6 ms·

I love vim, it's great to know how to navigate it, but I have met very few people who use it professionally. I'd love to hear others' experiences, there.

danmur 4y ago
Lots of people at my work use it, but I don't know if I'd consider it essential. If you can use any editor/IDE very fluently that's good; probably doesn't hurt to learn with vim if you don't already have that.
- justizin 4y ago
  if you ever find yourself needing to modify files at the shell on any sort of remotely modern unix/linux system, you're probably going to have vi or vim available. it's worth knowing an editor that doesn't require 6GB of RAM and a graphical environment, but it's probably not going to be most folks' primary editor. ;d
  - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
    <6 GB RAM? Sooo many choices. I started[1] programming on a 5 MB machine with ~4 MB free.[2] But I'm not allowed a GUI? Ok… then, I'll choose an editor with a keyboard-driven menubar across the top (keyboard shortcuts appearing in the menus), a status line on bottom, and as many keycombos that match my preferred GUI as possible. Failing that, I can muddle along with Nano. Until some once-in-20-years task actually requires using an arcane 'editor' that assumes I live in PDP-11. (^: [1] Wellll… I sometimes forget typing BASIC from magazines into an Apple II and making small changes. [2] And it was luxurious…until I tried to fit 8 MB of a CD-ROM app into compressed RAM.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
anthomtb 4y ago
Of the 10 developers I work with the most, 9 are vim users and one is VSCode. The VSCode guy won’t shut up about it but then he is also the proselytizing type. Honest, I’m not that attached to vim and mainly keep using it because it’s what my colleagues use. If everyone suddenly switched to VSCode I would follow the herd. The only thing about vim that I love, and would not give up, is the keybindings and I am sure I could find a decent plug-in for that.
tmerr 4y ago
I'm 30 and have been using vim since college. Usually I'm not actually using the vim editor, but some IDE that has vim keybindings. Good enough for me since I don't customize it much anyway. And then I get the best of both worlds: IDE features for navigating around files (jump to definition, display references), and vim for navigating within a file. Professionally I never paid attention to how many people are using it. Off hand I know a couple people that use emacs, and zero that know vim, but this is probably because emacs users talk about emacs :)
dfee 4y ago
Using vim itself? I mean, yeah picking up ninja edits here and there. Using vim motions? Everywhere. All the time.
- nicklaf 4y ago
  Yep! Evil for Emacs, IntelliJ, ranger, ksh93 shell history editing (this one includes search!), DuckDuckGo, Fastmail, Gmail....
jrumbut 4y ago
I've been using it professionally since 2011.
ar_lan 4y ago
I use (Neo)vim as my daily driver, professionally (for the past 4 years, coming from Goland). I've found every other editor to be too heavy/slow (VScode/Jetbrains), or too noisy (regarding features). Neovim allows me to specify the precise minimum I desire to have a fully functional IDE-like experience (basically treesitter + LSP + DAP + minimal extra plugins). It's super fast, I'm already in my shell, and my memory usage gets to stay super low :)
- Salgat 4y ago
  Once I learned how to use vs code productively it really changed my mind. The other day I needed to do a quick base64 encode and vs code had that. Same goes for formatting some json or doing a diff. It's all available in a single tool with no learning curve. Hell it even has git and git blame in there.
  - ar_lan 4y ago
    Yeah - to each their own. I have all these tools in my terminal too. I'm just a lot faster in the terminal, and I don't really think it's possible to be faster in a GUI (even if there are shortcuts - there will surely be shortcomings before you eventually just re-invent a terminal via VSCode). Plus - modal editing :)
  - laurels-marts 4y ago
    I think VS Code is just extremely convenient and can address most peoples needs out of the box. It’s therefore also very beginner friendly. You don’t need to constantly fight the tool or spend hours researching how to configure some trivial feature. That being said VS Code is quite heavy and has an enormous amount of GUI elements. I mean they even have buttons for things like git fetch and pull for heavens sake. They could release a VSC Light that strips most of the GUI out.
    - ohy 4y ago
      True, but you can customise it a lot. So the number of UI elements is not a problem.
laichzeit0 4y ago
I've given up on Vim a long time ago. However, every IDE or editor or notebook tool I use that has Vim keystrokes I enable that and use that. You have to let the Vim purist in you die, it's not a fight that can be won. Settle for like 80% of what you used to be able to do in Vim and call it a day.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
  I don't understand. Why do you need to do this? What am I settling for? I use vim daily and want for nothing. Vim becomes a state of mind, a model for editing that is really empowering. I can translate any thought to code by doing a little dance on my keyboard. My mind is freed by this expression.
zem 4y ago
been using it my entire career. works well, never had much reason to switch, especially these days when I do most of my work sshed into another machine (we aren't allowed to have work code on our laptops)
shaunsingh0207 4y ago
Every time I'm working on a personal project I boot up neovim and have some fun. I have an extensive neovim (and emacs) configuration. If I need to do anything in a professional environment, I boot up intellij/vscode/whatever they use and just install a vim emulation plugin. Vim is fun and all, but when time is money the last thing I want to worry about is configuring my editor.
jojo14 4y ago
I use Vim infrequently. I know it and if it was the only option I'd be efficient with it. I've even started with Vi as the only option. However I prefer Emacs because I feel way more efficient and comfortable with it. As a bonus main key bindings are consistent with Bash and others GNU tools. The course should introduce Emacs as well so that students can choose on their own. Whatever your preferred editor is IMHO it is up to an IDE to integrate with it.
tooltower 4y ago
I switched to vim in college, never went back. That was 20 years ago.
theonething 4y ago
I use it professionally and personally for all text editing, even just taking plain notes. I feel handicapped without it.
vyskocilm 4y ago
I use neovim with Ale plugin for LSP and linters. Somehow it maps into my brain better than anything else. Its fast, on cli, feature rich, usable without a mouse... The only thing where vim/neovim really sucks against other tools is the project specific configuration.
johncoltrane 4y ago
I switched from TextMate to Vim as my main driver in 2010. Never looked back.
vincent-manis 4y ago
I'm not fond of Vim, have been an Emacs user for going on 40 years, starting with Gosmacs. That said, I'd rather that students learn one editor really well, rather than the smattering of editor/IDE usage most of them seem to acquire. So, fine, teach them enough Vim that they can use it well, afterwards, they can use whatever editor they choose.
vishnugupta 4y ago
I can't edit text files without vim. I use modern IDEs (IntelliJ) and the first thing I do when I install them is to install Vim plugin.
crispinb 4y ago
I use it (well neovim) exclusively now because I like it. I have in the past used Emacs, IntelliJ, and VSCode. All work, the choice between them doesn't matter a jot, and that choice has never had the slightest influence on my competence or so-called 'productivity'. More useless words have been spent over editor choice than .. "how good is Linux?" or "how terrible is Electron!" or any one of the handful of sometimes entertaining and always vacuous areas of argument software people frequent over their peccadilloes.
raincole 4y ago
Depending on what kind of programming you're doing. I think it's fairly command in sysadmin stuff. But I can't imainge doing, say, Android development in vim. (Of course it's physicall possible, but...)
lordnacho 4y ago
I don't use vim much since nano seems to be on every installation I've seen recently. But I don't think anyone can avoid learning how to quit vim. We've all been there, you think you know the keys, you don't, now you are trapped.
flippinburgers 4y ago
I have used neovim for a few years now. With lsp support and other additions, using a vim variant hasn't been better!
lizknope 4y ago
70% of my coworkers use vi but most of us are in our 40's. About 20% use emacs and the other 10% use some other usually GUI text editor.

danmur 4y ago

Lots of people at my work use it, but I don't know if I'd consider it essential. If you can use any editor/IDE very fluently that's good; probably doesn't hurt to learn with vim if you don't already have that.

justizin 4y ago
if you ever find yourself needing to modify files at the shell on any sort of remotely modern unix/linux system, you're probably going to have vi or vim available. it's worth knowing an editor that doesn't require 6GB of RAM and a graphical environment, but it's probably not going to be most folks' primary editor. ;d
- IIsi50MHz 4y ago
  <6 GB RAM? Sooo many choices. I started[1] programming on a 5 MB machine with ~4 MB free.[2] But I'm not allowed a GUI? Ok… then, I'll choose an editor with a keyboard-driven menubar across the top (keyboard shortcuts appearing in the menus), a status line on bottom, and as many keycombos that match my preferred GUI as possible. Failing that, I can muddle along with Nano. Until some once-in-20-years task actually requires using an arcane 'editor' that assumes I live in PDP-11. (^: [1] Wellll… I sometimes forget typing BASIC from magazines into an Apple II and making small changes. [2] And it was luxurious…until I tried to fit 8 MB of a CD-ROM app into compressed RAM.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

anthomtb 4y ago

Of the 10 developers I work with the most, 9 are vim users and one is VSCode. The VSCode guy won’t shut up about it but then he is also the proselytizing type. Honest, I’m not that attached to vim and mainly keep using it because it’s what my colleagues use. If everyone suddenly switched to VSCode I would follow the herd. The only thing about vim that I love, and would not give up, is the keybindings and I am sure I could find a decent plug-in for that.

tmerr 4y ago

I'm 30 and have been using vim since college. Usually I'm not actually using the vim editor, but some IDE that has vim keybindings. Good enough for me since I don't customize it much anyway. And then I get the best of both worlds: IDE features for navigating around files (jump to definition, display references), and vim for navigating within a file. Professionally I never paid attention to how many people are using it. Off hand I know a couple people that use emacs, and zero that know vim, but this is probably because emacs users talk about emacs :)

dfee 4y ago

Using vim itself? I mean, yeah picking up ninja edits here and there. Using vim motions? Everywhere. All the time.

nicklaf 4y ago
Yep! Evil for Emacs, IntelliJ, ranger, ksh93 shell history editing (this one includes search!), DuckDuckGo, Fastmail, Gmail....

jrumbut 4y ago

I've been using it professionally since 2011.

ar_lan 4y ago

I use (Neo)vim as my daily driver, professionally (for the past 4 years, coming from Goland). I've found every other editor to be too heavy/slow (VScode/Jetbrains), or too noisy (regarding features). Neovim allows me to specify the precise minimum I desire to have a fully functional IDE-like experience (basically treesitter + LSP + DAP + minimal extra plugins). It's super fast, I'm already in my shell, and my memory usage gets to stay super low :)

Salgat 4y ago
Once I learned how to use vs code productively it really changed my mind. The other day I needed to do a quick base64 encode and vs code had that. Same goes for formatting some json or doing a diff. It's all available in a single tool with no learning curve. Hell it even has git and git blame in there.
- ar_lan 4y ago
  Yeah - to each their own. I have all these tools in my terminal too. I'm just a lot faster in the terminal, and I don't really think it's possible to be faster in a GUI (even if there are shortcuts - there will surely be shortcomings before you eventually just re-invent a terminal via VSCode). Plus - modal editing :)
- laurels-marts 4y ago
  I think VS Code is just extremely convenient and can address most peoples needs out of the box. It’s therefore also very beginner friendly. You don’t need to constantly fight the tool or spend hours researching how to configure some trivial feature. That being said VS Code is quite heavy and has an enormous amount of GUI elements. I mean they even have buttons for things like git fetch and pull for heavens sake. They could release a VSC Light that strips most of the GUI out.
  - ohy 4y ago
    True, but you can customise it a lot. So the number of UI elements is not a problem.

laichzeit0 4y ago

I've given up on Vim a long time ago. However, every IDE or editor or notebook tool I use that has Vim keystrokes I enable that and use that. You have to let the Vim purist in you die, it's not a fight that can be won. Settle for like 80% of what you used to be able to do in Vim and call it a day.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
I don't understand. Why do you need to do this? What am I settling for? I use vim daily and want for nothing. Vim becomes a state of mind, a model for editing that is really empowering. I can translate any thought to code by doing a little dance on my keyboard. My mind is freed by this expression.

zem 4y ago

been using it my entire career. works well, never had much reason to switch, especially these days when I do most of my work sshed into another machine (we aren't allowed to have work code on our laptops)

shaunsingh0207 4y ago

Every time I'm working on a personal project I boot up neovim and have some fun. I have an extensive neovim (and emacs) configuration. If I need to do anything in a professional environment, I boot up intellij/vscode/whatever they use and just install a vim emulation plugin. Vim is fun and all, but when time is money the last thing I want to worry about is configuring my editor.

jojo14 4y ago

I use Vim infrequently. I know it and if it was the only option I'd be efficient with it. I've even started with Vi as the only option. However I prefer Emacs because I feel way more efficient and comfortable with it. As a bonus main key bindings are consistent with Bash and others GNU tools. The course should introduce Emacs as well so that students can choose on their own. Whatever your preferred editor is IMHO it is up to an IDE to integrate with it.

tooltower 4y ago

I switched to vim in college, never went back. That was 20 years ago.

theonething 4y ago

I use it professionally and personally for all text editing, even just taking plain notes. I feel handicapped without it.

vyskocilm 4y ago

I use neovim with Ale plugin for LSP and linters. Somehow it maps into my brain better than anything else. Its fast, on cli, feature rich, usable without a mouse... The only thing where vim/neovim really sucks against other tools is the project specific configuration.

johncoltrane 4y ago

I switched from TextMate to Vim as my main driver in 2010. Never looked back.

vincent-manis 4y ago

I'm not fond of Vim, have been an Emacs user for going on 40 years, starting with Gosmacs. That said, I'd rather that students learn one editor really well, rather than the smattering of editor/IDE usage most of them seem to acquire. So, fine, teach them enough Vim that they can use it well, afterwards, they can use whatever editor they choose.

vishnugupta 4y ago

I can't edit text files without vim. I use modern IDEs (IntelliJ) and the first thing I do when I install them is to install Vim plugin.

crispinb 4y ago

I use it (well neovim) exclusively now because I like it. I have in the past used Emacs, IntelliJ, and VSCode. All work, the choice between them doesn't matter a jot, and that choice has never had the slightest influence on my competence or so-called 'productivity'. More useless words have been spent over editor choice than .. "how good is Linux?" or "how terrible is Electron!" or any one of the handful of sometimes entertaining and always vacuous areas of argument software people frequent over their peccadilloes.

raincole 4y ago

Depending on what kind of programming you're doing. I think it's fairly command in sysadmin stuff. But I can't imainge doing, say, Android development in vim. (Of course it's physicall possible, but...)

lordnacho 4y ago

I don't use vim much since nano seems to be on every installation I've seen recently. But I don't think anyone can avoid learning how to quit vim. We've all been there, you think you know the keys, you don't, now you are trapped.

flippinburgers 4y ago

I have used neovim for a few years now. With lsp support and other additions, using a vim variant hasn't been better!

lizknope 4y ago

70% of my coworkers use vi but most of us are in our 40's. About 20% use emacs and the other 10% use some other usually GUI text editor.