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Short article, but voted up simply to voice my love for Vim. It took me a long time to finally get comfortable with Vim. I would load it up every few weeks, le

by Hates_ 17y ago

Short article, but voted up simply to voice my love for Vim. It took me a long time to finally get comfortable with Vim. I would load it up every few weeks, learn a couple of commands or things like using split windows and then get frustrated/held up enough that I would go back to Textmate. After going through the process for a good few months, I then somehow managed to make it through a day without getting frustrated once. Then on the second day I literally felt like I was flying through my code. TBH I have never felt this productive in an editor before. I would constantly read people saying that watching someone in Vim is like a work of art and never quite understood what they meant. But now I do. The speed at which I can navigate through a file, move text around, move around my project. Even simply never having to move my hands away from the home row makes me feel more focused on what I'm currently working on.

tarkin2 17y ago
I'm going through that process now. It really is a culture difference when you've been using Windows, or other GUI apps in linux, for a long time. The links in the original link did help. This http://jmcpherson.org/editing.html http://jmcpherson.org/editing.html is useful for me at the moment.
silentbicycle 17y ago
> voted up simply to voice my love for Vim. Please do not do this. It leads to really banal "vote up if you like _ too" posts on the front page. I think a lot of people find vi unpleasant because it so unapologetically makes the trade-off of having dozens of (composable) single-character commands you have to memorize upfront, rather than a more conventional interface whose advanced features you can gradually learn. You can't really get an accurate impression of vi's strengths until you've already committed to memorizing a lot of commands - the terseness itself is a major feature in the long run. (Emacs is similar in this regard, but with very different trade-offs.) For most programs, this trade-off is probably hard to justify, but for something that one spends a lot of time working with directly (such as a structurally-aware text editor, photoshop, autocad, etc.) it's probably reasonable.

by Hates_ 17y ago

tarkin2 17y ago

I'm going through that process now. It really is a culture difference when you've been using Windows, or other GUI apps in linux, for a long time. The links in the original link did help. This http://jmcpherson.org/editing.html http://jmcpherson.org/editing.html is useful for me at the moment.

silentbicycle 17y ago

> voted up simply to voice my love for Vim. Please do not do this. It leads to really banal "vote up if you like _ too" posts on the front page. I think a lot of people find vi unpleasant because it so unapologetically makes the trade-off of having dozens of (composable) single-character commands you have to memorize upfront, rather than a more conventional interface whose advanced features you can gradually learn. You can't really get an accurate impression of vi's strengths until you've already committed to memorizing a lot of commands - the terseness itself is a major feature in the long run. (Emacs is similar in this regard, but with very different trade-offs.) For most programs, this trade-off is probably hard to justify, but for something that one spends a lot of time working with directly (such as a structurally-aware text editor, photoshop, autocad, etc.) it's probably reasonable.