is.
- jrumbut 5y ago
  Vim is at its best reading text files,perhaps moreso than for editing them. I have to use an IDE or notebook environment a lot now, but when I'm trying to make sense of a folder full of source files I always break out vim. This is where the mouse-free operation (though modern vim has OK mouse integration) and the close relationship with bash/sh/zsh shine.
anonporridge 5y ago
If you take the time to invest in building a rock solid foundation, it looks like nothing's happening for a long time. Critics complain. "Why aren't they doing anything?" "This is taking too long." "We're paying you to build a skyscraper, not dig a hole!" Then suddenly, a skyscraper shoots up in what seems like no time at all. Too many people want the penthouse without committing the required time to dig deep into the Earth and pour a solid foundation. It almost never works.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Or I can code to within 95% of the speed of a Vim expert in any other editor and my skills are transferrable to almost any platform. And, as is always mentioned and then always brushed off by the Vim avout, code manipulation/editing is almost never the bottleneck for anything but the most trivial of problems.
  - hermanradtke 5y ago
    This is definitely not true. I regularly type fast enough that some major editors lag behind by seconds. There may be a subset of editors where this can be true, but definitely not “any other editor”.
  - tambourine_man 5y ago
    Since we’re not typists, of course the speed of text input is not the bottleneck, but thinking, getting motivated, etc. But that’s not what Vim is (only) about. Editing text with Vim a pleasurable experience unlike any other. See the parent’s comment on that as well. It is, however, the steepest wall I’ve had to climb usability wise. Probably akin to Blender, where everything is different from what you would expect at first, but, hopefully, for a good reason.
  - II2II 5y ago
    People use vim for purposes other than code editing. Being able to think about a document in terms of it's logical structure is often beneficial, may that be the structure of a sentence in prose or fields of a record in a CSV file. If you are only developing software, vim isn't the best program for the job. By default, it is missing important features of an IDE. Customizing it to fill those gaps is difficult. Yet if you're working of different types of text files, the skills that you learn in one domain are transferrable to another domain. If you are proficient at editing documentation and data files in vim, you're probably going to prefer it for editing code since you are building upon pre-existing skills.
ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
I have to be honest, seeing some content on YouTube and noticing some folks presumably putting things on the screen in the same speed as they were thinking is what got me into it. I've had a TREMENDOUSLY DIFFICULT time getting fully up and running with it in terms of workflow, but the text navigation alone has absolutely made me code not necessarily faster, but in a MUCH more enjoyable way. After a while it became difficult to imagine navigating a piece of code without some of VIM's core ideas, even if in my case it is down to mostly the feature-set related to easily navigating a file. Alas, for me then the VScode-Vim extension is doing the trick, but since you mentioned the learning wall, curious if you know any resources or can suggest a path to move past it nowadays.
- yoyohello13 5y ago
  Definitely agree about the enjoyable part. I don’t necessarily think vim has made me more efficient than normal keyboard+mouse, but I definitely find text editing a lot more enjoyable. It makes a really big difference in my state of mind during the day.
- dharmab 5y ago
  For me it was a combination of: - Reading through vimtutor - Disabling my arrow key bindings and unplugging my mouse for a week (as part of a combined vim/i3/vimiuim learning experience/experiment) - Playing Vim Adventures, a puzzle game based on Vim's controls The three days of godawful productivity has paid off a thousandfold- especially when I later became temporarily disabled (broken bones in both arms) and couldn't use a mouse for a while.
- edge17 5y ago
  Is the vim-vscode extension good? I love vim on the terminal but I tried thr extension once and felt like I was trying to shovel one system into another system. Maybe I was just doing it wrong...?
  - lc9er 5y ago
    Note that I haven’t used it in two years, but this is the same problem I had with the extension and experimenting with things like evil mode in emacs. There was also a problem where VSCode would update and the vim extension would break or get laggy until the extension devs caught up. It may be better now, but both experiences drove home the fact the I really just felt more comfortable in vim.
hk1337 5y ago
And 90% of your typing was probably trying to figure out how to exit?

37ef_ced3 5y ago

I've been working inside vim for decades. I wanted a tattoo of the vim logo but my wife said no.

rektide 5y ago
i started using dtach so i could abandon tmux & use vim as my outtermost multiplexer, as my container. one of the only things i havent dug into is how to leave a :term open without keeping a window open. this is more porblematic because im not a vim tabs user. so i end up with a bunch of super mini-sized splits eith a couple random terminals. but in general- never going back. the way on is through. these other tools just murky it up, vim is better. switching threads, recently reflected on my lifelong idlings of perhaps getting a debian tattoo. still has great appeal. but even now feels like debianistas are pretty closed ranks. that the boundary between insider & outsider is very high. & that don't jive well.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  Are you not using 'set hidden'? Or am I misunderstanding? You can keep a terminal active and not visible.
RyJones 5y ago
I want my headstone to read :wq!
- function_seven 5y ago
  And rest for an eternity as nerds stroll by and snort, "Hmpf, [Shift]ZZ uses fewer keystrokes."? Ha, no thanks!
  - Jenk 5y ago
    :x - less strain on the pinky.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  Wait, saving is an option? I want to reload!

xtracto 5y ago

This was on Nov 2nd no?

axegon_ 5y ago

I've always loved vim but I always assumed I was the younger one in our relationship... Turns out I am 3 years older. That's depressing...

davidbanham 5y ago
Just tell yourself that vim is really actually vi wearing a snazzy new hat, and that you’re the spring chicken in a romance with a distinguished yet energetic 45 year old partner.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Yeah I remember using vi in the 80s. Still use it now over vim or eMacs for the simple reason that vi is always installed.
  - Anthony-G 5y ago
    On most GNU/Linux systems, vi is usually Vim running in vi-compatible mode (it also has an Ex mode if you’d like even less bells and whistles).
    - gnubison 5y ago
      Honestly, ex mode would be such a good idea … if it didn’t clear the entire goddamn screen when it started up! The whole point of using a line editor is that it shouldn’t take up the entire screen.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
    I’ve never understood that argument. That’s like saying you prefer to walk everywhere because your car (which you already own) might not always have a full tank of gas.
    - easton 5y ago
      Much of the reason Vi(m) is still in use today is because it’s guaranteed to be on pretty much any *nix box. When it’s 3AM and you’re trying to rewrite /etc/lstab from scratch and the network won’t come up… there’s no way you’re installing emacs or nano.

sonofhans 5y ago

If programmers paid for computer time by the keystroke, everyone would use vim.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> If programmers paid for computer time by the keystroke, everyone would use vim. No, they’d use editors with mousing-heavy interfaces.
- earthscienceman 5y ago
  A lesson on intent vs impact, ladies and gentlepeople

raman162 5y ago

I've only used vim for three years and it's been a fantastic experience. Every time I'm in a normal editor I long for vim. I think the most important video I watched about vim was about text completion in a thoughtbot meetup [0]. There I learned about ctags, the jumplist and ways to complete words, sentences, lines and blocks of code. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TX3kV3TICU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TX3kV3TICU

farisjarrah 5y ago
The thoughtbot series on vim is great. I'm really glad I found this video early in my Vim career. I've got a very minimal vimrc as a result and just try to lean into the vim builtins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM&list=RDCMUCUR1pFG_3XoZn3JNKjulqZg&index=9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM&list=RDCMUCUR1pF...

clircle 5y ago

I've never used Vim, but I use Evil mode and vim bindings everywhere. I'd have a much poorer relationship with my computer without vim modes.

imran-iq 5y ago

What a great piece of software. It's amazing how many features it has in such a small size.

francislata 5y ago

Doing less work on Xcode and working more on servers made me appreciate vim alot! I don't use any plugins (tried it back then with neovim and found the editor itself slow to load) and make me memorize folder structure a whole lot more since I'm using tmux alongside it. I love the fact that I can hop on any system that has vim and I'm ready to go. Happy birthday, vim!!!

sprkwd 5y ago
that's the biggest draw for me.

JonathanBuchh 5y ago

I’m grateful to Vim because it taught me that I can write plain text. Previously, I was under the assumption that I need to create a Word or Google Doc. I wonder how many others are in the same situation I was in…

raman162 5y ago
I never thought about this until you mentioned it but my love for markdown only came after I learned vim. Vim is easily my most used application; I use it for my task list, to write notes when learning new topics and even to journal my personal thoughts. Prior to this I used applications like evernote, google keep, google docs etc. I think the only advantage of those tools had was easy sync notes between devices but I solved that with syncthing[0]. [0]:https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
- JonathanBuchh 5y ago
  I was opposite with Markdown—I started using it with Obsidian, then fell in love with vim. Now I love Markdown even more and use vimwiki instead of Obsidian. > I solved that with syncthing syncthing is great!
  - jackthetab 5y ago
    > vimwiki I've been looking for a Personal Knowledge Base (?) for a while and have started using Obsidian. I love the idea of the tags, backlinks, and Graph view but the editor itself leaves much to be desired (besides the fact that it's not vi(m)); whoever came up with the default color scheme (medium/light grey on dark grey) needs to be shot. So how do they compare? If I can do everything I want with vim(wiki) I won't bother with Obsidian. I hear that VSCode is going to incorporate backlinks and will be a better Obsidian than Obsidian is.
    - r6203 5y ago
      Well it occurred to me after reading this thread that I could edit my Obsidian vault via vim. Of course, that's only for basic text editing capabilities everything else has to happen inside Obsidian.

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emptyparadise 5y ago

I once tried out my modern vimrc with Vim 7.0 and only had to add feature checks to three lines or so. Powerful software!

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago

I’ve always wanted to learn vim but the keying for Dvorak users is chaos. Interested to hear from Dvorak users who use vim effectively!

scns 5y ago
I use neo2. The keys for hjkl are totally scattered and left and right switched. Still, working in qwerty or without vimbindings seems like hell. Keep at it, it will become muscle memory.
- manx 5y ago
  I also use neo2 and am using the neo arrow keys and Esc on layer 4. Works like a charm. Fun thing with neo: You have additional keys free for keybindings: hjkläöüß I'm using ä, ö and ü to save, close buffer and quit vim. I'm very happy with that.
  - scns 5y ago
    Can you use those layer 4 keys in macros though? Great idea to reuse äöüß!
    - manx 5y ago
      Yes, layer 4 keys (like arrow keys) in macros are working well. Here are my üöä bindings: https://github.com/fdietze/dotfiles/blob/83455c587ccdacaf68165c2acdc1bad5fd4eec7e/.vimrc_keybindings#L41 https://github.com/fdietze/dotfiles/blob/83455c587ccdacaf681...
arp242 5y ago
Vim ships with a "dvorak" plugin; you can load it with ":packadd dvorak". Curiously, this is not documented unless I'm missing something; after loading you can enable "dvorak mode" with ",d" (w/o quotes), and disable it with ",q". It just maps some keys, see: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/pack/dist/opt/dvorak/dvorak/enable.vim https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/pack/dist/opt... Hasn't been updated in 6 years, and there may be better plugins/ways. I'm sure you're not the only person.

mrlonglong 5y ago

Still rocking vim since 1997 and love it. But old age's getting to me and I'm now finding myself reaching for either Visual Studio or JetBrains CLion for my coding more and more these days.

gizdan 5y ago
Both of those have vim plugins. Highly recommend it. It gives you the power of an IDE, with the speed and much of the flexibility of Vim.

fred256 5y ago

What blows my mind is that vim is now twice as old as vi was when vim was released.

isoskeles 5y ago

Happy birthday, Vim! Thanks to everyone who has worked on that project. I've used vim for a while now, although not a power user I'm certainly capable. One of my favorite experiences with vim was remote pairing about a decade ago with another developer. He lived a couple of states over, and we paired by sshing into the other person's machine and using vim on a byobu session. It was also fun because both of us had different habits using vim and got to learn some stuff from each other.

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imglorp 5y ago

And vi is 45. Thanks, Bill!

nojs 5y ago

One of the best things about PyCharm and friends is the vim bindings. They are much closer to actual vim than other IDE plugins. This is the main reason reason I made the switch to using an IDE for Python development.

mountainriver 5y ago

There’s a really fun online emulator that lets you use the original vim https://bit.ly/3k7vKDi https://bit.ly/3k7vKDi

Galanwe 5y ago
Nice one :D

travisgriggs 5y ago

Possibly the best foundational tool I learned all those years ago. Every time I see someone have to use Nano or the like, I just feel sorry.

rickreynoldssf 5y ago

I went to the party and I can't leave.

v1g1l4nt3 5y ago

Happy Birthday Vim! This page helped me learn all the important Vim keys. https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/ Been meaning to try out Neovim after watching this episode of Dev Tool Time: https://srcgr.ph/the-primeagen https://srcgr.ph/the-primeagen

otterpro 5y ago

I first started using vi in late 80's at the university on a shared multics mainframe. Then I stopped using vi after graduating, only to pick Vim in 2012. How times have changed, running vi from a dumb vt100 terminal to now running vim on a pc with nearly infinite processing power, with gobs of cores, memory, and storage that was considered unimaginable in the 80's. Vi and vim has stood the test of time (along with C, emacs, Linux, etc)

User23 5y ago

Vim is a wonderful editor, but let’s not forget that ed is the standard editor[1]. [1] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

sciencesama 5y ago

and i still dont know how to search and replace in VIM !!

artogahr 5y ago
:%s/firstpattern/secondpattern/g g for global, or to match all the found ones, not just the next one you can also add c for confirm to the end, which will make vim ask for confirmation for each replace, so you can pick-and-choose

sciencesama 5y ago

and i still dont know how to find and replace in vim !!

colordrops 5y ago
Within a single file it's not that bad, :%s/<search>/<replace>/gc (with several variations on this) Now across multiple files, that's a whole different story.. 'm a seasoned vim user and still need to look it up whenever I do it.
- jonathf 5y ago
  :bufdo! %s/<search>/<replace>/gc to multi-buffer search-replace. But depending on your starting point though, you might need need a vim $(grep -l <filter>) to get all relevant files into buffers.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

I am a vim user, but I use it like an amateur. How can I go to the next level?

nouveaux 5y ago
https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/

vram22 5y ago

Happy birthday, Vim. I'll just leave this here: https://mobile.twitter.com/vasudevram/status/1248583566897762304 https://mobile.twitter.com/vasudevram/status/124858356689776... It's a plug for my vi quickstart tutorial that I first wrote for two Windows sysadmin friends of mine. They had been asked to additionally manage a few Unix boxes, and had asked me to make a small tutorial that could help them quickly learn enough vi to get by on Unix. After using it, they told me it was helpful for that purpose.

lockjawh 5y ago

I'm glad that this post led to the group of you all that took the opportunity to donate! Didn't think it would get that much traction, so it's especially nice to see some good come from it.

hyperstar 5y ago

VIm is to other editors what touch typing is to hunt-and-peck.

wrapupandkeepit 5y ago

Vim is what got me into using terminal emulators, the shell, and linux. I started trying to use it because a mentor of mine said "it makes coding fun again." It's the reason I moved from Windows to WSL, and from WSL to Linux. It's the reason why I started learning about core utils. When using vim, it feels natural (and even inevitable) to use the shell and cli tools.