5 ms·

You spelled vi wrong

by francoisdevlin 15y ago

mahmud 15y ago
I don't see "vi-mode" in my site-lisp.
- thurn 15y ago
  I don't see "site-lisp" on my quantum programming butterfly.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    It's there. And it isn't.
sigstop 15y ago
I'm sure this was meant as a joke, but, the downmods still make me sad. I used VS for some classes in school and at my first job and it made me a worse programmer. It took years to undo the damage. In my opinion, as a developer, and in my experience in working with a lot of other developers, terminal + vim + build tools (gcc/javac/python, etc) is far superior compared to VS.
- silverbax88 15y ago
  I'd be curious as to what 'damage' you needed to have undone. I've written in just about every IDE available (including vim) and quite frankly my opinion is that, well, tools can make things easier but they won't make anyone a good programmer.
  - sigstop 15y ago
    The debugger is a big one. I had a terrible habit of not thinking through the code but just running through the debugger until I got it working. Not thinking about how code looks (especially to other people) since I could just resize the window to whatever. A lot of the build complexities were hidden, which was fine as long as everything worked, but, as soon as something small broke, I spent days reading documentation and uselessly searching MSDN and the web trying to get the project to build (so, not understanding my build environment is something else I had to fix). There are lots more (source control, collaboration, etc). I know that switching my tools and my development environment made me a better programmer.
    - eropple 15y ago
      I do most of my development in Eclipse or VS, because frankly my time is worth more than screwing around with Vim for more than basic text editing. Funnily enough, I only break out the debugger when something's really nasty--maybe once a week, for half an hour or so. I certainly don't practice debugger-driven development, and I don't know anyone who does. Personal problem, not a tooling problem. "Not thinking about how the code looks"--personal and cultural problem, not that of the tools; whether I'm in Vim or Coda or VS2010, I run a guideline at 100 characters (because 80 character lines is dumb in the age of the smallest dev monitor being 1280 pixels wide) and wrap to it. Never heard a complaint from anyone I work with. Build complexity--here, you have something of a point, but MSBuild or Maven or whatever isn't appreciably different than tooling with makefiles (except that MSBuild probably has better documentation and there's some semblance of a standard way to do things). Source control? I use Hg and Git, seamlessly, from within VS2010 or Eclipse. Not a problem at all. Collaboration? I've used VSTS for it before, but I just hang a Chrome window in my second monitor and keep Redmine (at home--Bugzilla, at work) and an IRC channel open. None of this is appreciably easier in the Land of the Holy Terminal--it's just different. I've used both heavily IDE-driven stuff and the stone knives and bearskins that vi-land suggests, and my practices do not fundamental change from one to the other--because I understand what I am doing and how and why to do it. Changing your environment doesn't help you become a better programmer unless you understand why you did what you did and have developed the discipline to not do it regardless of tooling. Your problem existed between keyboard and chair, and it doesn't sound like you've fixed it--just hid it away.
      - sigstop 15y ago
        I'm glad the tools you use work well for you. I have coworkers who use Eclipse (for Java). It's a CPU hog; often it locks up entirely, crashes are infrequent but, happen. I've tried it; I know I'm much faster with vim. For me, my time is worth more than putting up with Eclipse. I use 80 characters per line because if I am at a larger monitor, I can have 2 or 3 split windows side by side. If I'm at a smaller terminal, everything's still readable. I find narrower code is more readable anyway. Most developers I admire write like that. In any case, this is a major flame war topic; if you don't like it, I'm glad that your system works for you. As far as build systems, I'll take autotools and its learning curve and pain over VS any day. I can fix it when it breaks. What are you trying to accomplish by saying that my problem is not the tools but that I'm bad at programming? Why is it that because you think you can write decent code in VS, that means that I didn't learn anything new when I switched from it? I know I certainly did; in fact, if I could give myself any advice back when I started any sort of formal programming, it would be: get off VS and Windows immediately! I would be three years ahead of where I am now.
pragmatic 15y ago
Thanks for hijacking this thread. This is quite an awesome tool that MSFT has released. But the top N comments are about the merits of IDE's vs vi then devolves into a pissing match about coding discipline.

You spelled vi wrong

mahmud 15y ago

I don't see "vi-mode" in my site-lisp.

thurn 15y ago
I don't see "site-lisp" on my quantum programming butterfly.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  It's there. And it isn't.

sigstop 15y ago

I'm sure this was meant as a joke, but, the downmods still make me sad. I used VS for some classes in school and at my first job and it made me a worse programmer. It took years to undo the damage. In my opinion, as a developer, and in my experience in working with a lot of other developers, terminal + vim + build tools (gcc/javac/python, etc) is far superior compared to VS.

silverbax88 15y ago
I'd be curious as to what 'damage' you needed to have undone. I've written in just about every IDE available (including vim) and quite frankly my opinion is that, well, tools can make things easier but they won't make anyone a good programmer.
- sigstop 15y ago
  The debugger is a big one. I had a terrible habit of not thinking through the code but just running through the debugger until I got it working. Not thinking about how code looks (especially to other people) since I could just resize the window to whatever. A lot of the build complexities were hidden, which was fine as long as everything worked, but, as soon as something small broke, I spent days reading documentation and uselessly searching MSDN and the web trying to get the project to build (so, not understanding my build environment is something else I had to fix). There are lots more (source control, collaboration, etc). I know that switching my tools and my development environment made me a better programmer.
  - eropple 15y ago
    I do most of my development in Eclipse or VS, because frankly my time is worth more than screwing around with Vim for more than basic text editing. Funnily enough, I only break out the debugger when something's really nasty--maybe once a week, for half an hour or so. I certainly don't practice debugger-driven development, and I don't know anyone who does. Personal problem, not a tooling problem. "Not thinking about how the code looks"--personal and cultural problem, not that of the tools; whether I'm in Vim or Coda or VS2010, I run a guideline at 100 characters (because 80 character lines is dumb in the age of the smallest dev monitor being 1280 pixels wide) and wrap to it. Never heard a complaint from anyone I work with. Build complexity--here, you have something of a point, but MSBuild or Maven or whatever isn't appreciably different than tooling with makefiles (except that MSBuild probably has better documentation and there's some semblance of a standard way to do things). Source control? I use Hg and Git, seamlessly, from within VS2010 or Eclipse. Not a problem at all. Collaboration? I've used VSTS for it before, but I just hang a Chrome window in my second monitor and keep Redmine (at home--Bugzilla, at work) and an IRC channel open. None of this is appreciably easier in the Land of the Holy Terminal--it's just different. I've used both heavily IDE-driven stuff and the stone knives and bearskins that vi-land suggests, and my practices do not fundamental change from one to the other--because I understand what I am doing and how and why to do it. Changing your environment doesn't help you become a better programmer unless you understand why you did what you did and have developed the discipline to not do it regardless of tooling. Your problem existed between keyboard and chair, and it doesn't sound like you've fixed it--just hid it away.
    - sigstop 15y ago
      I'm glad the tools you use work well for you. I have coworkers who use Eclipse (for Java). It's a CPU hog; often it locks up entirely, crashes are infrequent but, happen. I've tried it; I know I'm much faster with vim. For me, my time is worth more than putting up with Eclipse. I use 80 characters per line because if I am at a larger monitor, I can have 2 or 3 split windows side by side. If I'm at a smaller terminal, everything's still readable. I find narrower code is more readable anyway. Most developers I admire write like that. In any case, this is a major flame war topic; if you don't like it, I'm glad that your system works for you. As far as build systems, I'll take autotools and its learning curve and pain over VS any day. I can fix it when it breaks. What are you trying to accomplish by saying that my problem is not the tools but that I'm bad at programming? Why is it that because you think you can write decent code in VS, that means that I didn't learn anything new when I switched from it? I know I certainly did; in fact, if I could give myself any advice back when I started any sort of formal programming, it would be: get off VS and Windows immediately! I would be three years ahead of where I am now.

pragmatic 15y ago

Thanks for hijacking this thread. This is quite an awesome tool that MSFT has released. But the top N comments are about the merits of IDE's vs vi then devolves into a pissing match about coding discipline.