10 ms·

Every time I read an article like this, it's how a power user installs an array of plugins and customizations to really soup up Vim, which to me kind of misses

by fatbird 14y ago

Every time I read an article like this, it's how a power user installs an array of plugins and customizations to really soup up Vim, which to me kind of misses the point. If you want that level whiz-bang, use Coda or Sublime Text 2 or Eclipse or whatever. I don't recall where I saw this, but someone advised disabling syntax coloring in your editor to remove a crutch (and, secondarily, to visually simplify your environment). I've tried this with Vim and it's surprisingly nice [0]. You have to read the code more closely, and think more carefully about what's on screen, and this has the effect of focussing me more. Simplifying my environment, making it more sparse, but always having the power of Vim available, makes for a really potent, semi-distraction-free environment. [0] Well, mostly. I leave it on in order to have three colors used: a good contrast color for code, a second contrast color for strings, and a third, very low-contrast color for comments and line numbers so that, if I want to see those things, I can look for/at them, but if I don't, they're easy to ignore. Likewise, visually distinguishing between strings and code continues to be really useful.

yepguy 14y ago
How did you configure vim to use only three colors? Did you create your own colorscheme or is there another way to do it?
deleted 14y ago
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deleted 14y ago
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slurgfest 14y ago
Customizing your editor to do what you want doesn't miss the point. It is the point. If my editor does exactly what I want, I have no need of Coda or Sublime Text 2 or Eclipse or whatever. You can turn off colors. That's your customization because you like it. Good. Other people want other customizations.
pr0zac 14y ago
A lot of us do development on remote servers. Using vim in a terminal on the server is a heck of a lot snappier than a local editor over a remote connection. Also makes reconnecting your dev environment as easy as tmux a -d and allows me to do so from multiple machines.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  It is 2013, why are you doing "development" on a remote server? Is remote debugging now not a thing?
  - laurent123456 14y ago
    That can happen when the dev environment is too complex / heavy to setup on a local machine.
kragen 14y ago
He said he tried using Eclipse, and his Vim setup was more productive. Apparently that means that Vim can not only beat Eclipse at being a sparse minimalistic editor, but also at being a whiz-bang IDE. In short, according to the OP, if you want that level whiz-bang, you should switch from Eclipse (and presumably Coda or Sublime Text 2) to Vim.
gnosis 14y ago
"If you want that level whiz-bang, use Coda or Sublime Text 2 or Eclipse or whatever. I don't recall where I saw this, but someone advised disabling syntax coloring in your editor to remove a crutch (and, secondarily, to visually simplify your environment)." Perhaps you might enjoy using ed... From: patl@athena.mit.edu (Patrick J. LoPresti) Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Subject: The True Path (long) Date: 11 Jul 91 03:17:31 GMT Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs,alt.slack When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time. Ed, man! !man ed ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1) NAME ed - text editor SYNOPSIS ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ] DESCRIPTION Ed is the standard text editor. --- Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED! "Ed is the standard text editor." And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed -rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!! "Ed is the standard text editor." Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed: golem> ed ? help ? ? ? quit ? exit ? bye ? hello? ? eat flaming death ? ^C ? ^C ? ^D ? --- Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity. "Ed is the standard text editor." Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all. ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!! When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!! TEXT EDITOR. When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard. Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!! ?
rquantz 14y ago
someone advised disabling syntax coloring in your editor to remove a crutch (and, secondarily, to visually simplify your environment) ... You have to read the code more closely, and think more carefully about what's on screen I don't want to have to think more carefully about things that don't matter like syntax. Highlighting gives you visual clues so you can get meaning from code more quickly and get on with it, instead of having to read everything carefully. Plus: pretty colors.
berlinbrown 14y ago
It is funny, I use vim pretty much everyday for a decade. I install vim, I use "write", "close", "quit". I semi pretty vimrc file with line numbers and syntax highlighting. I am still not very good at opening multiple buffers, I just close vim and open the other file. But that is about it. I felt I have doing it wrong. But I can get work done and it is easier everytime I install a new server.

by fatbird 14y ago

yepguy 14y ago

How did you configure vim to use only three colors? Did you create your own colorscheme or is there another way to do it?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

slurgfest 14y ago

Customizing your editor to do what you want doesn't miss the point. It is the point. If my editor does exactly what I want, I have no need of Coda or Sublime Text 2 or Eclipse or whatever. You can turn off colors. That's your customization because you like it. Good. Other people want other customizations.

pr0zac 14y ago

A lot of us do development on remote servers. Using vim in a terminal on the server is a heck of a lot snappier than a local editor over a remote connection. Also makes reconnecting your dev environment as easy as tmux a -d and allows me to do so from multiple machines.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
It is 2013, why are you doing "development" on a remote server? Is remote debugging now not a thing?
- laurent123456 14y ago
  That can happen when the dev environment is too complex / heavy to setup on a local machine.

kragen 14y ago

He said he tried using Eclipse, and his Vim setup was more productive. Apparently that means that Vim can not only beat Eclipse at being a sparse minimalistic editor, but also at being a whiz-bang IDE. In short, according to the OP, if you want that level whiz-bang, you should switch from Eclipse (and presumably Coda or Sublime Text 2) to Vim.

gnosis 14y ago

"If you want that level whiz-bang, use Coda or Sublime Text 2 or Eclipse or whatever. I don't recall where I saw this, but someone advised disabling syntax coloring in your editor to remove a crutch (and, secondarily, to visually simplify your environment)." Perhaps you might enjoy using ed... From: patl@athena.mit.edu (Patrick J. LoPresti) Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Subject: The True Path (long) Date: 11 Jul 91 03:17:31 GMT Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs,alt.slack When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time. Ed, man! !man ed ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1) NAME ed - text editor SYNOPSIS ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ] DESCRIPTION Ed is the standard text editor. --- Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED! "Ed is the standard text editor." And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed -rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!! "Ed is the standard text editor." Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed: golem> ed ? help ? ? ? quit ? exit ? bye ? hello? ? eat flaming death ? ^C ? ^C ? ^D ? --- Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity. "Ed is the standard text editor." Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all. ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!! When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!! TEXT EDITOR. When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard. Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!! ?

rquantz 14y ago

someone advised disabling syntax coloring in your editor to remove a crutch (and, secondarily, to visually simplify your environment) ... You have to read the code more closely, and think more carefully about what's on screen I don't want to have to think more carefully about things that don't matter like syntax. Highlighting gives you visual clues so you can get meaning from code more quickly and get on with it, instead of having to read everything carefully. Plus: pretty colors.

berlinbrown 14y ago

It is funny, I use vim pretty much everyday for a decade. I install vim, I use "write", "close", "quit". I semi pretty vimrc file with line numbers and syntax highlighting. I am still not very good at opening multiple buffers, I just close vim and open the other file. But that is about it. I felt I have doing it wrong. But I can get work done and it is easier everytime I install a new server.