6 ms·

Yes, there are definite reasons why the vi/vim editing model is just superior to any other out there Zealots trying to convert unbelievers is plain obnoxious.

by weego 12y ago

Yes, there are definite reasons why the vi/vim editing model is just superior to any other out there Zealots trying to convert unbelievers is plain obnoxious. Your choice of editor isn't a religion so use what you use and I'll use what I use and you don't have to worry that what I'm using isn't what you are.

ai_ja_nai 12y ago
Probably it's just driven by the use cases: most vi users (probably) come from server side, where you don't have a mouse. Vi is particularly effective in those circumstances
- wz1000 12y ago
  Vi is particularly effective because you don't have to use a mouse, even if you have one.
  - dstanko 12y ago
    So I suppose you're replying to this in your lynx browser?
    - tyrfing 12y ago
      Nope! With VimFx: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimfx/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimfx/
    - wz1000 12y ago
      Close but no cigar. I use Vimperator! With that, tmux, xmonad and vim I rarely if ever have to use the mouse.
      - dstanko 12y ago
        Well good for you! I am impressed seriously! It is 2015 and arguments like "we don't need no stinking mice" are still used to defend vi. If all that effort was put into building a better shell that works with a mouse (or trackpad if you use them apples), where would we be right now?
        wz1000 12y ago
        > If all that effort was put into building a better shell that works with a mouse (or trackpad if you use them apples), where would we be right now? You are missing the very point of a shell. Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Automation becomes extremely easy because of this. Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work instead of breaking your concentration. Vim has its own vocabulary, and the essence of vim commands is composability. You imbibe this vocabulary over time and editing text becomes effortless like stringing together words to form sentences and sentences to form paragraphs. The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. It simply wouldn't work with a mouse. Many people have tried this and failed. Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. The abstract geometry that you have to use to describe mouse movements is neither intuitive, nor is it easy to process.
        WorldWideWayne 12y ago
        > Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Can you think of any big things that you lose though? > Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work... I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. > The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. Successful in what way? As successful as GUIs? > Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell.
        pfranz 12y ago
        Ahh, these arguments. They each have pros and cons. GUIs are generally more discoverable. Terminals are /way/ more flexible, faster, and customizable if that's your job and you take the time to learn them. > Can you think of any big things that you lose though? Definitely. Customizing behaviors. I work with image sequences a lot. "ls" is used to list files in a directory "lss" is a command we wrote to group image sequences together. This makes finding missing images in a sequence, knowing the range, and dealing with 1000's of files in a folder trivial. These are technically possible with a gui, you need to re-write your whole file-browser or have one with some plugin system that support this (I don't know of any). > I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. That's a terrible analogy and a half-truth on both sides. Jumping to the mouse does slow things down, but I use GUI file browsers without a mouse just fine. The only thing I can't do out of the box is resize and move windows around--navigating through directories is fine. > Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell. I think the difference is that guis offer more spacial queues and persistent information than terminals do. Someone who has never used a computer would be equally confused at how a mouse or scrolling worked. Humans are not terrible as memorizing text commands, there's just no need to use them everyday and a gui is usually good enough. Fewer people can drive a stick-shift or parallel park now that it's generally unnecessary. It's not that it was difficult. I imagine in a few generations after automation takes off driving a car at all will be difficult for most people.
- stephenr 12y ago
  If you're editing files live on the server, you're doing it wrong. This argument ("Oh I use <insert console based editor> because I can use it on my laptop or via SSH on the server") is fucking stupid. If you can learn how to use fucking vim or emacs, you can learn how to use configuration management - either through a "full blown" tool like puppet/chef/ansible/etc or through config packages (if you're on debian) or even through plain old shell scripts.
  - pas 12y ago
    Yes, yes, conf. mgmt. Yes, yes. Except when it's not really your call. And you have to poke around files so far down behind God's back through a shared desktop Enterprise VPN IE-only plugin-fest, that you don't even know which way is 127.0.0.1, then you're happy that you have vim on Dear Client's pointlessly supported RHEL boxes by default. And othertimes, when you want to debug something that only happens on a live/production server. Editing files on the server live is - in itself - not right or wrong. Doing it as a regular workflow is what's bad.
    - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
      That's a long way from original claim that "the vi/vim editing model is just superior to any other out there", though. "You may need it in some crippled environments, so it's handy to know" is a considerably weaker claim...
  - cauterized 12y ago
    You can host a non-production development environment on a remote server. That can help ensure it's as similar as possible to your production environment, as well as making it easier to move between locations / computers without having to sync your Dev environment. Oh, and if you're editing system config files for systems administration tasks? That's on the server. As GP said, if you come from a sysadmin background, you're used to using a keyboard-only editor. And Vim sure beats ed.
    - stephenr 12y ago
mathetic 12y ago
Indeed, why use a hammer to hammer a nail when a big rock can achieve the same! I agree calling it better than any other editor is erroneous. There is emacs too, but that's about it.
tomjen3 12y ago
It is even more obnoxious when they are wrong. For one Emacs is a better editor, but that aside if you are using an editor when there is a good IDE you are doing it wrong(TM). Yep they are huge and bloated - but so was Vi back in the day - but your computer has both the space and the power to run them, while your brain hasn't. You need type completion because your brain shouldn't worry about whether the method is called `updateBufferFromStorage` or `updateBufferStorage`, it should be focused on writing the best possible code.
- wz1000 12y ago
  Ah, the editor wars resume once again. Emacs is a good Elisp environment. Evil-mode turns it into a good editor :P
- jmcomets 12y ago
  Vim has basic word completion in insert mode with Ctrl-N/Ctrl-P. Extended completion is available with the Ctrl-X commands, including completion by syntax, line, filepath and a few others I don't frequently use. I agree with the statement "use the right tool for the job", but people shouldn't diabolize something without knowing why others swear by it. FYI, in most cases we use Vi(m) because it's the fastest text editor available, not an IDE.
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    Can Vim do type completion based on a method declared in an interface of a parent class(in say Java)? Granted if what you are doing is actually editing text then it makes sense to use Vim or Emacs, but I find that I relatively rarely do that.
    - jmcomets 12y ago
      Yes it can with the built-in omni completion (Ctrl-X Ctrl-O keybinding), I invite you to read the 'compl-omni' section in the Vim help.
StevePerkins 12y ago
I'm having a hard time drawing a connection between the quoted text and your reaction. The author believes that <Technology X> is superior to the alternatives, and wrote a blog post complaining about people who pressure its users to switch away. That's not exactly Jehovah's Witness knocking on your front door to thrust a magazine in your hand. In fact, the conclusion section starts with, "Do whatever you want. Don't learn it if you feel it's too much effort just for nothing.". The gist of this piece doesn't seem to be "converting" anyone. Ironically, it seems to have been inspired by receiving such pressure from others. Half of Hacker News consists of discussing why all users of last week's fad should abandon it and jump onto this week's fad (e.g. "MySql -> Postgres -> MongoDB -> back to Postgres"... "Ruby -> Scala -> Node -> Go -> Rust -> Julia", etc). If you're looking for obnoxious zealotry, there are plenty of better threads in which to look.
mrzool 12y ago
> Your choice of editor isn't a religion I'd argue with that.

by weego 12y ago

ai_ja_nai 12y ago

Probably it's just driven by the use cases: most vi users (probably) come from server side, where you don't have a mouse. Vi is particularly effective in those circumstances

wz1000 12y ago
Vi is particularly effective because you don't have to use a mouse, even if you have one.
- dstanko 12y ago
  So I suppose you're replying to this in your lynx browser?
  - tyrfing 12y ago
    Nope! With VimFx: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimfx/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimfx/
  - wz1000 12y ago
    Close but no cigar. I use Vimperator! With that, tmux, xmonad and vim I rarely if ever have to use the mouse.
    - dstanko 12y ago
      Well good for you! I am impressed seriously! It is 2015 and arguments like "we don't need no stinking mice" are still used to defend vi. If all that effort was put into building a better shell that works with a mouse (or trackpad if you use them apples), where would we be right now?
      - wz1000 12y ago
        > If all that effort was put into building a better shell that works with a mouse (or trackpad if you use them apples), where would we be right now? You are missing the very point of a shell. Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Automation becomes extremely easy because of this. Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work instead of breaking your concentration. Vim has its own vocabulary, and the essence of vim commands is composability. You imbibe this vocabulary over time and editing text becomes effortless like stringing together words to form sentences and sentences to form paragraphs. The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. It simply wouldn't work with a mouse. Many people have tried this and failed. Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. The abstract geometry that you have to use to describe mouse movements is neither intuitive, nor is it easy to process.
        WorldWideWayne 12y ago
        > Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Can you think of any big things that you lose though? > Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work... I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. > The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. Successful in what way? As successful as GUIs? > Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell.
        pfranz 12y ago
        Ahh, these arguments. They each have pros and cons. GUIs are generally more discoverable. Terminals are /way/ more flexible, faster, and customizable if that's your job and you take the time to learn them. > Can you think of any big things that you lose though? Definitely. Customizing behaviors. I work with image sequences a lot. "ls" is used to list files in a directory "lss" is a command we wrote to group image sequences together. This makes finding missing images in a sequence, knowing the range, and dealing with 1000's of files in a folder trivial. These are technically possible with a gui, you need to re-write your whole file-browser or have one with some plugin system that support this (I don't know of any). > I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. That's a terrible analogy and a half-truth on both sides. Jumping to the mouse does slow things down, but I use GUI file browsers without a mouse just fine. The only thing I can't do out of the box is resize and move windows around--navigating through directories is fine. > Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell. I think the difference is that guis offer more spacial queues and persistent information than terminals do. Someone who has never used a computer would be equally confused at how a mouse or scrolling worked. Humans are not terrible as memorizing text commands, there's just no need to use them everyday and a gui is usually good enough. Fewer people can drive a stick-shift or parallel park now that it's generally unnecessary. It's not that it was difficult. I imagine in a few generations after automation takes off driving a car at all will be difficult for most people.
stephenr 12y ago
If you're editing files live on the server, you're doing it wrong. This argument ("Oh I use <insert console based editor> because I can use it on my laptop or via SSH on the server") is fucking stupid. If you can learn how to use fucking vim or emacs, you can learn how to use configuration management - either through a "full blown" tool like puppet/chef/ansible/etc or through config packages (if you're on debian) or even through plain old shell scripts.
- pas 12y ago
  Yes, yes, conf. mgmt. Yes, yes. Except when it's not really your call. And you have to poke around files so far down behind God's back through a shared desktop Enterprise VPN IE-only plugin-fest, that you don't even know which way is 127.0.0.1, then you're happy that you have vim on Dear Client's pointlessly supported RHEL boxes by default. And othertimes, when you want to debug something that only happens on a live/production server. Editing files on the server live is - in itself - not right or wrong. Doing it as a regular workflow is what's bad.
  - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
    That's a long way from original claim that "the vi/vim editing model is just superior to any other out there", though. "You may need it in some crippled environments, so it's handy to know" is a considerably weaker claim...
- cauterized 12y ago
  You can host a non-production development environment on a remote server. That can help ensure it's as similar as possible to your production environment, as well as making it easier to move between locations / computers without having to sync your Dev environment. Oh, and if you're editing system config files for systems administration tasks? That's on the server. As GP said, if you come from a sysadmin background, you're used to using a keyboard-only editor. And Vim sure beats ed.
  - stephenr 12y ago

mathetic 12y ago

Indeed, why use a hammer to hammer a nail when a big rock can achieve the same! I agree calling it better than any other editor is erroneous. There is emacs too, but that's about it.

tomjen3 12y ago

It is even more obnoxious when they are wrong. For one Emacs is a better editor, but that aside if you are using an editor when there is a good IDE you are doing it wrong(TM). Yep they are huge and bloated - but so was Vi back in the day - but your computer has both the space and the power to run them, while your brain hasn't. You need type completion because your brain shouldn't worry about whether the method is called `updateBufferFromStorage` or `updateBufferStorage`, it should be focused on writing the best possible code.

wz1000 12y ago
Ah, the editor wars resume once again. Emacs is a good Elisp environment. Evil-mode turns it into a good editor :P
jmcomets 12y ago
Vim has basic word completion in insert mode with Ctrl-N/Ctrl-P. Extended completion is available with the Ctrl-X commands, including completion by syntax, line, filepath and a few others I don't frequently use. I agree with the statement "use the right tool for the job", but people shouldn't diabolize something without knowing why others swear by it. FYI, in most cases we use Vi(m) because it's the fastest text editor available, not an IDE.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  Can Vim do type completion based on a method declared in an interface of a parent class(in say Java)? Granted if what you are doing is actually editing text then it makes sense to use Vim or Emacs, but I find that I relatively rarely do that.
  - jmcomets 12y ago
    Yes it can with the built-in omni completion (Ctrl-X Ctrl-O keybinding), I invite you to read the 'compl-omni' section in the Vim help.

StevePerkins 12y ago

I'm having a hard time drawing a connection between the quoted text and your reaction. The author believes that <Technology X> is superior to the alternatives, and wrote a blog post complaining about people who pressure its users to switch away. That's not exactly Jehovah's Witness knocking on your front door to thrust a magazine in your hand. In fact, the conclusion section starts with, "Do whatever you want. Don't learn it if you feel it's too much effort just for nothing.". The gist of this piece doesn't seem to be "converting" anyone. Ironically, it seems to have been inspired by receiving such pressure from others. Half of Hacker News consists of discussing why all users of last week's fad should abandon it and jump onto this week's fad (e.g. "MySql -> Postgres -> MongoDB -> back to Postgres"... "Ruby -> Scala -> Node -> Go -> Rust -> Julia", etc). If you're looking for obnoxious zealotry, there are plenty of better threads in which to look.

mrzool 12y ago

> Your choice of editor isn't a religion I'd argue with that.