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Vim is extremely regular, as well as extremely powerful. The thing that makes me rage when I'm forced to use an editor other than vim is "Ctrl-RightArrow / Ctr

by ramses0 14y ago

Vim is extremely regular, as well as extremely powerful. The thing that makes me rage when I'm forced to use an editor other than vim is "Ctrl-RightArrow / Ctrl-LeftArrow". Will it stop on spaces? Will it stop on commas? Will it stop on parenthesis? If I hit Ctrl-Right->Right->Right then Ctrl-Left->Left->Left do I end up back where I started? I cannot fathom how people blindly accept that their editing movement operations are inconsistent. In case it's not clear, by default in windows most text editor areas do not "properly" return you to where you started with a bunch of Ctrl-Right/Ctrl-Left pairs (although I can't tell you at the moment what characters actually trigger this issue). Finally, by being a "modal" editor... when you want to type letters and stuff, getting into insert mode is an extremely small price to pay in comparison to having 26 function keys under your fingertips at all times. """Vi has the advantage that most ordinary keys are connected to some kind of command for positioning, altering text, searching and so forth, either singly or in key combinations. Many commands can be touch typed without the use of ⇧ Shift,Ctrl or Alt. Other types of editors generally require the user to move their hands from the home row when touch typing:""" ...the idea being that when you're actively typing, vim is just as crappy of a text editor as anything else (notepad, bbedit, etc.) but when you're not typing you've got at least 26 letters which all do something, then 26 more because you can type shift. q == record macro, w == move by word, e == end of word, r == replace character, etc, etc, etc. (don't make me type them all out, we'll be here a while! ;-)

robomartin 14y ago
> I cannot fathom how people blindly accept that their editing movement operations are inconsistent. That can be a problem if you have to jump from platform to platform or work with IDE's that implement things in vastly different ways. I jump between Windows and Mac all the time and for the longest time the Mac keyboard was infuriating. My solution was to re-map it to match, as much as possible, what I was used to. That may very well be the case with vim advocates. To be clear, this isn't about one or the other approach being better by any measure of the work. It's simply that one tends to prefer that which is familiar. That's just the way every person is wired. I've seen this across disciplines that have nothing whatsoever to do with programming. Resistance to change is a strong force. We tend to want to stay with what we know and reject change at a visceral level. And that's OK. Your point are probably valid. I'll take the time to explore over the weekend. Thanks for taking the time to share your insights.

by ramses0 14y ago

robomartin 14y ago

> I cannot fathom how people blindly accept that their editing movement operations are inconsistent. That can be a problem if you have to jump from platform to platform or work with IDE's that implement things in vastly different ways. I jump between Windows and Mac all the time and for the longest time the Mac keyboard was infuriating. My solution was to re-map it to match, as much as possible, what I was used to. That may very well be the case with vim advocates. To be clear, this isn't about one or the other approach being better by any measure of the work. It's simply that one tends to prefer that which is familiar. That's just the way every person is wired. I've seen this across disciplines that have nothing whatsoever to do with programming. Resistance to change is a strong force. We tend to want to stay with what we know and reject change at a visceral level. And that's OK. Your point are probably valid. I'll take the time to explore over the weekend. Thanks for taking the time to share your insights.