8 ms·

> The amount of work needed not only to get a basic IDE up and running for your languages of choice, even for commonly used languages such as Python or Javascri

by p-e-w 3y ago

> The amount of work needed not only to get a basic IDE up and running for your languages of choice, even for commonly used languages such as Python or Javascript, is far too much for someone who wants to get on with their day job or hobby coding and doesn't want to spend precious hours fixing obscure issues in Lua. "This airplane is the choice of professional pilots! The first thing we advise you to do is turn the yoke upside down, it's much more ergonomic like that. Also, you probably want to rip out the altimeter and replace it with a custom one that has more features. And bring your own GPS unit and tape it to the windshield, because this plane doesn't have one by default. And of course, remember that unlike in your car, 'left' actually means right in this plane. This is the professional way. Ah yes, when you fly over Canada, you will see a blinking warning sign telling you that you're out of fuel. That's just a small glitch caused by metric/imperial confusion. It has been known for 23 years but we haven't quite gotten around to fixing it yet. Don't worry, this plane is still excellent for professional pilots. If you feel otherwise, you are probably not a real professional."

divbzero 3y ago
Was that expressly written to parody Vim? If so, this line is particularly spot on: > 'left' actually means right
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Emacs more likely since the bug is 23 yrs old and the gatekeeping But yeah I agree with the sentiment of parent OP
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > Was that expressly written to parody Vim? Yes. The advice to turn the yoke upside down is supposed to reference remapping Caps Lock to Escape, without which Vim destroys your pinky on a standard keyboard. But it's the choice of professionals, so what can we do?
  - _7tgr 3y ago
    I'm playing into the joke here, but on most terminals, alt + <key> will actually be sent to the program as <esc> + key. You can use this to avoid pressing escape in Neovim.
    - xeyownt 3y ago
      Interesting tip too! Need to find the right combination however, I noticed that Alt-L might be a good one (no side effect it seems).
      - greggyb 3y ago
        That will move your cursor to the right by one character after exiting insert mode.
        _7tgr 3y ago
        Entering + exiting insert mode with i and Esc moves your cursor to the left by one, so I suppose this neutralizes it?
    - madsr 3y ago
      +1. I mainly use this approach. If your next intended move is to go to the next line, Alt-J will exit insert mode and go to the next line immediately. Also the same for Alt+w/W/b/B, Alt+o, Alt+0, etc etc and it's just a matter of using your left thumb at the same time as navigating.
  - divbzero 3y ago
    Nice, I didn’t pick up on that one. And I do have Caps Lock mapped to remapped to Escape haha. If any vim enthusiasts haven’t read this history before, this article [1] provides a good overview of how ex/vi came to be. The photo of the Lear Siegler ADM-3A keyboard used by Bill Joy largely explains the odd choice of keys. [1]: https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/05/where-vim-came-from.html https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/05/where-vim-came-from.htm...
  - 3y ago
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  Maybe I've just grown blind to this, but how is this relevant? Unless you mean that you can define that
- oblio 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - cerved 3y ago
    the bindings are by far the best thing about Vim
    - oblio 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - schrectacular 3y ago
        Do you still use a QWERTY keyboard? Or have you just been beaten over the head with them so long that Stockholm syndrome is super strong?
        oblio 3y ago
        Did you read my original comment? I literally mentioned QWERTY as another example of backwards compatibility screwing everyone over. I use QWERTY because I have to, I don't like it and I can't do much about it in practice. People frequently defend Vi's HJKL vehemently - just like - if I'm not mistaken - you, presenting it as a superior option for some reason.
  - geysersam 3y ago
    As if there are "studies" backing the claim that arrow keys are easier to use for navigation than the home row keys... Personally I don't want to move my hands from where I'm writing to the other side of they keyboard just to move the cursor.
    - m45t3r 3y ago
      Like many things in our field, we try to justify our choices, and because generally folks in our field holds high standards about themselves, we should justify as the only right way. What in reality, it is all about user preference. In the end, use whatever your feel most comfortable. I hate the VSCode interface and all of those notifications/popups and general slow interface, but I can understand who doesn't care or think that even with those VSCode is still more efficient for them. I also can completely understand the issue that folks say when they lost a long time tuning their Neovim configuration to their preferences, considering that I just have done so. But I still prefer neovim to VSCode nowadays, and not everyone needs to think the same, and this is fine.
dcow 3y ago
This is why I strictly adhere to vanilla Vim.
- danjac 3y ago
  I use vanilla vim when I have to ssh into a server and work on some config files. As such, I much prefer it to nano, and it's installed, or easily installable, on any Linux server. For that use case, it's absolutely great. No complaints.
  - rajamaka 3y ago
    I spent years and years enjoying using vim for the same purpose when I was a sysadmin. I was absolutely disgusted beyond belief to find out people actually used it as their daily IDE when I became a developer.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  You mean the one with syntax highlighting disabled by default?
  - dcow 3y ago
    Yeah. I actually find that no highlighting in some ways helps you understand the language better. Because you have to parse it, not rely on the highlighting to do it for you. When I was learning Rust, I spent a year writing Rust in vanilla vim which is by some accounts insane. But I did it for the uh immersion. And I’m happy with the result. I do use Zed for working on projects when on my home turf. It’s just that I’ve sworn off wasting time configuring Vim everywhere. That too is advantageous because you have to have a much more thorough knowledge of the vim tool instead of relying on plugins to make it work for you. And vim is everywhere.
    - gsinclair 3y ago
      The thing is, using a plugin like ‘surround’ Is just so nice. When you’ve chosen to use a pleasant and powerful editor, I don’t see the benefit in depriving oneself of further pleasure and power.
globular-toast 3y ago
Let's not forget that vim isn't really designed to be an IDE, though. People just like the editor so much they want an IDE with it. Unfortunately using vim itself for that is the wrong choice. The correct choice is emacs with evil mode.
- hju22_-3 3y ago
  The correct choice is to instead use something that doesn't require a really long time to both learn properly and modify until it's decently functional, even including premade distributions for it, and just using something to get the job done so that, you know, you get the job done instead of preparing to get it done and not getting it done.
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
More that you want to carve a bowl out of wood. Vim is like a knife that with some modifications you can turn into a carving knife. VSCode is like a chainsaw that has attachments that have been made for it and it also has bowl carving attachment. If you don't know your tools, then you can easily mess the knife modification and not end up with a carving knife. The chainsaw with ready made attachments is way easier to get going, but in return you have to carry the chainsaw with you and if there are any problems with the tool itself you probably aren't going to be able to fix or modify it yourself. So it is more like trading initial speed with more precision, but also being able to do more after the initial learning curve.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > The chainsaw with ready made attachments is way easier to get going, but in return you have to carry the chainsaw with you and if there are any problems with the tool itself you probably aren't going to be able to fix or modify it yourself. This is where your analogy breaks down for me. The "chainsaw" (VSCode) is absolutely perfect for the tasks I'm using it for. When I write Python code, the Python extension gives me exactly what I want. That's because the environment it creates has been fine-tuned based on feedback from thousands of users with similar requirements to my own. There's no need for me to modify anything, any more than I modify my car or my trousers. It's simply ready for me to do professional work, and whenever I have special requirements, I know that I will find an extension that caters to them also. I don't need or want to reinvent a wheel that has been invented hundreds of times already, and polished to perfection through more man-hours than I could ever hope to invest myself.
  - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
    It does not break down. Chainsaw is very good at doing chainsaw things. If what you need to do is cut down bunch of trees then chainsaw is exactly what you need. No one in their right minds would start with a knife and start building it into a saw and then attach a motor to motorize it. Mind you we were carving a bowl, but as per Internet argument you completely dismissed the use case and inserted your own. If VSCode does exactly what you need out of the box exactly how you want it to do it, then you are set and you should use VSCode.
mgdlbp 3y ago
> Canada ... out of fuel Referencing the Gimli glider. But does vim have any analogous issue? In matters of technical correctness FOSS is usually the more exacting. You won't find a 1 TB hard drive full at 931 GB of used space on Linux, for example.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  This was supposed to parody how some of Vim's default shortcuts just flat out do not work on non-US keyboards, because e.g. typing [ requires pressing AltGr+8 on German layouts, but Ctrl+AltGr+8 is not the same thing as Ctrl+[. And yes, it was also a reference to the Gimli glider.
  - pohuing 3y ago
    And I thought I was going insane when I tried vim. No wonder the thing felt horrible to use, it literally doesn't work with my pc?!?
  - cerved 3y ago
    us international with dead keys is superior
  - xigoi 3y ago
    I'm Czech and I use the English layout with UCW accented letters accessible via AltGr. It's much more convenient than tke standard Czech keyboard, even outside of Vim.
- krab 3y ago
  What about reserved blocks in ext filesystem? With default settings, it will say 5 % free but writes will fail if you're not root.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Are we talking about Gyrocopters here?

by p-e-w 3y ago

divbzero 3y ago

Was that expressly written to parody Vim? If so, this line is particularly spot on: > 'left' actually means right

raverbashing 3y ago
Emacs more likely since the bug is 23 yrs old and the gatekeeping But yeah I agree with the sentiment of parent OP
p-e-w 3y ago
> Was that expressly written to parody Vim? Yes. The advice to turn the yoke upside down is supposed to reference remapping Caps Lock to Escape, without which Vim destroys your pinky on a standard keyboard. But it's the choice of professionals, so what can we do?
- _7tgr 3y ago
  I'm playing into the joke here, but on most terminals, alt + <key> will actually be sent to the program as <esc> + key. You can use this to avoid pressing escape in Neovim.
  - xeyownt 3y ago
    Interesting tip too! Need to find the right combination however, I noticed that Alt-L might be a good one (no side effect it seems).
    - greggyb 3y ago
      That will move your cursor to the right by one character after exiting insert mode.
      - _7tgr 3y ago
        Entering + exiting insert mode with i and Esc moves your cursor to the left by one, so I suppose this neutralizes it?
  - madsr 3y ago
    +1. I mainly use this approach. If your next intended move is to go to the next line, Alt-J will exit insert mode and go to the next line immediately. Also the same for Alt+w/W/b/B, Alt+o, Alt+0, etc etc and it's just a matter of using your left thumb at the same time as navigating.
- divbzero 3y ago
  Nice, I didn’t pick up on that one. And I do have Caps Lock mapped to remapped to Escape haha. If any vim enthusiasts haven’t read this history before, this article [1] provides a good overview of how ex/vi came to be. The photo of the Lear Siegler ADM-3A keyboard used by Bill Joy largely explains the odd choice of keys. [1]: https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/05/where-vim-came-from.html https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/05/where-vim-came-from.htm...
- 3y ago
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
Maybe I've just grown blind to this, but how is this relevant? Unless you mean that you can define that
oblio 3y ago
[flagged]
- cerved 3y ago
  the bindings are by far the best thing about Vim
  - oblio 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - schrectacular 3y ago
      Do you still use a QWERTY keyboard? Or have you just been beaten over the head with them so long that Stockholm syndrome is super strong?
      - oblio 3y ago
        Did you read my original comment? I literally mentioned QWERTY as another example of backwards compatibility screwing everyone over. I use QWERTY because I have to, I don't like it and I can't do much about it in practice. People frequently defend Vi's HJKL vehemently - just like - if I'm not mistaken - you, presenting it as a superior option for some reason.
- geysersam 3y ago
  As if there are "studies" backing the claim that arrow keys are easier to use for navigation than the home row keys... Personally I don't want to move my hands from where I'm writing to the other side of they keyboard just to move the cursor.
  - m45t3r 3y ago
    Like many things in our field, we try to justify our choices, and because generally folks in our field holds high standards about themselves, we should justify as the only right way. What in reality, it is all about user preference. In the end, use whatever your feel most comfortable. I hate the VSCode interface and all of those notifications/popups and general slow interface, but I can understand who doesn't care or think that even with those VSCode is still more efficient for them. I also can completely understand the issue that folks say when they lost a long time tuning their Neovim configuration to their preferences, considering that I just have done so. But I still prefer neovim to VSCode nowadays, and not everyone needs to think the same, and this is fine.

dcow 3y ago

This is why I strictly adhere to vanilla Vim.

danjac 3y ago
I use vanilla vim when I have to ssh into a server and work on some config files. As such, I much prefer it to nano, and it's installed, or easily installable, on any Linux server. For that use case, it's absolutely great. No complaints.
- rajamaka 3y ago
  I spent years and years enjoying using vim for the same purpose when I was a sysadmin. I was absolutely disgusted beyond belief to find out people actually used it as their daily IDE when I became a developer.
p-e-w 3y ago
You mean the one with syntax highlighting disabled by default?
- dcow 3y ago
  Yeah. I actually find that no highlighting in some ways helps you understand the language better. Because you have to parse it, not rely on the highlighting to do it for you. When I was learning Rust, I spent a year writing Rust in vanilla vim which is by some accounts insane. But I did it for the uh immersion. And I’m happy with the result. I do use Zed for working on projects when on my home turf. It’s just that I’ve sworn off wasting time configuring Vim everywhere. That too is advantageous because you have to have a much more thorough knowledge of the vim tool instead of relying on plugins to make it work for you. And vim is everywhere.
  - gsinclair 3y ago
    The thing is, using a plugin like ‘surround’ Is just so nice. When you’ve chosen to use a pleasant and powerful editor, I don’t see the benefit in depriving oneself of further pleasure and power.

globular-toast 3y ago

Let's not forget that vim isn't really designed to be an IDE, though. People just like the editor so much they want an IDE with it. Unfortunately using vim itself for that is the wrong choice. The correct choice is emacs with evil mode.

hju22_-3 3y ago
The correct choice is to instead use something that doesn't require a really long time to both learn properly and modify until it's decently functional, even including premade distributions for it, and just using something to get the job done so that, you know, you get the job done instead of preparing to get it done and not getting it done.

nextlevelwizard 3y ago

More that you want to carve a bowl out of wood. Vim is like a knife that with some modifications you can turn into a carving knife. VSCode is like a chainsaw that has attachments that have been made for it and it also has bowl carving attachment. If you don't know your tools, then you can easily mess the knife modification and not end up with a carving knife. The chainsaw with ready made attachments is way easier to get going, but in return you have to carry the chainsaw with you and if there are any problems with the tool itself you probably aren't going to be able to fix or modify it yourself. So it is more like trading initial speed with more precision, but also being able to do more after the initial learning curve.

p-e-w 3y ago
> The chainsaw with ready made attachments is way easier to get going, but in return you have to carry the chainsaw with you and if there are any problems with the tool itself you probably aren't going to be able to fix or modify it yourself. This is where your analogy breaks down for me. The "chainsaw" (VSCode) is absolutely perfect for the tasks I'm using it for. When I write Python code, the Python extension gives me exactly what I want. That's because the environment it creates has been fine-tuned based on feedback from thousands of users with similar requirements to my own. There's no need for me to modify anything, any more than I modify my car or my trousers. It's simply ready for me to do professional work, and whenever I have special requirements, I know that I will find an extension that caters to them also. I don't need or want to reinvent a wheel that has been invented hundreds of times already, and polished to perfection through more man-hours than I could ever hope to invest myself.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  It does not break down. Chainsaw is very good at doing chainsaw things. If what you need to do is cut down bunch of trees then chainsaw is exactly what you need. No one in their right minds would start with a knife and start building it into a saw and then attach a motor to motorize it. Mind you we were carving a bowl, but as per Internet argument you completely dismissed the use case and inserted your own. If VSCode does exactly what you need out of the box exactly how you want it to do it, then you are set and you should use VSCode.

mgdlbp 3y ago

> Canada ... out of fuel Referencing the Gimli glider. But does vim have any analogous issue? In matters of technical correctness FOSS is usually the more exacting. You won't find a 1 TB hard drive full at 931 GB of used space on Linux, for example.

p-e-w 3y ago
This was supposed to parody how some of Vim's default shortcuts just flat out do not work on non-US keyboards, because e.g. typing [ requires pressing AltGr+8 on German layouts, but Ctrl+AltGr+8 is not the same thing as Ctrl+[. And yes, it was also a reference to the Gimli glider.
- pohuing 3y ago
  And I thought I was going insane when I tried vim. No wonder the thing felt horrible to use, it literally doesn't work with my pc?!?
- cerved 3y ago
  us international with dead keys is superior
- xigoi 3y ago
  I'm Czech and I use the English layout with UCW accented letters accessible via AltGr. It's much more convenient than tke standard Czech keyboard, even outside of Vim.
krab 3y ago
What about reserved blocks in ext filesystem? With default settings, it will say 5 % free but writes will fail if you're not root.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Are we talking about Gyrocopters here?