4 ms·

tbf quitting vim is extremely unintuitive to someone that opened it by accident for the first time.

by Quarrelsome 7mo ago

marssaxman 7mo ago
I used `killall vi` from another terminal for years before I finally memorized the proper way to do it.
- thaumasiotes 7mo ago
  How did you save the edits you made in vi?
  - marssaxman 7mo ago
    I didn't try to make any edits in vi; I just ended up there, on occasion, when something would invoke $EDITOR.
SilasX 7mo ago
Funny/informative story about this: There was a project, OpenHatch.org c. 2011 that tried to get people to be comfortable enough with programming to contribute to open source projects. In one of the tutorials (I think introducing command-line git?), if you followed the instructions, it would dump you into vim. It hadn't introduced to you vim by that point or explained that's what was happening, so you wouldn't even know enough to google the error. And this was a project that was supposed to be primarily focused on being newbie-friendly!
budman1 7mo ago
quitting vi is a basic competency test. would you listen to a doctor that could not suture a cut? how about a mechanic that could not remove a socket from a ratchet? simple file editing. vi has been around for every. if you haven't seen it, and needed it at least once, what have you been doing? (personal anecdote: once had an engineering VP bring up that a stray ":wq" in a document was a sign of a real engineer...working outside of where he should be..)
- Quarrelsome 7mo ago
  > quitting vi is a basic competency test. no, its pop quiz bullshit. Oh you know about ":wq"? Well done! But if you don't know, you do it a few times and now you know. It does nothing, outside of teaching you a bit about poor UX. > if you haven't seen it, and needed it at least once, what have you been doing? using one of the other available ides? > once had an engineering VP bring up that a stray ":wq" in a document was a sign of a real engineer...working outside of where he should be.. That's not a sign of good judgement, that's a sign of being technically fashionable. It's hipster shit, akin to rejecting a candidate because they're a fan of Taylor Swift and don't know who the band Tool are.
  - johnisgood 7mo ago
    What distinguishes knowing about vim from knowing about virtually anything else? If you apply to a job in tech, you should know that by long-pressing the power button, your PC turns off. Is this pop quiz shit, too? The bar is ridiculously low these days, apparently.
    - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
      are you being sarcastic? Its nothing like the power button. Everyone has to press the power button but not everyone has to use Vi. :wq is one of the most insane key combinations to quit an app and this is just hipster shit where people who use vim think they're the only "real engineers". It's just a disgusting level of arrogance and masturbation. The code is what matters, not the IDE. To focus on it as a sign of technical excellence makes a mockery of what engineers are supposed to care about (comp sci things) and replaces them with all the elegance of a high school bully belittling some other kid for not wearing Nikes.
      - pavlus 7mo ago
        It's not about using vim, it's about when you had to sudoedit a config on a server you visited the first time, and it had vim as default EDITOR, so you have to know how to exit it and open nano, or whatever you use. It's about exposure, exposure to many small things is a sign of experience, it is experience, to be precise. If they don't know small basic things, it's a sign, they don't have relevant experience. Can also check, if they have empty lines at the end of their files, know how to remove docker images from their machine, or get a TCP/UDP joke.

tbf quitting vim is extremely unintuitive to someone that opened it by accident for the first time.

marssaxman 7mo ago

I used `killall vi` from another terminal for years before I finally memorized the proper way to do it.

thaumasiotes 7mo ago
How did you save the edits you made in vi?
- marssaxman 7mo ago
  I didn't try to make any edits in vi; I just ended up there, on occasion, when something would invoke $EDITOR.

SilasX 7mo ago

Funny/informative story about this: There was a project, OpenHatch.org c. 2011 that tried to get people to be comfortable enough with programming to contribute to open source projects. In one of the tutorials (I think introducing command-line git?), if you followed the instructions, it would dump you into vim. It hadn't introduced to you vim by that point or explained that's what was happening, so you wouldn't even know enough to google the error. And this was a project that was supposed to be primarily focused on being newbie-friendly!

budman1 7mo ago

quitting vi is a basic competency test. would you listen to a doctor that could not suture a cut? how about a mechanic that could not remove a socket from a ratchet? simple file editing. vi has been around for every. if you haven't seen it, and needed it at least once, what have you been doing? (personal anecdote: once had an engineering VP bring up that a stray ":wq" in a document was a sign of a real engineer...working outside of where he should be..)

Quarrelsome 7mo ago
> quitting vi is a basic competency test. no, its pop quiz bullshit. Oh you know about ":wq"? Well done! But if you don't know, you do it a few times and now you know. It does nothing, outside of teaching you a bit about poor UX. > if you haven't seen it, and needed it at least once, what have you been doing? using one of the other available ides? > once had an engineering VP bring up that a stray ":wq" in a document was a sign of a real engineer...working outside of where he should be.. That's not a sign of good judgement, that's a sign of being technically fashionable. It's hipster shit, akin to rejecting a candidate because they're a fan of Taylor Swift and don't know who the band Tool are.
- johnisgood 7mo ago
  What distinguishes knowing about vim from knowing about virtually anything else? If you apply to a job in tech, you should know that by long-pressing the power button, your PC turns off. Is this pop quiz shit, too? The bar is ridiculously low these days, apparently.
  - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
    are you being sarcastic? Its nothing like the power button. Everyone has to press the power button but not everyone has to use Vi. :wq is one of the most insane key combinations to quit an app and this is just hipster shit where people who use vim think they're the only "real engineers". It's just a disgusting level of arrogance and masturbation. The code is what matters, not the IDE. To focus on it as a sign of technical excellence makes a mockery of what engineers are supposed to care about (comp sci things) and replaces them with all the elegance of a high school bully belittling some other kid for not wearing Nikes.
    - pavlus 7mo ago
      It's not about using vim, it's about when you had to sudoedit a config on a server you visited the first time, and it had vim as default EDITOR, so you have to know how to exit it and open nano, or whatever you use. It's about exposure, exposure to many small things is a sign of experience, it is experience, to be precise. If they don't know small basic things, it's a sign, they don't have relevant experience. Can also check, if they have empty lines at the end of their files, know how to remove docker images from their machine, or get a TCP/UDP joke.