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Pros: Vi's ability to be easily mouseless, and it's wonderful "editing language". By "editing language" I mean that editing commands follow a syntax with verbs,
by dwc 13y ago
Pros: Vi's ability to be easily mouseless, and it's wonderful "editing language". By "editing language" I mean that editing commands follow a syntax with verbs, objects, modifiers, etc. The "dw" command, for instance, deletes a word. Then you learn that "p" is a paragraph object. Can you "dp" to delete a paragraph? Of course, because that's how it goes in vi/vim. Want to delete 4 words? 4dw. Want to change a word? cw deletes and then puts you in insert mode. Does that work on paragraphs and other things? Of course. Learning new things in vim is kind of like compound interest in terms of payoff. Every text object you learn gets multiplied by all the verbs you know, and any new verb can be applied to all the text objects you know.
Cons: vimscript
- pedalpete 13y agothat all sounds really amazing, and so many people love VI, I'm wondering if more IDEs have copied these short cuts. I know sublime text has a plugin to add VI shortcuts. I always found it a bit awkward to get in and out of VIs 'edit modes', it just seemed so unnatural.
- dwc 13y agoThe whole modal aspect takes time to get used to, and some people never get over it. Even given a fair shot, I don't think vi is for everyone. For my part, after using emacs for more than a decade, I knew I'd stick with vi after about 2 weeks.