4 ms·

I love Vim, it's just a shame it takes 200 years to setup properly.

by Daunk 4y ago

I_complete_me 4y ago
But a very enjoyable 200 years it must be said!
crispinb 4y ago
But if you develop the habit of spending just 10 minutes a day on it, you can spread that over 10 million years.
noloblo 4y ago
Use neovim or astrovim or spacevim These are setup perfectly and come with just the right batteries installed
- agrippanux 4y ago
  LunarVim is a good choice as well, just works out of the box
  - noloblo 4y ago
    What's lunarvim what are it's advantages over space or ASTRO Vim
jzelinskie 4y ago
I'd honestly point folks towards Helix[0] these days if they don't already have something keeping them on neovim/vim. There's very little in the ways of needing to configure Helix; it has built-in most functionality that you'd find with batteries-included vim "distributions" and it works out of the box with the installed LSP servers on your system. [0]: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
- noloblo 4y ago
  AFAIK is not fully compatible with Vim keystrokes
  - jzelinskie 4y ago
    Correct. If you've got no background in vim, it might be a good thing Helix has broken "backwards compatibility" in order to have more cohesive key-bindings.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      But then you'd not be comfortable with the hundreds if not thousands of other packages out there that use vim bindings.
      - jzelinskie 4y ago
        I think folks might be over-estimating the difference between the Helix and vim. IME, adding "ge" to Vimium[0] was good enough to avoid any conflicting muscle-memory. I think many folks configuring their vimrc are deviating equally as far or farther than the Helix defaults. I'm not sure that I buy the purity argument -- almost all "vim modes" in other software are interpretations of the vim key-bindings and not an embeded vim/neovim engine. As a result, they all have their own caveats and folks using vim get used to functionality that exists exclusively in their vimrc. Often times vim mode just means supporting "hjkl". [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...
    - noloblo 4y ago
      Yes my problem with helix is when the keystrokes that are muscle memory in Vim don't have any actions in helix this makes it problematic to move to helix over moving to neovim for example neovim retains most if not all the vi keystrokes not just out of respect to the vi authors
- loveparade 4y ago
femto113 4y ago
Setup how? I've used vi/vim daily as my main editor for the past 35 years or so, over that time I doubt I've put more than 20 total hours into its setup. I've been using some evolution of the same .vimrc for decades and it's only accumulated a couple dozen lines. The longest setup task I can remember was a few years ago getting MacVim to launch with one window per folder (with files as tabs, in most cases that equates to one window per repo, handy when I'm working across a couple different ones), but that was all shell work, not within vim itself.
- tridao 4y ago
  Personally for me the setup only gets annoying when you want IDE-like features: text completion, treesitter syntax highlighting, go to definitions, ...
  - Aperocky 4y ago
    no thanks, I'll go with tests. jvm language goes to the IDE. Others can use vim.
- fbarred 4y ago
  20 hours??? Your comment makes it sound like you think it's a small amount? I get that it's over 35 years, but still!
  - femto113 4y ago
    It's a tiny amount--I'm guessing I've probably easily logged 20,000 hours of active use in vi by this point, I can't think of any other tool I use regularly that has a better time-of-use/time-of-setup ratio. Compared to the time I've spent, say, installing Ruby gems and fixing dependency conflicts it's a rounding error, and Ruby's only been a focus for a small fraction of my career. To clarify that wasn't ever one 20 hour chunk, that's a rough guess at the total time spent setting it up on dozens of different computers across many different operating systems and window managers. It's typically well under an hour of setup per computer, and much of that time goes towards remembering where to find installers, picking fonts, etc.
tastysandwich 4y ago
And if you change jobs and start working with a totally different tech stack you get to set it up all over again! (I still love it though)
shortlived 4y ago
I used to have crazy IDE-like setups but have realized that Vim is great for straight text manipulation (writing bash scripts, log parsing, etc) and VS code or eclipse is great for heavy duty programming. Now my vimrc is less than 50 lines and no plugins.
anta40 4y ago
My impression is if you ask 10 vim users how they setup their vim, you'll get 11 different answers :p I'm happy enough with config generated from: https://vim-bootstrap.com/ https://vim-bootstrap.com/
sikjoy 4y ago
but you'll recover that time by not touching your mouse... ;o)

I love Vim, it's just a shame it takes 200 years to setup properly.

by Daunk 4y ago

I love Vim, it's just a shame it takes 200 years to setup properly.

I_complete_me 4y ago

But a very enjoyable 200 years it must be said!

crispinb 4y ago

But if you develop the habit of spending just 10 minutes a day on it, you can spread that over 10 million years.

noloblo 4y ago

Use neovim or astrovim or spacevim These are setup perfectly and come with just the right batteries installed

agrippanux 4y ago
LunarVim is a good choice as well, just works out of the box
- noloblo 4y ago
  What's lunarvim what are it's advantages over space or ASTRO Vim

jzelinskie 4y ago

I'd honestly point folks towards Helix[0] these days if they don't already have something keeping them on neovim/vim. There's very little in the ways of needing to configure Helix; it has built-in most functionality that you'd find with batteries-included vim "distributions" and it works out of the box with the installed LSP servers on your system. [0]: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix https://github.com/helix-editor/helix

noloblo 4y ago
AFAIK is not fully compatible with Vim keystrokes
- jzelinskie 4y ago
  Correct. If you've got no background in vim, it might be a good thing Helix has broken "backwards compatibility" in order to have more cohesive key-bindings.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    But then you'd not be comfortable with the hundreds if not thousands of other packages out there that use vim bindings.
    - jzelinskie 4y ago
      I think folks might be over-estimating the difference between the Helix and vim. IME, adding "ge" to Vimium[0] was good enough to avoid any conflicting muscle-memory. I think many folks configuring their vimrc are deviating equally as far or farther than the Helix defaults. I'm not sure that I buy the purity argument -- almost all "vim modes" in other software are interpretations of the vim key-bindings and not an embeded vim/neovim engine. As a result, they all have their own caveats and folks using vim get used to functionality that exists exclusively in their vimrc. Often times vim mode just means supporting "hjkl". [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...
  - noloblo 4y ago
    Yes my problem with helix is when the keystrokes that are muscle memory in Vim don't have any actions in helix this makes it problematic to move to helix over moving to neovim for example neovim retains most if not all the vi keystrokes not just out of respect to the vi authors
loveparade 4y ago

femto113 4y ago

Setup how? I've used vi/vim daily as my main editor for the past 35 years or so, over that time I doubt I've put more than 20 total hours into its setup. I've been using some evolution of the same .vimrc for decades and it's only accumulated a couple dozen lines. The longest setup task I can remember was a few years ago getting MacVim to launch with one window per folder (with files as tabs, in most cases that equates to one window per repo, handy when I'm working across a couple different ones), but that was all shell work, not within vim itself.

tridao 4y ago
Personally for me the setup only gets annoying when you want IDE-like features: text completion, treesitter syntax highlighting, go to definitions, ...
- Aperocky 4y ago
  no thanks, I'll go with tests. jvm language goes to the IDE. Others can use vim.
fbarred 4y ago
20 hours??? Your comment makes it sound like you think it's a small amount? I get that it's over 35 years, but still!
- femto113 4y ago
  It's a tiny amount--I'm guessing I've probably easily logged 20,000 hours of active use in vi by this point, I can't think of any other tool I use regularly that has a better time-of-use/time-of-setup ratio. Compared to the time I've spent, say, installing Ruby gems and fixing dependency conflicts it's a rounding error, and Ruby's only been a focus for a small fraction of my career. To clarify that wasn't ever one 20 hour chunk, that's a rough guess at the total time spent setting it up on dozens of different computers across many different operating systems and window managers. It's typically well under an hour of setup per computer, and much of that time goes towards remembering where to find installers, picking fonts, etc.

tastysandwich 4y ago

And if you change jobs and start working with a totally different tech stack you get to set it up all over again! (I still love it though)

shortlived 4y ago

I used to have crazy IDE-like setups but have realized that Vim is great for straight text manipulation (writing bash scripts, log parsing, etc) and VS code or eclipse is great for heavy duty programming. Now my vimrc is less than 50 lines and no plugins.

anta40 4y ago

My impression is if you ask 10 vim users how they setup their vim, you'll get 11 different answers :p I'm happy enough with config generated from: https://vim-bootstrap.com/ https://vim-bootstrap.com/

sikjoy 4y ago

but you'll recover that time by not touching your mouse... ;o)