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I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim, but referring to its history is not a particularly compelling one (for me, at leas

I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim, but referring to its history is not a particularly compelling one (for me, at least). In today's terms, the above "without wasting too much paper during editing" argument translates into "with as few keystrokes as possible". In some situations, I definitely find my ability to type (or in general, to edit text) to be the bottleneck in getting things out of my brain and into a file. In these cases, Vim allows me to trade a bit of brainpower for efficiency in editing, which is great. Other times, I'm being held up because I'm not sure what to type, but I prefer to do creative thinking away from the keyboard, so Vim is neither here nor there in those cases. So basically, the historical argument doesn't make sense for me; do you have any specific issues with Vim?

lutusp 13y ago
> I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim ... Sure, no problem: * It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. * It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment -- mouse navigation, different fonts, text styling, page layout, or anything else. Just like vi. * No clipboard support -- all copying and pasting operations, apart from being another example of bizarre vi incantations requiring the recall of a raft of magic characters, is within vi/vim and disregards the system clipboard. I can say this in vi/vim's favor: it's a step up from ed, its predecessor. > In today's terms, the above "without wasting too much paper during editing" argument translates into "with as few keystrokes as possible". No, actually, in the vi days, to save paper one had to enter more keystrokes, not fewer. When I wrote Apple Writer, former users of vi were astonished by how few keystrokes were required to accomplish things. > do you have any specific issues with Vim? Just one. It doesn't belong in modern times, it belongs in a museum.
- virtualwhys 13y ago
  What is/are your replacement(s) for VIM?
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > What is/are your replacement(s) for VIM? Anything at all. Kate. KWrite. Gedit. The programming editors built into Netbeans and Eclipse. My own (free) program Arachnophilia (http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia), a sort of a descendant of Apple Writer, but much improved and with support for many document types. Essentially anything. All the above choices take advantage of the modern computing environment. That by itself sets them apart from vi/vim.
    - virtualwhys 13y ago
      Yah, I'm on Eclipse (Kepler) for Scala development, but VIM bindings are more efficient editing-wise, IMO. I would choose VIM over Gedit simply because remote servers tend to have vi/vim installed out of the box, not to mention the fact that Gedit is to me not really all that great (perhaps a bit better than M$'s Wordpad). VIM is my default editor for sysadmin work; for coding it's Eclipse for server-side and Aptana for client-side (which I guess is Eclipse under the hood, just not as bloated).
- djur 13y ago
  How are "different fonts, text styling, page layout" relevant to a programmer's editor?
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > How are "different fonts, text styling, page layout" relevant to a programmer's editor? You're suffering from a hidden assumption -- that an editor can only be a programming editor, can't be many different things without degrading its usefulness as a programming editor.
- seren 13y ago
  > * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. All these operations, except entering text, are available from "normal" mode which is the default mode. This is factually incorrect that you need to switch mode to delete something, or save a file.
  - jbri 13y ago
    To me, it sounds like he's made the classic "vim newbie" mistake of thinking of insert mode as the default, and then switching to normal mode to do anything other than edit text. It's easy to see how that would cause a painful experience.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > To me, it sounds like he's made the classic "vim newbie" ... Based on simple probability, the chance is better than 50% that I was using vi before you were born.
      - pestaa 13y ago
        Nice ad hominem. Using vi before any of us was born does not mean you avoided the classic "vim newbie" mistake.
        lutusp 13y ago
        > Nice ad hominem. How is calling you young, saying you have your entire life in front of you, an ad hominem? Except possibly to suggest that you have a quota of mistakes you need to go through before you become more efficient at avoiding them?
        heurist 13y ago
        >saying you have your entire life in front of you That's not what you said... you said he was too young to know vi/vim better than you. If you haven't used it in 30 years how would you know vim any better than a younger person? Why would age have anything to do with recognizing the benefits and drawbacks of various text editors? My grandparents barely knew how to turn on a computer... they wouldn't try to teach me that notepad is a better text editor than vim. I'm not discounting your experience (you definitely have more than most people here) but your arguments here could be better.
- Avshalom 13y ago
  gvim comes standard with vim with vim defaults to allowing the cursor keys and delete/backspace. I mouse around my gvim with my custom font all day long middle click pasting snippets in from the browser.
- ehsanu1 13y ago
  These don't seem like the most sound criticisms honestly. It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. Not sure what the issue is there? It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment gvim/macvim exists. They also give you regular clipboard support. Though I honestly don't get much out of all that, and am happy enough with vim in a terminal, but I understand the motivation. To perform multiple operations ... requires you to switch modes Vim is modal, yes, but what is the specific disadvantage of that? That it has a learning curve? Mode switches are generally single key presses, so it's not exactly onerous once you know what keys to press. Equivalents in "modern" text editors require use of the mouse, which while being much easier to figure out, is also much less efficient. Using the mouse, though just taking a bit longer each time, is enough for my brain do a switch and focus on that action instead of the code - unlike the vim mode switches I do all the time without thinking. No, actually, in the vi days, to save paper one had to enter more keystrokes, not fewer That sounds plausible, but not all that relevant to how one uses vim now. former users of vi were astonished by how few keystrokes were required to accomplish things Also irrelevant. Vim's text objects, which basically offers you a vocabulary for text manipulation, has no match and will generally allow vim to win in practically any keystroke comparison. It's not clear how well you know how to use vim, if it all, though you've clearly used and hated vi in a past life :).
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > These don't seem like the most sound criticisms honestly. So Steve Jobs was wrong to visit Xerox Parc, be impressed by what he saw, and create the modern computer? > Vim is modal, yes, but what is the specific disadvantage of that? It is less efficient. But you are now obviously trolling, posing arguments that no rational person could possibly accept. "So, a few more keystrokes for each command, repeated for each such command. So what? Are you in a hurry to get somewhere? Do you want to live forever?"
    - ehsanu1 13y ago
      It is less efficient. But you are now obviously trolling, posing arguments that no rational person could possibly accept. "So, a few more keystrokes for each command, repeated for each such command. So what? Are you in a hurry to get somewhere? Do you want to live forever?" I said no such thing. I said a keypress is more efficient than alternatives, and thus more efficient and faster. Please reconsider who an external observer would mark as a troll in this conversation. But in fact, I don't think you're trolling, you just hate vim, and that's fine. And I like vim, and that doesn't make me a troll I hope.
- lake99 13y ago
  I hate vim too, but some of your points are simply not true: > * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. Open a file. Insert some text. Use arrow keys to scroll. Hit Alt-/ to search forward. Hit Alt-Shift-/ to search backwards. Sure, some commands need you to switch modes, but not all. > * It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment -- mouse navigation, different fonts, text styling, page layout, or anything else. Just like vi. One can do text styling (but only with colours, I think) with vim. With gvim, one can use a mouse, and change fonts.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > I hate vim too, but some of your points are simply not true Your claim is that what I said is false. > Sure, some commands need you to switch modes, but not all. Your claim is that what I said is true. Only one of the above comments can be so. If one is true, then the other is false. Take your pick.
    - Oletros 13y ago
      No, you're wrong and he is right and now it is clear that you're just laughing
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > No, you're wrong and he is right ... That's for sure. In a single post he asserted both that there are modes, and there aren't modes. That leaves no room for another viewpoint. There's one sure way to win an argument -- assert all possible viewpoints, declare victory, and depart the field.
        lake99 13y ago
        Declare what victory? I have no* stance in superiority of the whole modal vs. non-modal deal. Whenever I have a choice, I pick a modern GUI editor, just like you. Far from "[asserting] all possible viewpoints", I mentioned specific keystrokes that you could try out too. If you are in insert-mode, and use arrow keys to visit a different location, you'd continue to be in insert-mode. Is it implemented as a secret hack to quietly enter and exit the scroll mode when arrow keys are pressed? I neither know nor care. However, in this usage scenario, modes are not exposed to the end-user. * actually, I do like modal behaviour, but in very few cases. In MS Windows, it used to be the case that Win-space z would put the window in resize-mode. One could then use arrow keys to resize the window. There was a similar sequence for moving windows too.
- ashashwat 13y ago
  > * No clipboard support -- all copying and pasting operations, apart from being another example of bizarre vi incantations requiring the recall of a raft of magic characters, is within vi/vim and disregards the system clipboard. I was under the impression, vim does have clipboard support. Putting "set clipboard=unnamed" in ~/.vimrc integrates it with system clipboard (at least on OSX).
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > I was under the impression, vim does have clipboard support. Putting "set clipboard=unnamed" in ~/.vimrc integrates it with system clipboard I was wrong about that. As it turns out, in some environments, by reconfiguration you can make vi/vim recognize the system clipboard, even though it's terribly unhappy about it, and even though the change isn't transferable to all working environments. I stand corrected.
- danielbarla 13y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I guess we have a difference of opinion on the concept of modal editing, which is fine. I find it a plus that I'm not having to move my mouse hand off the base row all the time, and find that vi offers elegant solutions to many oft-recurring tasks people normally accomplish with a mouse (copying a row or two, highlighting text inside brackets / inverted commas, editing a variable name up to a specific point, etc). While I agree that the incantations required are relatively complex, they do become second nature (e.g. I'm an on-and-off user of perhaps 2 years, and I'm comfortable with the basics). This of course comes at the cost of having to switch modes often (and specifically, exit current mode using ESC, which is irritating), but this normally only involves 1 key. I guess a complete cost-benefit analysis would be highly subjective, in my personal experience the trade-off is worthwhile. In short, I'm not aware of anything that comes close to the terseness of vi(m) for basic editing.

lutusp 13y ago

> I would actually love to hear some specific and insightful criticisms of Vim ... Sure, no problem: * It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. * It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment -- mouse navigation, different fonts, text styling, page layout, or anything else. Just like vi. * No clipboard support -- all copying and pasting operations, apart from being another example of bizarre vi incantations requiring the recall of a raft of magic characters, is within vi/vim and disregards the system clipboard. I can say this in vi/vim's favor: it's a step up from ed, its predecessor. > In today's terms, the above "without wasting too much paper during editing" argument translates into "with as few keystrokes as possible". No, actually, in the vi days, to save paper one had to enter more keystrokes, not fewer. When I wrote Apple Writer, former users of vi were astonished by how few keystrokes were required to accomplish things. > do you have any specific issues with Vim? Just one. It doesn't belong in modern times, it belongs in a museum.

virtualwhys 13y ago
What is/are your replacement(s) for VIM?
- lutusp 13y ago
  > What is/are your replacement(s) for VIM? Anything at all. Kate. KWrite. Gedit. The programming editors built into Netbeans and Eclipse. My own (free) program Arachnophilia (http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia http://arachnoid.com/arachnophilia), a sort of a descendant of Apple Writer, but much improved and with support for many document types. Essentially anything. All the above choices take advantage of the modern computing environment. That by itself sets them apart from vi/vim.
  - virtualwhys 13y ago
    Yah, I'm on Eclipse (Kepler) for Scala development, but VIM bindings are more efficient editing-wise, IMO. I would choose VIM over Gedit simply because remote servers tend to have vi/vim installed out of the box, not to mention the fact that Gedit is to me not really all that great (perhaps a bit better than M$'s Wordpad). VIM is my default editor for sysadmin work; for coding it's Eclipse for server-side and Aptana for client-side (which I guess is Eclipse under the hood, just not as bloated).
djur 13y ago
How are "different fonts, text styling, page layout" relevant to a programmer's editor?
- lutusp 13y ago
  > How are "different fonts, text styling, page layout" relevant to a programmer's editor? You're suffering from a hidden assumption -- that an editor can only be a programming editor, can't be many different things without degrading its usefulness as a programming editor.
seren 13y ago
> * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. All these operations, except entering text, are available from "normal" mode which is the default mode. This is factually incorrect that you need to switch mode to delete something, or save a file.
- jbri 13y ago
  To me, it sounds like he's made the classic "vim newbie" mistake of thinking of insert mode as the default, and then switching to normal mode to do anything other than edit text. It's easy to see how that would cause a painful experience.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > To me, it sounds like he's made the classic "vim newbie" ... Based on simple probability, the chance is better than 50% that I was using vi before you were born.
    - pestaa 13y ago
      Nice ad hominem. Using vi before any of us was born does not mean you avoided the classic "vim newbie" mistake.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > Nice ad hominem. How is calling you young, saying you have your entire life in front of you, an ad hominem? Except possibly to suggest that you have a quota of mistakes you need to go through before you become more efficient at avoiding them?
        heurist 13y ago
        >saying you have your entire life in front of you That's not what you said... you said he was too young to know vi/vim better than you. If you haven't used it in 30 years how would you know vim any better than a younger person? Why would age have anything to do with recognizing the benefits and drawbacks of various text editors? My grandparents barely knew how to turn on a computer... they wouldn't try to teach me that notepad is a better text editor than vim. I'm not discounting your experience (you definitely have more than most people here) but your arguments here could be better.
Avshalom 13y ago
gvim comes standard with vim with vim defaults to allowing the cursor keys and delete/backspace. I mouse around my gvim with my custom font all day long middle click pasting snippets in from the browser.
ehsanu1 13y ago
These don't seem like the most sound criticisms honestly. It's still a command-line editor. Just like vi. Not sure what the issue is there? It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment gvim/macvim exists. They also give you regular clipboard support. Though I honestly don't get much out of all that, and am happy enough with vim in a terminal, but I understand the motivation. To perform multiple operations ... requires you to switch modes Vim is modal, yes, but what is the specific disadvantage of that? That it has a learning curve? Mode switches are generally single key presses, so it's not exactly onerous once you know what keys to press. Equivalents in "modern" text editors require use of the mouse, which while being much easier to figure out, is also much less efficient. Using the mouse, though just taking a bit longer each time, is enough for my brain do a switch and focus on that action instead of the code - unlike the vim mode switches I do all the time without thinking. No, actually, in the vi days, to save paper one had to enter more keystrokes, not fewer That sounds plausible, but not all that relevant to how one uses vim now. former users of vi were astonished by how few keystrokes were required to accomplish things Also irrelevant. Vim's text objects, which basically offers you a vocabulary for text manipulation, has no match and will generally allow vim to win in practically any keystroke comparison. It's not clear how well you know how to use vim, if it all, though you've clearly used and hated vi in a past life :).
- lutusp 13y ago
  > These don't seem like the most sound criticisms honestly. So Steve Jobs was wrong to visit Xerox Parc, be impressed by what he saw, and create the modern computer? > Vim is modal, yes, but what is the specific disadvantage of that? It is less efficient. But you are now obviously trolling, posing arguments that no rational person could possibly accept. "So, a few more keystrokes for each command, repeated for each such command. So what? Are you in a hurry to get somewhere? Do you want to live forever?"
  - ehsanu1 13y ago
    It is less efficient. But you are now obviously trolling, posing arguments that no rational person could possibly accept. "So, a few more keystrokes for each command, repeated for each such command. So what? Are you in a hurry to get somewhere? Do you want to live forever?" I said no such thing. I said a keypress is more efficient than alternatives, and thus more efficient and faster. Please reconsider who an external observer would mark as a troll in this conversation. But in fact, I don't think you're trolling, you just hate vim, and that's fine. And I like vim, and that doesn't make me a troll I hope.
lake99 13y ago
I hate vim too, but some of your points are simply not true: > * To perform multiple operations, like moving the cursor around, entering text, deleting text, searching the document, saving and loading files, requires you to switch modes. Just like vi. Open a file. Insert some text. Use arrow keys to scroll. Hit Alt-/ to search forward. Hit Alt-Shift-/ to search backwards. Sure, some commands need you to switch modes, but not all. > * It cannot take advantage of the modern computing environment -- mouse navigation, different fonts, text styling, page layout, or anything else. Just like vi. One can do text styling (but only with colours, I think) with vim. With gvim, one can use a mouse, and change fonts.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I hate vim too, but some of your points are simply not true Your claim is that what I said is false. > Sure, some commands need you to switch modes, but not all. Your claim is that what I said is true. Only one of the above comments can be so. If one is true, then the other is false. Take your pick.
  - Oletros 13y ago
    No, you're wrong and he is right and now it is clear that you're just laughing
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > No, you're wrong and he is right ... That's for sure. In a single post he asserted both that there are modes, and there aren't modes. That leaves no room for another viewpoint. There's one sure way to win an argument -- assert all possible viewpoints, declare victory, and depart the field.
      - lake99 13y ago
        Declare what victory? I have no* stance in superiority of the whole modal vs. non-modal deal. Whenever I have a choice, I pick a modern GUI editor, just like you. Far from "[asserting] all possible viewpoints", I mentioned specific keystrokes that you could try out too. If you are in insert-mode, and use arrow keys to visit a different location, you'd continue to be in insert-mode. Is it implemented as a secret hack to quietly enter and exit the scroll mode when arrow keys are pressed? I neither know nor care. However, in this usage scenario, modes are not exposed to the end-user. * actually, I do like modal behaviour, but in very few cases. In MS Windows, it used to be the case that Win-space z would put the window in resize-mode. One could then use arrow keys to resize the window. There was a similar sequence for moving windows too.
ashashwat 13y ago
> * No clipboard support -- all copying and pasting operations, apart from being another example of bizarre vi incantations requiring the recall of a raft of magic characters, is within vi/vim and disregards the system clipboard. I was under the impression, vim does have clipboard support. Putting "set clipboard=unnamed" in ~/.vimrc integrates it with system clipboard (at least on OSX).
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I was under the impression, vim does have clipboard support. Putting "set clipboard=unnamed" in ~/.vimrc integrates it with system clipboard I was wrong about that. As it turns out, in some environments, by reconfiguration you can make vi/vim recognize the system clipboard, even though it's terribly unhappy about it, and even though the change isn't transferable to all working environments. I stand corrected.
danielbarla 13y ago
Thanks for the reply. I guess we have a difference of opinion on the concept of modal editing, which is fine. I find it a plus that I'm not having to move my mouse hand off the base row all the time, and find that vi offers elegant solutions to many oft-recurring tasks people normally accomplish with a mouse (copying a row or two, highlighting text inside brackets / inverted commas, editing a variable name up to a specific point, etc). While I agree that the incantations required are relatively complex, they do become second nature (e.g. I'm an on-and-off user of perhaps 2 years, and I'm comfortable with the basics). This of course comes at the cost of having to switch modes often (and specifically, exit current mode using ESC, which is irritating), but this normally only involves 1 key. I guess a complete cost-benefit analysis would be highly subjective, in my personal experience the trade-off is worthwhile. In short, I'm not aware of anything that comes close to the terseness of vi(m) for basic editing.