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I've tried vim on and off for the past... almost 10 years. I'll use it for months at a time, tell myself it's the editor for me, then go off it. Not sure what

I've tried vim on and off for the past... almost 10 years. I'll use it for months at a time, tell myself it's the editor for me, then go off it. Not sure what sort of time commitment is needed, or if it's just the wrong editor for me.

dotancohen 5y ago
VI[M] is a redhead. Temperamental, difficult to get along with, will ruin everything if you touch it the wrong way. It is not for everyone. But I married a redhead, so VIM is quite comfortable for me. I've had slips of the finger turn more than one evening into an all-nighter. I've had moments of pure ecstasy, where just a few fancy seconds of creativity have enabled creations beyond what I'd dreamed possible. I've cursed, I've laughed, I've cried in both joy and frustration. That danger-benefit balance is not for everyone. That's why Jetbrains and Brunettes exist and flurish.
bee_rider 5y ago
I think it is not a great editor for people who want to like their editor. Like I tried eclipse, but it was laggy. I tried Notepad++, but it is too GUI. I tried VSCode but getting it to be much better than vim requires tracking down a bunch of questionable extensions or the cool extension everyone is buzzing about doesn't have FORTRAN support. I dunno. I use vim. I don't like vim. I don't like any editor. It is there, it doesn't do what I want it to all the time, but it reads and writes files, autocommands are easy to set up, and I can just plop whatever unix commands I want in there. vim is pretty boring and basic, but I go back to it because it doesn't do anything actively annoying to me.
- tryauuum 5y ago
  The part "I can just plop whatever Unix commands I want in there" resonates with me. For example, I can select several lines and pass them to "sort | uniq -c". Or to "python -m json.tool"
hvgk 5y ago
I’ve used it for 22 years at this point. I still don’t know how to use more than the basics. I think you settle into a comfortable zone where you know enough and stop looking for progression. In my case that was fairly early on. What makes me happy to use vim is the odd few hours here and there in visual studio with a large project loaded.

dotancohen 5y ago

VI[M] is a redhead. Temperamental, difficult to get along with, will ruin everything if you touch it the wrong way. It is not for everyone. But I married a redhead, so VIM is quite comfortable for me. I've had slips of the finger turn more than one evening into an all-nighter. I've had moments of pure ecstasy, where just a few fancy seconds of creativity have enabled creations beyond what I'd dreamed possible. I've cursed, I've laughed, I've cried in both joy and frustration. That danger-benefit balance is not for everyone. That's why Jetbrains and Brunettes exist and flurish.

bee_rider 5y ago

I think it is not a great editor for people who want to like their editor. Like I tried eclipse, but it was laggy. I tried Notepad++, but it is too GUI. I tried VSCode but getting it to be much better than vim requires tracking down a bunch of questionable extensions or the cool extension everyone is buzzing about doesn't have FORTRAN support. I dunno. I use vim. I don't like vim. I don't like any editor. It is there, it doesn't do what I want it to all the time, but it reads and writes files, autocommands are easy to set up, and I can just plop whatever unix commands I want in there. vim is pretty boring and basic, but I go back to it because it doesn't do anything actively annoying to me.

tryauuum 5y ago
The part "I can just plop whatever Unix commands I want in there" resonates with me. For example, I can select several lines and pass them to "sort | uniq -c". Or to "python -m json.tool"

hvgk 5y ago

I’ve used it for 22 years at this point. I still don’t know how to use more than the basics. I think you settle into a comfortable zone where you know enough and stop looking for progression. In my case that was fairly early on. What makes me happy to use vim is the odd few hours here and there in visual studio with a large project loaded.