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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

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.
  - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
    Its about people wanting to hire themselves. It's a cognitive bias we all suffer from. Being completely unaware of it and purity testing others based on your own experience, is: to be precise, a lack of experience in realising that other people can be just as good as you but took a completely different path to get there. Nah, I bet they suck, why can't they do what I've already done?
    - pavlus 7mo ago
      Yes, this is the bias we are looking for. If you can't quit vim, don't know how your frontend communicates with your backend, can't type on a regular qwerty keyboard without looking at letters, or navigate UI without mouse, never used a debugger, don't know how to check if it was DNS, can't write a spec for a feature, after talking to stakeholders (and defend it's priority on their behalf), or don't know how to open dev tools in your browser - you are not ready to herd the cats yet, they will herd you off the cliff instead. And that's okay, you'll get there someday.
      - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
        I couldn't breathe before I learned how to quit vim. Its surprising just how fundamental it is.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- johnisgood 7mo ago
  Okay, how about having the problem-solving skills to figure out how to exit vim when you inevitably encounter it? Sounds like a reasonable middle ground to me. Do you disagree with this? (FWIW I agree with pavlus.)
  - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
    I still think you're just trying to hire yourself and its kinda gross. Its like being British and refusing to hire someone that doesn't read or know about theregister.co.uk. Sure, most people probably should but there might be a great dev out there who don't and its extremely cruel to "other" them. Does vim always happily tell you that its running? It used to be the default diff tool on devices I worked with and IIRC it was just a blank shell in some cases, so it might be non-trivial to work out if you're in it, without knowing it. So yea, its probably interesting as a challenge but it doesn't prove shit, outside of "you like vim". I like Jetbrains products but I wouldn't assess someone's ability based on how someone might use the products, but rather what they create by using them.
    - johnisgood 7mo ago
      Since you are denying the importance of baseline exposure (consequently accumulated experience), I will just say this: if you are unable to figure out how to quit vim, it absolutely proves quite a lot about your experience. If you do not think that problem-solving skill is valuable, I do not know what to tell you. Edit: you keep heavily editing your comment so I will leave this as-is. FYI, you are the only one talking about gatekeeping.
      - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
        I had been sole technical owner for many distributed solutions for industry, as well as responsible for like ~20% of code running my nations transportation infrastructure before I learned how to quit vim. So that makes me think you're full of shit and lack the imagination to consider any other paths except your own.

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.
- Quarrelsome 7mo ago
  Its about people wanting to hire themselves. It's a cognitive bias we all suffer from. Being completely unaware of it and purity testing others based on your own experience, is: to be precise, a lack of experience in realising that other people can be just as good as you but took a completely different path to get there. Nah, I bet they suck, why can't they do what I've already done?
  - pavlus 7mo ago
    Yes, this is the bias we are looking for. If you can't quit vim, don't know how your frontend communicates with your backend, can't type on a regular qwerty keyboard without looking at letters, or navigate UI without mouse, never used a debugger, don't know how to check if it was DNS, can't write a spec for a feature, after talking to stakeholders (and defend it's priority on their behalf), or don't know how to open dev tools in your browser - you are not ready to herd the cats yet, they will herd you off the cliff instead. And that's okay, you'll get there someday.
    - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
      I couldn't breathe before I learned how to quit vim. Its surprising just how fundamental it is.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
johnisgood 7mo ago
Okay, how about having the problem-solving skills to figure out how to exit vim when you inevitably encounter it? Sounds like a reasonable middle ground to me. Do you disagree with this? (FWIW I agree with pavlus.)
- Quarrelsome 7mo ago
  I still think you're just trying to hire yourself and its kinda gross. Its like being British and refusing to hire someone that doesn't read or know about theregister.co.uk. Sure, most people probably should but there might be a great dev out there who don't and its extremely cruel to "other" them. Does vim always happily tell you that its running? It used to be the default diff tool on devices I worked with and IIRC it was just a blank shell in some cases, so it might be non-trivial to work out if you're in it, without knowing it. So yea, its probably interesting as a challenge but it doesn't prove shit, outside of "you like vim". I like Jetbrains products but I wouldn't assess someone's ability based on how someone might use the products, but rather what they create by using them.
  - johnisgood 7mo ago
    Since you are denying the importance of baseline exposure (consequently accumulated experience), I will just say this: if you are unable to figure out how to quit vim, it absolutely proves quite a lot about your experience. If you do not think that problem-solving skill is valuable, I do not know what to tell you. Edit: you keep heavily editing your comment so I will leave this as-is. FYI, you are the only one talking about gatekeeping.
    - Quarrelsome 7mo ago
      I had been sole technical owner for many distributed solutions for industry, as well as responsible for like ~20% of code running my nations transportation infrastructure before I learned how to quit vim. So that makes me think you're full of shit and lack the imagination to consider any other paths except your own.