5 ms·

Vim, to me, has been unproductive. I spent about 4 months on it daily unable to get up to speed how I was originally. This may just speak to my own inabilitie

Vim, to me, has been unproductive. I spent about 4 months on it daily unable to get up to speed how I was originally. This may just speak to my own inabilities of muscle memory, and granted, If I used Vim a little younger, I think the outcome would be different. But the thing is, I'm productive enough. Furthermore, I found the mouse to be faster in many cases - I only believe the top 10% of vim users who have spent countless hours tailoring their config to be the most "productive" in terms of typing. I say productive in terms of typing, because when we code, a grand majority of our productivity actually comes from our brain. Squeezing out additional wpm actually has very little relevance to productivity. But looking at seasoned Vim users looks cool though, and it definitely does give those style points.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
threatofrain 5y ago
I've used Vim for many years and I don't recommend people learn it. The things which make Vim strong (cross-platform, plugin ecosystem) has been subsumed by VSC for the most part, and what is left is Vim's unique philosophy of text editing, which by itself is an incredibly modest proposition.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Software like VS Code lives in cycles. It's popular now but you will see it being less popular every year. People will notice how it grows slower, buggier, and probably some unpopular decisions by Microsoft will annoy users. This is the default path for big software. Vim will always be there and because it's not backed by big tech, it will continue to be modular, fast and modern. Much like Linux, learning it means you are free, powerful and you will not get affected by the whims of big tech. This is very valuable. Every year you use free software, you invest time in skills that won't go away and will support you for life.
  - aidos 5y ago
    Yup, that's also why I decided to get good in vim. I was pretty happy in TextMate at the time, but the popularity tide had turned as he was working on TextMate2. The writing appeared to be on the wall, so I learnt vim properly. Sublime took over, then came Atom, now VSCode. Neovim is home for me now, and that's been a whole other beast to configure, but vim has just been such a stable, efficient environment for me for almost 15 years now.
  - shroompasta 5y ago
    Even if that is the case, I don't understand why you think getting onboarded to the next big thing is a hurdle. Do you have to learn Vscode? no. Do you have to learn vim? immensely so. Moving onto the next big thing (although i'm betting on vscode for at least the next decade), is not going to be hard.
    - funklute 5y ago
      > Do you have to learn Vscode? no. If you actually want to take full advantage of the editor and its plugins, then the answer is yes. It's easier to immediately get to grips with vscode than vim, but once you've understood the basics for vim (which takes maybe a full day of studying, and then some practice over a few months), the two editors are pretty equivalent in how much time you have to spend on super-powering them. I think that's relevant because once you've seen how vim (or emacs) can be customised, it's kinda hard to accept vscode as is, without spending significant time customising it. To me, that makes your argument that it's easy to move to the next big thing, mostly invalid... it would be easy if I don't care about learning and customising the tool. Of course mileage may vary depending on how picky you are with your setup. I'll admit I lie on the picky end of the spectrum.
      - shroompasta 5y ago
        > the two editors are pretty equivalent in how much time you have to spend on super-powering them. One of the most disagreeable things I have ever disagreed with. If you remove your bias, you'd find it within yourself that you would disagree with your own statement as well. When the next VSCode comes along, I will move onto it with ease. Please do not ever consider that I'd get onboarded to vim just as quickly - I've spent enough time with vim to know such. Jesus.
edgyquant 5y ago
I spent awhile learning vim, I use it often. But I don’t use any of the fancy stuff I see people doing I just do basic configuration editing and what not
veilrap 5y ago
I'm not a VIM expert, but I do use it as my primary editor. Visual Studio Code is my secondary editor and I flip between them, but tend to be in vim most often. I don't think that the utility of VIM comes from squeezing out wpm, but in it's navigational and editing capabilities. Particularly when paired with a relevant language server, code navigation is a breeze. Additionally, being able to run it on a remote server, in a tmux session, means I can drop off and pick up my work from basically any machine without any effort. My vim config is pretty barebones, its primarily just language server support and git fugitive. Now, modern vscode setup with a remote plugin, language plugin (and vim keybinding plugin) gets you basically the same benefits. For me personally though, I find a few things more clunky in that setup than the vim version of it, mostly around code navigation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

threatofrain 5y ago

I've used Vim for many years and I don't recommend people learn it. The things which make Vim strong (cross-platform, plugin ecosystem) has been subsumed by VSC for the most part, and what is left is Vim's unique philosophy of text editing, which by itself is an incredibly modest proposition.

peakaboo 5y ago
Software like VS Code lives in cycles. It's popular now but you will see it being less popular every year. People will notice how it grows slower, buggier, and probably some unpopular decisions by Microsoft will annoy users. This is the default path for big software. Vim will always be there and because it's not backed by big tech, it will continue to be modular, fast and modern. Much like Linux, learning it means you are free, powerful and you will not get affected by the whims of big tech. This is very valuable. Every year you use free software, you invest time in skills that won't go away and will support you for life.
- aidos 5y ago
  Yup, that's also why I decided to get good in vim. I was pretty happy in TextMate at the time, but the popularity tide had turned as he was working on TextMate2. The writing appeared to be on the wall, so I learnt vim properly. Sublime took over, then came Atom, now VSCode. Neovim is home for me now, and that's been a whole other beast to configure, but vim has just been such a stable, efficient environment for me for almost 15 years now.
- shroompasta 5y ago
  Even if that is the case, I don't understand why you think getting onboarded to the next big thing is a hurdle. Do you have to learn Vscode? no. Do you have to learn vim? immensely so. Moving onto the next big thing (although i'm betting on vscode for at least the next decade), is not going to be hard.
  - funklute 5y ago
    > Do you have to learn Vscode? no. If you actually want to take full advantage of the editor and its plugins, then the answer is yes. It's easier to immediately get to grips with vscode than vim, but once you've understood the basics for vim (which takes maybe a full day of studying, and then some practice over a few months), the two editors are pretty equivalent in how much time you have to spend on super-powering them. I think that's relevant because once you've seen how vim (or emacs) can be customised, it's kinda hard to accept vscode as is, without spending significant time customising it. To me, that makes your argument that it's easy to move to the next big thing, mostly invalid... it would be easy if I don't care about learning and customising the tool. Of course mileage may vary depending on how picky you are with your setup. I'll admit I lie on the picky end of the spectrum.
    - shroompasta 5y ago
      > the two editors are pretty equivalent in how much time you have to spend on super-powering them. One of the most disagreeable things I have ever disagreed with. If you remove your bias, you'd find it within yourself that you would disagree with your own statement as well. When the next VSCode comes along, I will move onto it with ease. Please do not ever consider that I'd get onboarded to vim just as quickly - I've spent enough time with vim to know such. Jesus.

edgyquant 5y ago

I spent awhile learning vim, I use it often. But I don’t use any of the fancy stuff I see people doing I just do basic configuration editing and what not

veilrap 5y ago

I'm not a VIM expert, but I do use it as my primary editor. Visual Studio Code is my secondary editor and I flip between them, but tend to be in vim most often. I don't think that the utility of VIM comes from squeezing out wpm, but in it's navigational and editing capabilities. Particularly when paired with a relevant language server, code navigation is a breeze. Additionally, being able to run it on a remote server, in a tmux session, means I can drop off and pick up my work from basically any machine without any effort. My vim config is pretty barebones, its primarily just language server support and git fugitive. Now, modern vscode setup with a remote plugin, language plugin (and vim keybinding plugin) gets you basically the same benefits. For me personally though, I find a few things more clunky in that setup than the vim version of it, mostly around code navigation.