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The article misses the foundational reason Vim is still relevant. Observe: :help style-changes The basic steps to make changes to the code: 1. Adjust th
by akkartik 15y ago
The article misses the foundational reason Vim is still relevant. Observe:
:help style-changes
The basic steps to make changes to the code:
1. Adjust the documentation. Doing this first gives you an impression of how
your changes affect the user.
...
Are you blown away yet? The first step in hacking on vim is to hack on the docs. This has been true since the start. Many's the hour I've spent bouncing around in Vim's incredible docs, and I have no doubt it has encouraged more contribution from more hackers.
- derleth 15y agoEmacs has something similar, to the extent that every (noteworthy) function added has its own documentation, which is exposed through a standard help feature.
- akkartik 15y agoYeah, Visual C++ has that too.
- sophacles 15y agoI have always gotten a real kick out of the fact that a large % of the questions in #vim are answered by ":he $THING". The help system is so good that most of the rest of support[1] comes from those few things humans do well, like matching fuzzy concepts and questions to search terms. [1] It can always be better, but the amount of time i spend searching random vim stuff outside the official documentation is trivial, particularly when compared against most other tools I use.