5 ms·

"I don't want to learn all that Vim stuff and configure it myself so I will let someone configure it for me and learn their stuff instead."

themodelplumber 4y ago
See also: Gentoo vs. Debian, Arch vs. Mint, groceries vs. takeout, etc etc...
SkyMarshal 4y ago
Is that a problem?
- johncoltrane 4y ago
  Yes.
least 4y ago
I have my own configuration for vim/neovim, but there's a lot of faffing about finding plugins and tweaking settings to suit my workflow. The end result is kind of a sort of functional stack but without much consistency since it's evolved over time and I simply don't want to refactor it into something more sensible with less conflicts. Something like SpaceVim kind of makes it so someone doesn't have to concern themselves with that because someone designed the entire thing from the ground up so you're less likely to run into issues that someone who's gradually built up their vim config over time would. That isn't even mentioning the fact that it all hypothetically just works together and you can be productive actually programming out of the box with something like this. I think for someone that is interested in using Vim (or Emacs, for that matter), these premade configurations with their own superset of paradigms seems like a much better approach to going about it. They can, after all, switch to building out their own config down the line if they feel the need or desire to.
- johncoltrane 4y ago
  Someone interested in $THING would be better off learning $THING directly rather than tip-toeing around it. The argument that they can still decide to do it properly when they want is not grounded in reality. People get used easily to those things so two things happen in those cases: - they get very frustrated by the real Vim, - they try to replicate their previous ready-made config anyway. It's all just some elaborate avoidance strategy.
  - least 4y ago
    > Someone interested in $THING would be better off learning $THING directly rather than tip-toeing around it. This is not really the universal truth that you think it is. I remember when I learned to drive my father started me on his car with a manual transmission. I skipped gears, Started from a stop in 3rd gear, and had a whole lot of frustration trying to deal with both the concepts of driving the car, the rules of the road, and trying not to completely destroy the clutch of the car. I switched to learning on my mother's car, which was an automatic. I gained confidence on the road and then I went back to learning how to drive stick. This resulted in a much easier time for both me and the clutch. So no, I wasn't better off learning it directly. The same can be said for something like walking and then running, or learning how to program. They typically don't start students off learning to write Assembly even if their intent is to be an Assembly programmer. Training wheels on a bike exist for the same reason too. Can people make this approach work? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's better. In fact I think in quite a lot of cases it's way worse. > they get very frustrated by the real Vim They are using the "real" Vim. You being weirdly gatekeepy about this doesn't change the fact that they're using the same application that you are, except they loaded a config different from yours. There is a list of different keybinds from vanilla vim in their documentation and you can disable them with one line in your config. Pretty much all the typical vim paradigms are exactly the same. > they try to replicate their previous ready-made config anyway. kind of their prerogative and one of the nice things about extensible programs like vim is that people can do exactly that. I could change vim to use CUA commands, be mouse-focused, and default to insert mode and I'd still be using vim.
    - johncoltrane 4y ago
iasay 4y ago
I’m in the same space but I found the best option was just to not bother with anything past the default plugins. I type one simple vimrc from memory that is about ten lines and job done. Also I only use a fairly common subset of commands. I found this was a good compromise because I jump around all sorts of systems and broken ass container hosts so any vi variant is home then.
- ivlad 4y ago
  You may like this approach: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles If you keep your dotfiles (vimrc included) in a public repo, checking them out to every new system may become a useful habit. Or you can even do curl ...| bash to setup your work environment every time.
  - iasay 4y ago
    Im not allowed to do that. I work in high security environments usually. We can’t even talk to GitHub from those nodes. And if we could we’d be shot for doing it. Pulling stuff out of GitHub regardless of the repo into a production machine should be frowned upon anyway.
pprotas 4y ago
Exactly!
kirillbobyrev 4y ago
After almost 10 years of tinkering with Vim and fixing it every time a random extension updates and breaks my whole setup, that would be exactly something I want.
- drekipus 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure after 10 years most vim users stick to a vanilla 5 line config for this very reason.
  - tempodox 4y ago
    How would you know? It's certainly not true for me.
- rag-hav 4y ago
  > fixing it every time a random extension updates You could pin your extensions in packers. Not sure about other plugins managers though.
  - kirillbobyrev 4y ago
    Yes, I was doing that at some point. But then the problem is that - I work (or rather workED until a month ago) on LSP implementation for C++ (clangd) and I frequently need updates in the client - The client (Neovim LSP client) is being developed quite rapidly For the reasons above, I did update the LSP plugins and Neovim versions quite a lot. And (in my experience) that is the thing that breaks the most over the past 2-3 years. Everything else is kind of OK, but it doesn't make much sense without the LSP. I could update only some plugins and keep the others at a fixed version, but then overall I'm not getting bug fixes & features which makes me kind of sad (that's why I started building my ultimate (Neo)vim setup in the first place). I guess I should really stick to just a couple of basic plugins and throw everything else out.
rgoulter 4y ago
Vim (and its cousin, Emacs) are quite terrible out of the box, with the excuse that it's "configuration over convention". It's not efficient for many different developers to each learn how to configure Vim to the point where they can get an effective editor out of it. - For this, a shared configuration / distribution saves a bunch of time. It does make sense for developers to learn vi keybindings (so that they'll be able to use a vanilla vi in a limited environment), or to learn how to customise their programs for their particular situations. To my understanding, the non-standard keybindings in distributions like Spacemacs provide are consistent, well thought out, and discoverable. (Which won't be the case with each ad-hoc customisation). I do get the impression that Spacemacs (which I think inspired this project) adds a layer of abstraction too many, such that users who are stuck with Emacs might not have the capability to get themselves un-stuck without effort.
- cutler 4y ago
  Plus there hasn't been a stable Spacemacs update in years. Telling users to use the dev branch doesn't inspire confidence.
slig 4y ago
It's an option for newcomers, and IMHP way better than just sticking with VSCode without even trying Vim because it's too hard to use or setup.
- johncoltrane 4y ago
  Here is another option: learn Vim in Vim itself.
avgcorrection 4y ago
This is for people who happen to like the “space” setup already. Not for people who just want some random configuration. What’s the difference between someone who uses vanilla, unconfigured Vim and someone who uses unconfigured SpaceVim? Merely that one of them likes vanilla Vim and the other one likes SpaceVim. What’s the problem with not configuring things if you don’t want or have to? Also the mock quotation thing is way overdone around these parts, jeez.
- johncoltrane 4y ago
  > This is for people who happen to like the “space” setup already. Not for people who just want some random configuration. It is used by and marketed to both populations. > What’s the difference between someone who uses vanilla, unconfigured Vim and someone who uses unconfigured SpaceVim? As if those were the only possibilities. > What’s the problem with not configuring things if you don’t want or have to? No problem and no idea where that comes from.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
pweissbrod 4y ago
I look at it differently. If vim is a useful tool in your daily workflow then it's probably worthwhile to invest time into customizing it and enhancing it with plugins. The open source landscape of plug-in development is under constant evolution and it can be quite a time sink staying on top of the latest and best tooling. I see SpaceVim as something similar to a Linux distribution. The maintainers offer the work of selecting various packages inversion combinations that harmonize into a consistent system. And just like any Linux distribution you can agree or disagree with the packages they choose or the default configurations it comes with. I end up using a somewhat heavily customized SpaceVim that I personally like but it's my opinion the distribution is a very productive foundation.

themodelplumber 4y ago

See also: Gentoo vs. Debian, Arch vs. Mint, groceries vs. takeout, etc etc...

SkyMarshal 4y ago

Is that a problem?

johncoltrane 4y ago
Yes.

least 4y ago

I have my own configuration for vim/neovim, but there's a lot of faffing about finding plugins and tweaking settings to suit my workflow. The end result is kind of a sort of functional stack but without much consistency since it's evolved over time and I simply don't want to refactor it into something more sensible with less conflicts. Something like SpaceVim kind of makes it so someone doesn't have to concern themselves with that because someone designed the entire thing from the ground up so you're less likely to run into issues that someone who's gradually built up their vim config over time would. That isn't even mentioning the fact that it all hypothetically just works together and you can be productive actually programming out of the box with something like this. I think for someone that is interested in using Vim (or Emacs, for that matter), these premade configurations with their own superset of paradigms seems like a much better approach to going about it. They can, after all, switch to building out their own config down the line if they feel the need or desire to.

johncoltrane 4y ago
Someone interested in $THING would be better off learning $THING directly rather than tip-toeing around it. The argument that they can still decide to do it properly when they want is not grounded in reality. People get used easily to those things so two things happen in those cases: - they get very frustrated by the real Vim, - they try to replicate their previous ready-made config anyway. It's all just some elaborate avoidance strategy.
- least 4y ago
  > Someone interested in $THING would be better off learning $THING directly rather than tip-toeing around it. This is not really the universal truth that you think it is. I remember when I learned to drive my father started me on his car with a manual transmission. I skipped gears, Started from a stop in 3rd gear, and had a whole lot of frustration trying to deal with both the concepts of driving the car, the rules of the road, and trying not to completely destroy the clutch of the car. I switched to learning on my mother's car, which was an automatic. I gained confidence on the road and then I went back to learning how to drive stick. This resulted in a much easier time for both me and the clutch. So no, I wasn't better off learning it directly. The same can be said for something like walking and then running, or learning how to program. They typically don't start students off learning to write Assembly even if their intent is to be an Assembly programmer. Training wheels on a bike exist for the same reason too. Can people make this approach work? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's better. In fact I think in quite a lot of cases it's way worse. > they get very frustrated by the real Vim They are using the "real" Vim. You being weirdly gatekeepy about this doesn't change the fact that they're using the same application that you are, except they loaded a config different from yours. There is a list of different keybinds from vanilla vim in their documentation and you can disable them with one line in your config. Pretty much all the typical vim paradigms are exactly the same. > they try to replicate their previous ready-made config anyway. kind of their prerogative and one of the nice things about extensible programs like vim is that people can do exactly that. I could change vim to use CUA commands, be mouse-focused, and default to insert mode and I'd still be using vim.
  - johncoltrane 4y ago

iasay 4y ago

I’m in the same space but I found the best option was just to not bother with anything past the default plugins. I type one simple vimrc from memory that is about ten lines and job done. Also I only use a fairly common subset of commands. I found this was a good compromise because I jump around all sorts of systems and broken ass container hosts so any vi variant is home then.

ivlad 4y ago
You may like this approach: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles If you keep your dotfiles (vimrc included) in a public repo, checking them out to every new system may become a useful habit. Or you can even do curl ...| bash to setup your work environment every time.
- iasay 4y ago
  Im not allowed to do that. I work in high security environments usually. We can’t even talk to GitHub from those nodes. And if we could we’d be shot for doing it. Pulling stuff out of GitHub regardless of the repo into a production machine should be frowned upon anyway.

pprotas 4y ago

Exactly!

kirillbobyrev 4y ago

After almost 10 years of tinkering with Vim and fixing it every time a random extension updates and breaks my whole setup, that would be exactly something I want.

drekipus 4y ago
I'm pretty sure after 10 years most vim users stick to a vanilla 5 line config for this very reason.
- tempodox 4y ago
  How would you know? It's certainly not true for me.
rag-hav 4y ago
> fixing it every time a random extension updates You could pin your extensions in packers. Not sure about other plugins managers though.
- kirillbobyrev 4y ago
  Yes, I was doing that at some point. But then the problem is that - I work (or rather workED until a month ago) on LSP implementation for C++ (clangd) and I frequently need updates in the client - The client (Neovim LSP client) is being developed quite rapidly For the reasons above, I did update the LSP plugins and Neovim versions quite a lot. And (in my experience) that is the thing that breaks the most over the past 2-3 years. Everything else is kind of OK, but it doesn't make much sense without the LSP. I could update only some plugins and keep the others at a fixed version, but then overall I'm not getting bug fixes & features which makes me kind of sad (that's why I started building my ultimate (Neo)vim setup in the first place). I guess I should really stick to just a couple of basic plugins and throw everything else out.

rgoulter 4y ago

Vim (and its cousin, Emacs) are quite terrible out of the box, with the excuse that it's "configuration over convention". It's not efficient for many different developers to each learn how to configure Vim to the point where they can get an effective editor out of it. - For this, a shared configuration / distribution saves a bunch of time. It does make sense for developers to learn vi keybindings (so that they'll be able to use a vanilla vi in a limited environment), or to learn how to customise their programs for their particular situations. To my understanding, the non-standard keybindings in distributions like Spacemacs provide are consistent, well thought out, and discoverable. (Which won't be the case with each ad-hoc customisation). I do get the impression that Spacemacs (which I think inspired this project) adds a layer of abstraction too many, such that users who are stuck with Emacs might not have the capability to get themselves un-stuck without effort.

cutler 4y ago
Plus there hasn't been a stable Spacemacs update in years. Telling users to use the dev branch doesn't inspire confidence.

slig 4y ago

It's an option for newcomers, and IMHP way better than just sticking with VSCode without even trying Vim because it's too hard to use or setup.

johncoltrane 4y ago
Here is another option: learn Vim in Vim itself.

avgcorrection 4y ago

This is for people who happen to like the “space” setup already. Not for people who just want some random configuration. What’s the difference between someone who uses vanilla, unconfigured Vim and someone who uses unconfigured SpaceVim? Merely that one of them likes vanilla Vim and the other one likes SpaceVim. What’s the problem with not configuring things if you don’t want or have to? Also the mock quotation thing is way overdone around these parts, jeez.

johncoltrane 4y ago
> This is for people who happen to like the “space” setup already. Not for people who just want some random configuration. It is used by and marketed to both populations. > What’s the difference between someone who uses vanilla, unconfigured Vim and someone who uses unconfigured SpaceVim? As if those were the only possibilities. > What’s the problem with not configuring things if you don’t want or have to? No problem and no idea where that comes from.
- avgcorrection 4y ago

pweissbrod 4y ago

I look at it differently. If vim is a useful tool in your daily workflow then it's probably worthwhile to invest time into customizing it and enhancing it with plugins. The open source landscape of plug-in development is under constant evolution and it can be quite a time sink staying on top of the latest and best tooling. I see SpaceVim as something similar to a Linux distribution. The maintainers offer the work of selecting various packages inversion combinations that harmonize into a consistent system. And just like any Linux distribution you can agree or disagree with the packages they choose or the default configurations it comes with. I end up using a somewhat heavily customized SpaceVim that I personally like but it's my opinion the distribution is a very productive foundation.