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> Lua is great, but one JSON file is even better I will never understand how you go back from a very customized editor setup to the one with "reasonable defaul

> Lua is great, but one JSON file is even better I will never understand how you go back from a very customized editor setup to the one with "reasonable defaults with little to no things to configure". Great talk on this topic by TJ: Personal Development Environment: https://youtu.be/QMVIJhC9Veg https://youtu.be/QMVIJhC9Veg

Barrin92 2y ago
>I will never understand how you go back from a very customized editor setup because when the very customized setup inevitably breaks the amount of headache you have is roughly proportionate to the amount of customization, whereas software with strong defaults tends to deal with that for you. This is particularly the case with neovim which, in almost deliberate defiance of any systems thinking, just tends to consist of a few dozen moving parts loosely tied together and you have to sort of pray that updating some doesn't just break things. Paraphrasing Russ Ackhoff, if you take the best part of every car and put it together you don't get the best car, you get something that doesn't even drive, this is how I've felt more than once with very bespoke editor setups
- climb_stealth 2y ago
  Haha this is so true. I stopped upgrading neovim when something little broke and I couldn't work out how to fix it an hour or so. It was something stupid like the column bar not having the right colour anymore. Just hope that nothing breaks in an OS upgrade.
  - thefaux 2y ago
    Yeah, they changed the default colorscheme in neovim at some point in the last year or so. I have an extremely minimal config and don't even use syntax highlighting or tab completions but I could not get it to render the way it used to. I wasted at least 30 minutes on this for absolutely no good reason. So I git bisected, made my own build (which took maybe 10-15 minutes) and will likely never upgrade neovim again.
- rewgs 2y ago
  I see people mentioning neovim "breaking" and to this day I have no idea what everyone is talking about. I have a very customized neovim setup, update almost every day, and quite literally have never experienced a single thing breaking.
  - ivanjermakov 2y ago
    I agree. Cramming a dozen of low quality plugins without understanding how they operate and hoping updating won't break things is not a great way to go. I understand "just make it work" mentality, but it might be useful to have deeper understanding of a tool you use several hours everyday.
marssaxman 2y ago
Back in the '90s I would customize my development environment to within an inch of its life, but after going from one machine to the next, one toolchain to the next, one operating system to the next, year after year, culminating in one ridiculous six-month period when I had to pave my dev machine and reinstall everything from scratch every two weeks (yes, this was stupid; yes, I knew it was stupid at the time; no, I had no way out of it, not if I wanted to keep my job) - I learned that adapting myself to the defaults was a lot less work than adapting the settings to me. Or, to put it another way: every step you take away from the mainstream has a cost, so you had better know how much you are willing to pay and budget your quirks accordingly.
- eviks 2y ago
  How is the work of copying an editor config/plugin folder with a script every two weeks for six months worse than using the bad suboptimal defaults every day? > every step you take away from the mainstream has a cost Customizing neovim is mainstream
- theendisney 2y ago
  If it can open text files and has a cursor im good. Irl i dont grow attached to environments either. Its just to expensive when they vanish. Its just people now :)
  - baq 2y ago
    Not sure why but I feel almost physical pain when I see nano opened on a fresh setup. I just can’t handle it, it’s surreal.
    - theendisney 2y ago
      I just think ok how spoiled we are. In the 50-60s the typist diploma required 300 strokes per minute, without typos, on a mechanical typewriter, from paper or dictation. I never had to tape up a smashed finger.
- wruza 2y ago
astrobe_ 2y ago
> I will never understand how you go back from a very customized editor setup to the one with "reasonable defaults with little to no things to configure". That's one of the reasons why I chose Vim over Emacs after switching back and forth for a while. I do prefer the design of Emacs because I prefer having full control over my environment - I even coded more than a couple of tiny, application-specific editors - but sometimes I have better things to do than e.g. reading docs or searching for a plugin/extension mod that does what I need, or do it myself; sometimes I am a mere luser who want things to "just work" out-of-the-box.

Barrin92 2y ago

>I will never understand how you go back from a very customized editor setup because when the very customized setup inevitably breaks the amount of headache you have is roughly proportionate to the amount of customization, whereas software with strong defaults tends to deal with that for you. This is particularly the case with neovim which, in almost deliberate defiance of any systems thinking, just tends to consist of a few dozen moving parts loosely tied together and you have to sort of pray that updating some doesn't just break things. Paraphrasing Russ Ackhoff, if you take the best part of every car and put it together you don't get the best car, you get something that doesn't even drive, this is how I've felt more than once with very bespoke editor setups

climb_stealth 2y ago
Haha this is so true. I stopped upgrading neovim when something little broke and I couldn't work out how to fix it an hour or so. It was something stupid like the column bar not having the right colour anymore. Just hope that nothing breaks in an OS upgrade.
- thefaux 2y ago
  Yeah, they changed the default colorscheme in neovim at some point in the last year or so. I have an extremely minimal config and don't even use syntax highlighting or tab completions but I could not get it to render the way it used to. I wasted at least 30 minutes on this for absolutely no good reason. So I git bisected, made my own build (which took maybe 10-15 minutes) and will likely never upgrade neovim again.
rewgs 2y ago
I see people mentioning neovim "breaking" and to this day I have no idea what everyone is talking about. I have a very customized neovim setup, update almost every day, and quite literally have never experienced a single thing breaking.
- ivanjermakov 2y ago
  I agree. Cramming a dozen of low quality plugins without understanding how they operate and hoping updating won't break things is not a great way to go. I understand "just make it work" mentality, but it might be useful to have deeper understanding of a tool you use several hours everyday.

marssaxman 2y ago

Back in the '90s I would customize my development environment to within an inch of its life, but after going from one machine to the next, one toolchain to the next, one operating system to the next, year after year, culminating in one ridiculous six-month period when I had to pave my dev machine and reinstall everything from scratch every two weeks (yes, this was stupid; yes, I knew it was stupid at the time; no, I had no way out of it, not if I wanted to keep my job) - I learned that adapting myself to the defaults was a lot less work than adapting the settings to me. Or, to put it another way: every step you take away from the mainstream has a cost, so you had better know how much you are willing to pay and budget your quirks accordingly.

eviks 2y ago
How is the work of copying an editor config/plugin folder with a script every two weeks for six months worse than using the bad suboptimal defaults every day? > every step you take away from the mainstream has a cost Customizing neovim is mainstream
theendisney 2y ago
If it can open text files and has a cursor im good. Irl i dont grow attached to environments either. Its just to expensive when they vanish. Its just people now :)
- baq 2y ago
  Not sure why but I feel almost physical pain when I see nano opened on a fresh setup. I just can’t handle it, it’s surreal.
  - theendisney 2y ago
    I just think ok how spoiled we are. In the 50-60s the typist diploma required 300 strokes per minute, without typos, on a mechanical typewriter, from paper or dictation. I never had to tape up a smashed finger.
wruza 2y ago

astrobe_ 2y ago

> I will never understand how you go back from a very customized editor setup to the one with "reasonable defaults with little to no things to configure". That's one of the reasons why I chose Vim over Emacs after switching back and forth for a while. I do prefer the design of Emacs because I prefer having full control over my environment - I even coded more than a couple of tiny, application-specific editors - but sometimes I have better things to do than e.g. reading docs or searching for a plugin/extension mod that does what I need, or do it myself; sometimes I am a mere luser who want things to "just work" out-of-the-box.