9 ms·

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 ma

by 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.
    - RMPR 5y ago
      For example during vimconf[0] there is this guy writing his novel with nvim. I found it inspiring, and he's not even tech-savvy. 0: https://www.vimconf.live/ https://www.vimconf.live/
  - caslon 5y ago
    > It's just simple arithmetic. If you spend more time hammering out code, then in order to keep up, you need to spend less time doing something else. > But when it comes to programming, there are only so many things you can sacrifice! You can cut down on your documentation. You can cut down on commenting your code. You can cut down on email conversations and participation in online discussions, preferring group discussions and hallway conversations. A great snippet of a Yegge article from 2008. I don't even use Vim, but your mindset seems pretty toxic and it's unlikely that your 95% is actually 95% when all of the sacrifices you have to make are taken into account.
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?

by eh9 5y ago

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.
  - RMPR 5y ago
    For example during vimconf[0] there is this guy writing his novel with nvim. I found it inspiring, and he's not even tech-savvy. 0: https://www.vimconf.live/ https://www.vimconf.live/
- caslon 5y ago
  > It's just simple arithmetic. If you spend more time hammering out code, then in order to keep up, you need to spend less time doing something else. > But when it comes to programming, there are only so many things you can sacrifice! You can cut down on your documentation. You can cut down on commenting your code. You can cut down on email conversations and participation in online discussions, preferring group discussions and hallway conversations. A great snippet of a Yegge article from 2008. I don't even use Vim, but your mindset seems pretty toxic and it's unlikely that your 95% is actually 95% when all of the sacrifices you have to make are taken into account.

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?