Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?

http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html

by manuscreationis • 14 years ago

232 220 14 years ago

viemu.com

mammadori• 14 years ago

Why is that a NEWS?

It seems quite old to me.

AdrianRossouw• 14 years ago

I've been using vi for 10 years and i didn't know about the '.' command. I've been writing macros whenever i needed to do stuff like that.

manuscreationis2• 14 years ago

It seems quite powerful, but overall vi still overwhelms me with all the options and functionality...

I'm trying to learn more about vi/m (and emacs) as I get more into Linux development, but I think a lifetime of Windows has damaged me, mentally

yogsototh• 14 years ago

In fact learning vi/m is a lot like learning to play a music instrument.

It is a pain to start using vim. But if you reach a certain level you start improving more and more. Concerning vim, it should takes some weeks to be as efficient than with notepad.

I written this article which also might help you:

http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim-Progressiv...

Don't give up! It will pay faster than you think.

techiferous2• 14 years ago

I want to meet a dvorak keyboard user who is passionate about vi.

Lio• 14 years ago

I'm a Colemak user and still really like Vim. I have to do a bit of mapping to get things comfortable but still it works well for me.

stevelosh• 14 years ago

I've been learning Colemak off and on and am a bit worried about using it with Vim.

What mappings do you use (particularly for hjkl)? My first instinct was to map them to something more comfortable, but lots of other apps use those keybindings so I feel like it might be better to just learn to use them as-is.

dkersten• 14 years ago

I switched to Colemak (and a DAS keyboard) about two and a half months ago. Any details about your mapping that you could share would be appreciated.

TomasSedovic3• 14 years ago

Pleasure to meet you. Not sure how much passion you require. I'm not exactly head-over-heels with vim, but I have been using it for about 7 years and dvorak for about 3.

Anything in particular you want to ask?

dasil0032• 14 years ago

I imagine the mnemonics make it work reasonably well, but what about hjkl? Do you really get used to having those spread around?

techiferous2• 14 years ago

Hi TomasSedovic!

> Anything in particular you want to ask?

Just wondering how much dvorak gets in the way of vi/vim. Lots of wonderful answers showed up in this thread! Looks like dvorak is a small obstacle (because of hjkl) but not a show-stopper.

andrewaylett• 14 years ago

I use vim a lot, but I only really started using it for most of my work in a job I had after switching to Dvorak -- was primarily an Emacs user before that.

mmavnn2• 14 years ago

Not sure about passionate, but I like it enough that I use VsVim for my day job (.net developer).

I actually started using Dvorak before picking up vi; never had a problem with the keyboard mappings. It helps that j and k are still next to each other, and h is to the left of l.

phlyingpenguin2• 14 years ago

I'm extremely passionate about vim, and I cannot type with a plain QWERTY keyboard. It's really not a big deal. I remap h,j,k,l to d,h,t,n (and n to l so I can search) and I'm off to go.

The one problem I have is that my vimrc/.vim stuff is all customized far enough that I can never use any of the vim-like emulated modes in other text editors. I think evil-mode may be possible if I wanted to learn how to configure emacs at all, but it's generally not worth the hassle. I'm not sure about the particular Visual Studio plugin that the link is to, but one of the two doesn't allow remaps, for instance. It's generally not a problem to use j/k for short periods of time at least. My big problem Dvorak wise is Nethack which is sort of a pain. I bought a Qido USB layout switcher to make games like that possible.

nuclear_eclipse2• 14 years ago

I'm one of the really blasphemous vi nuts who uses both Dvorak and the arrow keys for movement. I keep a very minimal vimrc, and I don't use or remap the standard hjkl keys. But that means I can also seamlessy switch between multiple IDE's with vi-compatible modes, and have zero problems using vi/vim on machines that don't yet have my vimrc set up. I feel that it gives me a superior editor with a superior keyboard layout, and the flexibility to use some of the best tools for the job.

For the record, I use a "Tenkeyless" [1] quality keyboard, and depending on what languages I'm working on, I use:

- vi/vim for editing one-off files or small, isolated projects

- Sublime Text 2 with vintage mode for Python or PHP projects

- Eclipse with Vrapper for Java/Android projects

- Visual Studio with the OP's ViEmu plugin for C#/Xna projects

I'm pretty freakin' happy with my setup.

1: http://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=leopold,tenkeyles...

CJefferson• 14 years ago

At this point, particularly on news.ycombinator, surely the article should be about "Why, oh WHY, do those #? nutheads not use vi?". It seems a majority of people believe it is better, certainly a majority of the vocal crowd.

zokier• 14 years ago

I'd be interested to know how much of the stuff presented in the article is actually present in plain vi (not vim). If you mean vim, then say vim, not vi. They are two different things.

dasil0032• 14 years ago

What's the biggest OS distribution that does not have vi mapped to vim by default these days?

adient• 14 years ago

Last time I installed Arch, it did not. Also checking Scientific, it does not (assume also RHEL/CentOS).

babarock• 14 years ago

The Solaris servers I am on all day at my job (when I'm not procrastinating on HN, that is).

ilikepi• 14 years ago

The last time I used AIX (I believe it was 5.3), it had old-school vi on it. I would bet this is true of newer revisions of AIX, as well as other commercial UNIX(tm) systems. I would also not be surprised to learn that some/most of the BSD systems still use it.

calloc• 14 years ago

FreeBSD. Although it is mapped to nvi instead, ever since 4.4BSD.

brown9-2• 14 years ago

One of the great things about vim is that even if you use it as your regular editor (I use MacVim), you tend to learn something new every time you read a new article. Today I learned about the '.' command.

Also, old discussion on same article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=151637

tkellogg• 14 years ago

Yeah, I also learned about the -i] commands. Can't believe I didn't know about them before...

gbog• 14 years ago

You might like , as well, it repeats the last move.

qdog3• 14 years ago

Yeah, I've never used the autoindent command before, either. Oops.

Been manually indenting stuff with :<line1>,<line2>,s/^/\t/ for years now, oof.

jjcm2• 14 years ago

= will also indent any selection you have automagically. gg=G will do your whole document, and V[selection]= will give you a selection range to indent. < and > are nice as well for indenting specific amounts in the left or right direction.

drblast• 14 years ago

Don't ever start using vi. After you do, any text editor that you are forced to use that doesn't have vi key bindings will give you fits and make you cry.

Learning vi is your standard process of enlightenment and elation followed by a lifetime of disappointment. Think about how you'd feel if you ate the best meal of your life at age 13, and the restaurant where you ate it went out of business the next day.

You'll be frustrated by all other software. You'll wander around trying to explain to other people why the thing you had was so good, and it was so easy, and that nothing else compares, and wouldn't it be great if everyone did things this way.

Exactly like the author of this article.

You have been warned.

singular• 14 years ago

s/vi/emacs/

;-)

Riesling4• 14 years ago

I feel your pain. This problem needs to be solved.

See my post below[0]. Your input would be appreciated.

[0]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3543011

tomjen32• 14 years ago

But vi has been ported to just about anything, so why wouldn't you use it?

andrewvc• 14 years ago

I just switched from ViM to emacs (mostly for SLIME) after about 6 years of ViM usage, it wasn't a big deal at all, both are great.

sjs• 14 years ago

I use TextMate day to day. If I'm not on OS X I use Emacs for making software, and sometimes I use Emacs on OS X. It's great for JavaScript.

Though vim is no longer my main editor I still use it every day. Right tool for the job and all that.

wahnfrieden2• 14 years ago

Maybe you didn't use Vim with much depth? I know plenty of people who claim to use it but just stay in insert-mode all the time, don't use text-objects, etc. It doesn't really count if you actively avoid most things that make vim unique.

metaobject• 14 years ago

Don't ever start using emacs. After you do, any text editor that you are forced to use that doesn't have emacs key bindings will give you fits and make you cry.

Learning emacs is your standard process of enlightenment and elation followed by a lifetime of disappointment. Think about how you'd feel if you ate the best meal of your life at age 13, and the restaurant where you ate it went out of business the next day.

You have been warned.

burke2• 14 years ago

As someone who used emacs for five years before switching to vim, my personal experience was that the top-level comment is more true than this one.

hencq• 14 years ago

Hehehe, yes I keep opening printer dialogs and new windows in my browser because of this. Though to be fair, that's often more due to being on Windows and not having 'focus follows mouse'.

ludwigvan• 14 years ago

I think a lot of other editors (even in Visual Studio, Netbeans, Eclipse) have emacs keybindings though, so the situation is much better for an emacs user. It is much easier to implement due to modelessness of emacs.

kahawe5• 14 years ago

"Ed is the standard text editor."

artursapek• 14 years ago

But why do you stop using it in your scenario? Why does the restaurant have to go out of business?

natesm• 14 years ago

Well, I use Xcode because the performance loss in writing Objective-C without autocompletion is larger than the performance gain from using vim. However, navigation is just so painful, and "awful" is really being kind about Xcode's find/replace.

Florin_Andrei2• 14 years ago

I learned the bare minimum required to use vi. Insert, find, override-save... That's pretty much it. When vi is the only option, it's good enough; otherwise I'm free to use different editors.

Domenic_S• 14 years ago

Funny that you got downvoted. The entire industry has spent the last... forever years making things easier to use/gui-fied, and you get dinged for wanting to use those improvements.

rgraham• 14 years ago

Don't ever have a great experience when you're young. It'll ruin the rest of your life. Avoid it at all costs.

Or maybe you'll move on and it isn't that big of a deal.

You have been warned.

dchest5• 14 years ago

I use vim for about a year or more, and I like it, however I'm still having trouble with copying and pasting tiny fragments of text. Maybe someone can help me out with this?

1) If I yank a line with yy, pressing P or p will insert the text into a new line.

2) If I go to visual mode and select a region, yank it with y, then press p/P, it gets it inserted into the current line.

That is, vim preserves new lines.

What I can't figure out is how to paste into the current line in the first case, and, vice-versa, how to easily paste into a new line in the second case (without doing :put, or opening a new line).

countersixte• 14 years ago

For #1, the yy command will yank the entire line (including the newline). Try using y$, which will yank from the cursor to the end of the line (not including the newline).

falcolas• 14 years ago

This is the simplest way, in my opinion. So simple, that I remapped 'Y' to do exactly that (so it matches the functionality of 'D' and 'C').

    map Y y$

minikomi• 14 years ago

For the first, you need to do a 0yt$ .. this will yank to endline, but not include it. The whole line can then be pasted into another without breaking it.

The 2nd can be o/O<esc>p .. Maybe there's a more elegant way though!

You could bind these to, say, <leader>p and <leader>P, if you find yourself doing it a lot.

graywh3• 14 years ago

:h i_ctrl-r

That is, i<C-r>0 will paste a line character-wise, but the EOL will still be there, so you might have to join lines afterward. Alternatively, you could not yank the EOL with ^y$.

For making a newline with a character-wise yank, use o or O to make the new line and you can use <C-r>0. Or Escape and p.

austintaylor• 14 years ago

Whether it pastes a newline or not depends on whether you yanked one. I guess this is what you mean by "vim preserves new lines". Don't all editors work this way?

If you want to yank a line character-wise, you would do something like ^y$. I have Y mapped to y$ for this sort of thing.

You cannot yank a substring of a line line-wise. That doesn't really make sense. I typically open a new line with o and then paste in insert mode with <C-r>". So o<C-r>".

Symmetry2• 14 years ago

Vim's preserving of new lines is more awesome than that of lesser editors. If you have

  This is a test
      ^

with your curser at the carrot, and you type 'yyp' you will get

  This is a test
  This is a test

Rather than

  This This is a test
  is a test

dchest5• 14 years ago

Don't all editors work this way?

Seems like my description was incorrect. I meant that there are two ways to deal with text: line-wise and fragment-wise.

In most other text editors, if you copy a line, and then paste it, it gets pasted into the cursor position regardless whether you copied a line or a fragment (fragment-wise). In Vim, lines yanked with 'yy' disregard the cursor column and get pasted into a line above or below, while fragments yanked with 'y' (e.g. '0y$'), take into account the column.

I like how in Vim you can do line-wise editing, but I just miss an easy way to paste text to the position starting with the current column regardless of the way I yanked it.

PS Thanks everyone for replies!

asynchronous13• 14 years ago

For the first case: use 'J', join-lines command. It deletes the newline at the end of the line your cursor is on.

dchest5• 14 years ago

Yes, joining works when I want it to appear at the end of the current line, but I want to it to appear at the cursor. Anyway, seems like pasting in the insert mode works the way I want, for the first case.

Symmetry2• 14 years ago

There's no good way to do it, unfortunatly. You need to yank the contents of the line without yanking the entire line qua line. Now, if 'l' were a text object for 'line' then there would be an obvious 'yil' for just getting the inner stuff, but since there isn't you'll have to do 0y$ to go to the start of the line and yank until the end of the line. That'll store the line contents instead of the line itself, so p will do what you want it to.

z92• 14 years ago

So it's

1. 0y$p

and

2. o<ESC>p

becasse2• 14 years ago

I have exactly this mapping defined in my .vimrc ...

  " 'Inside-line' operator-pending-mode mapping
  onoremap <silent> il :<C-U>normal! ^v$h<CR>
  onoremap <silent> iL :<C-U>normal! 0v$h<CR>

macco2• 14 years ago

Does it really make sense, using an editor more than a year and still have trouble with rather basic functions?

Use an editor you can use right away and whose controlls don't contradicts with the rest of the software you use.

I don't believe in vim neither I don't belive in plain Emacs.

Just my 2 cents

dchest5• 14 years ago

To the certain extent, yes, it makes sense. This trouble is rather small compared to benefits. I'm in constant search for the perfect editor, but every editor has its quirks, and of course, most editors require learning.

As for the controls that contradict with the rest of the software, there's no trouble for me at all. I don't suddenly start pressing :wq in the browser. As a simple example, consider people like me, who use two keyboard layouts: one for their native language and the other one for English. Even punctuation marks are on the different keys, but I don't have trouble typing the correct ones depending on the current layout.

vacri8• 14 years ago

'basic functions' in this case being the subtle difference in two kinds of pasting that he already knows how to achieve, and is asking for another way to do one of the paste formats.

moe• 14 years ago

What I normally do is:

1) 'J' to join the two lines after paste

2) o<esc>p or O<esc>p

Perhaps there's an even "easier" way, but for me these keystrokes have long been recorded to muscle-memory, I don't even notice them anymore.

wahnfrieden2• 14 years ago

Put this into your vimrc to make lines behave like they're a text-object. Then to yank a line without the carraige-return, it's just yil or yal (yank in/a line)

vnoremap <silent> al :<c-u>norm!0v$h<cr> vnoremap <silent> il :<c-u>norm!^vg_<cr> onoremap <silent> al :norm val<cr> onoremap <silent> il :norm vil<cr>

boofar• 14 years ago

There are some video tutorials by Derek Wyatt that have been recommended on HN a few times:

http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/vim-tutorial-videos/

jjcm2• 14 years ago

Vimcasts is also a nice series of video tutorials, and the author's accent is lovely to listen to.

http://vimcasts.org

agentultra• 14 years ago

I used vim for about 9 or 10 years before I switched to emacs. From my perspective people use vim because they haven't tried emacs yet (I kid!).

I still have the muscle memory for vi and that's what these sorts of editors rely on to be effective with them. Once you get enough practice the editor practically disappears and it becomes more about the text on the screen... almost like you are manipulating it directly with your mind.

Fun article. :)

zrail• 14 years ago

Augh the muscle memory! I used vim for five years in and out of college and then switched to emacs for the cool things you can do with SQLi-mode and shell-mode. Once in a great while I have to edit something on a machine I can't TRAMP to and I use vim, and then my fingers are completely shot for about an hour because they keep trying to type esc :wq instead of C-x C-s.

nik_0_0• 14 years ago

Interesting article, I have always been interesting in moving to Vim, and this article all but sealed the deal for me. The only problem being I don't really see how useful this would be for general notepad usage. I understand the author of this article is selling his plugin for Visual Studio, and this is a marvellous way to do it. Is there any other way to integrate vim with Visual Studio 2008 without purchasing his ViEmu? I would love to start learning vim but I doubt a trial would be enough, and I don't see most of the other attributes he covered ('.' for example) being very useful in daily notetaking.

mmavnn2• 14 years ago

Try VsVim if you're on VS2010.

alimbada• 14 years ago

I'd love to use ViEmu or VsVim, but it'd confuse the hell out of my team members if we ever have to pair up. And then I'd be lumped with trying to explain what it is to them when they barely even know what Unix is...

platz3• 14 years ago

Im waiting for this day to come for me, now.

electrichead• 14 years ago

I know this will be an unpopular comment, but my whole problem with it is actually the attitude of those that use it. After reading the article, I was really impressed and imagining all the ways it could help me after what, 8 years of coding into an IDE; and then I got to this:

"Do whatever you want. Don't learn it if you feel it's too much effort just for nothing. Learn emacs instead. Or stay in your IDE using a lousy editor. Whatever. But in any case, don't ever claim again that those 'vi guys are nutheads' - I hope that I have succeeded in showing you why they (we) stick to it, and you should at least be able to understand its power, even if you prefer to stay away from it."

jng• 14 years ago

I'm the author of the article. Yes, the ending is anticlimatic, but the only reason is that I didn't want to "push" it on people. I just wanted to share my views. I thought many people would complain of fanboyism if I finished with a push to use it.

I guess you just can't please everyone.

aiscott• 14 years ago

I believe the GP was referring to the condescending tone.

mechanical_fish• 14 years ago

Some unsolicited advice:

Never use the word "fanboy". It's a word used by people who hate joy.

Other people will call you a fanboy no matter what you do. Ignore these people.

You are a fan of vi. Nobody is fooled by your disclaimers: The joy shines through. This is not a problem. Advocate vi with pride!

un1xl0ser• 14 years ago

First, you understand how and why it is modal. Then you learn simple commands for movement and editing.

Then you learn all the meta-commands. All of these building blocks are only limited by your creativity of combining them to get what you want done. The more commands and tricks you know, the more you can slice and dice text, code, logs, whatever inside your editor (without leaving it).

I guess it's just a Unix/neckbeard thing. This is how the rest of Unix is designed, so why not the editor.

kenrik• 14 years ago

I used to use vi but I did not like it, now I use nano.

Riesling4• 14 years ago

Whenever I am using a program other than vim I feel clumsy.

Plugins for Eclipse, Chrome and so on will only bring you so far. The other way around, namely turning vim into a multipurpose IDE does not satisfy my needs. One needs to admit that some features (refactoring support in Eclipse for example) cannot be matched by the available vim plugins. I know there are other solutions, like eclim, but I am looking for something more universal (think of using vim bindings in your email client).

This is why I have been thinking about implementing a vim emulation layer recently, so that every program can profit from vim keybindings. Basically this would be implemented as some form of keygrabber that would translate vim specific commands into regular ones.

Does anyone know of related pre-existing projects one could use as a reference. A quick google search did not deliver any results for me.

Shanewho• 14 years ago

Here is one in C# https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim/

skrebbel3• 14 years ago

That's not what the GP meant. He meant getting Vi key bindings in any imaginable text field.

phlyingpenguin2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure if this still works, but I'll be trying it a bit later today. (and I am guessing you're not after GTK only VIM editing)

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vi_key_bindings_in_gtk

drothlis• 14 years ago

You didn't specify an operating system, but for OS X there's KeyRemap4MacBook[1]. Among a zillion other things, it has a setting for "Ubiquitous Vim Bindings" which enables vi-like bindings everywhere, except in terminals, emacs, and vi itself. And some things like password dialog boxes default to insert mode.

I'm not a vi person myself so I can't comment on how effective it is, but I do use KeyRemap4MacBook to enable certain system-wide emacs/readline-like keybindings that are missing (C-w for backward-kill-word, C-m for return) and some ergonomic tweaks (Return key mapped to Control when held down, because I don't have a right-hand Control key on my keyboard).

[1] http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

Riesling4• 14 years ago

I am using Linux right now.

I realize that the process of intercepting keystrokes is really OS specific. On windows you need to use hooks, on linux you need to deal with x.

Anyhow, thanks for the link. Since it is open source, I will look into it.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

Is there a big reason an IDE couldn't have a child editor process running inside the UI, and operate directly on the file? That would allow you to plug the editor if your choice into the IDE.

Riesling4• 14 years ago

This is actually possible in Eclipse. But I would prefer more upstream solution.

nuclear_eclipse2• 14 years ago

Specifically for Eclipse: http://vrapper.sourceforge.net/home/

It gives you modal editing, all the basic vi movements and commands, and still lets you use all the power of Eclipse's standard editor features.

skrebbel3• 14 years ago

> Do whatever you want. Don't learn it if you feel it's too much effort just for nothing. Learn emacs instead. Or stay in your IDE using a lousy editor. Whatever.

Why do all articles about how wonderful vi is end with condescension?

Anyway: vi -> fast editing. IDE -> fast maintenance. I know which one I'd choose. The text editing features of an IDE is not why people choose to use IDEs (note: of course this helps best if you use a well-supported statically typed language - a Ruby IDE can't be as awesome as a Java IDE).

Also, there could perfectly well be good IDEs with good Vim key binding support. This would be a wonderful mix of two worlds, and finally end this stupid discussion. I believe at least Qt Creator has a half-decent FakeVim mode baked in.

skrebbel3• 14 years ago

Oh! I read over the line that says that the author is actually developing a Visual Studio plugin to close exactly this gap.

That's cool. Also puts what I took for condescension in a different light.

Anyone used it? I might consider learning vi bindings decently if I can keep getting all the IDE goodness.

qdog3• 14 years ago

I use cscope as my backend for vim, there are other ways to get your IDE going. Adding a vim emulator would not be as good as just using vim, imho. http://sourceforge.net/projects/vimplugin/ is the vim plugin for Eclipse if you can't live without Eclipse. I can't live without vim, myself ;)

bostonvaulter2• 14 years ago

I've tried his free trial for ms word and it was pretty good.

Derbasti2• 14 years ago

It is absolutely awesome!

A few finer points are missing, but overall I can wholeheartedly recommend it. (missing: put last deletes in number registers)

There is also the free VsVim, though.

nessus42• 14 years ago

I mostly use Eclipse with the Emacs+ plugin for code development these days. Emacs+ provides an almost flawless Emacs experience, except for that fact that Eclipse is kind of a pain in the butt and often sluggish at manipulating text. It's sluggishness does interfere with my thought processes. Eclipse is very helpful for some things, but it would have been oh so much nicer if the features of Eclipse had been incorporated into something with the fluidity of Emacs. It's too bad that Lucid went out of business.

jerf• 14 years ago

"Why do all articles about how wonderful vi is end with condescension?"

Because one way to get someone over the initial learning hump is to "encourage" them by challenging their manhood. Same principle behind a boot camp sergeant telling every single incoming group that they are the worst bunch of nambypamby girliemen he's ever seen and he's been in this army for 25 years and that he will consider it a personal failure if he doesn't cause each and every one of you to quit in a crying mess. You're supposed to be motivated to try your best in the hope that he'll begrudgingly concede at the end that you didn't suck after all.

It works, but it has the side effect of creating a strong tribal identity among those who pass the bar, an "us" who are good enough to make it and the "them" who didn't. The military deliberately exploits this side effect; I'm less convinced it's a good idea in a programmer context.

kstenerud6• 14 years ago

My response to this approach has always been the middle finger. If someone can't afford me even the minimal level of respect, I'll leave. My worth is not dependent upon what other people think.

kahawe5• 14 years ago

Comparing vi to an IDE is like comparing a screwdriver to a fully automated car assembly line... it is completely beside the point and they each have their purpose and downsides.

njharman• 14 years ago

vim key bindings are nothing. If you think vim == keybindings you know nothing about vim.

Saying that "editor/IDE with vim keybindings" is as good as vim. Is like saying a Honda Civic painted red is as good as a Ferrari f70.

nateberkopec• 14 years ago

That "vi gang sign" is a real shocker.

sarcasmatron• 14 years ago

I didn't want you to think your comment had gone unnoticed.

Well played.

funkah• 14 years ago

> The first time you stumble into vi or vim, you are shocked and disgusted that you have to use 'i' to start typing text. Can't remember which of hjkl moves in which direction. And you need to press 'a' if you want to insert after the last character of the line. Since you're already probably used to other editors, and if the arrow keys work in insert mode (they do if the system is configured properly, which is over 90% of the cases), you will stay in insert mode and not go back to normal mode except if absolutely necessary. You'll probably spend 20 minutes with it, and never go back.

All of this, except the 20 minutes part. I'd hate to have to spend that much time with one of these "enlightened" editors. Just let me use my arrow keys, please and thank you.

pyre2• 14 years ago

  > All of this, except the 20 minutes part. I'd hate
  > to have to spend that much time with one of these
  > "enlightened" editors.

Did you have this same resistance to learning when you learned the languages you are presumably programming in?

"I'd hate to have to spend 20 minutes with Ruby, just let me describe my program in 'real' language please."

recursive4• 14 years ago

> Did you have this same resistance to learned when you learning the languages you are presumably programming in?

Speaking for myself, no. My reasons for disliking "enlightened" editors are similar to my reasons for disliking alternative keyboard layouts. If I can only be fluent in a highly specialized environment, in a sense, my skills become less portable. I like being able to walk up to someone's computer and just use it or help them with their issue. I do care about editing efficiency and superfluous keystrokes. But when I compared the keystrokes required to complete the example to what I would use in my preferred editor, (Programmer's Notepad) I didn't find the savings to be significant enough to warrant all the pain of learning a completely separate UI.

And FWIW, if I was actually doing that example in real life, I'd be in my IDE, clicking "Implement Interface", not wrangling text.

As for learning new languages, I enjoy doing it, and look forward to learning new ways of approaching problems that new languages can provide.

eropple3• 14 years ago

Not that I'm a big fan of the douchey tone of the article writer, and apparently unlike this dude I find it trivial to switch between vim and Sublime Text or whatever other editor without having a crying jag, but...wait for it...vim does let you use the arrow keys.

He seems to be conflating vi and vim (personally I've only used vi once or twice in the last five years). Also, his grand sweeping pronouncement that you spend all your time in normal mode is, to me, utterly bizarre. I go into normal mode to do text manipulation. I live in insert mode because I'm actually writing stuff. In that respect it feels like every other editor ever.

ReidZB• 14 years ago

If you're actually writing code from scratch in a linear fashion, then you do spend a fair bit of your time in insert mode. After a few years of vim use (about four years, so I'm not a grizzled veteran by any means), I've found that when I'm writing new code, I do use insert mode more often than usual.

But the difference is that when I need to make some edits to the code I'm writing, I immediately swap back to normal mode. It's not something you notice much if you don't use vi(m) a lot, but you go back and edit the code you're writing quite a bit.

From my experience with vim, this guy is spot on: someone who has really used vim for a long time will spend a majority of their time in normal mode, because literally you don't do anything in insert mode except write text in a linear fashion. If you want to move your cursor somewhere else, you go into normal mode to move it. If you want to erase a string you just typed, you go into normal mode. If you want to refactor your if statement into something cleaner, you go to normal mode. And the list goes on; normal mode, once you've learned it, is just so much more fluid that you will want to be in normal mode 99% of the time.

Vim can be a little crazy to use, yeah. But once you have learned it, it's unconscious. It reminds me a bit of algebra. When you first learn algebra, you're really focused on the symbolic manipulation. But as you get into the higher maths and have more experience, you'll find yourself rearranging equations without any thought. Vim is the same way, and that is what makes us vim users addicted to it: complicated text editing becomes subliminal.

overshard• 14 years ago

I thought this was a rant on hash bangs or GET request variables and the coloration between them and people who use VI...

kstenerud6• 14 years ago

I've never really felt comfortable in vi. I first started using it in 1989 at home, used it throughout college, and then used it on-and-off during my career, but it's never really felt powerful compared to a GUI editor.

I want a scrollbar. I want a list of files in my project that I can just click on to open. I want tabs I can click. I want multiple windows that I can alt-tab to. And since I spend most of my time thinking and modifying code, I'm more often than not thinking in terms of tweaks and copy/pasting between files rather than "replace in this block of 3 words". A mouse and GUI just feels a lot more natural to me, even after 20 years of vi.

tomjen32• 14 years ago

It is very nice to have a tab for each of your files.

Until you have twenty files open and you can't find the right one (will happen sooner than you think, at least on largeish projects).

kstenerud6• 14 years ago

I like having 20+ tabs open, provided the text editor supports multiple rows of tabs so you can see the names.

eropple3• 14 years ago

I currently have 55 tabs open in IntelliJ (I counted). I have no trouble finding any of them. Side tabs and alphabetical sort are great.

bmj2• 14 years ago

Yes, this. About a year ago, I finally bothered to understand the buffer concept in vim (after a brief stint in emacs), and suddenly any tabbed editor felt clumsy.

herge• 14 years ago

If anyone is looking for tabs in vi, try out the (you'll never guess) tab feature in vi http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/tabpage.html . What is great is that text completion (ctrl-p) works across tabs, so if you are using a library, open it up in a tab and you can ctrl-p away.

For extra points, learn to use hjkl and map your arrow keys to switch tabs.

drhowarddrfine• 14 years ago

Just the opposite. I find all that distracting. My hands never leave the keyboard. The mouse is a nuisance. I'm far more productive without all the GUI crap.

sofal5• 14 years ago

I'm with you. I want tabs, I want multiple windows, I want an easy list of project files, and I don't want to waste time thinking about editing. That's why I use vim.

karpathy• 14 years ago

I'm with you. I think an equivalent post could have been written on how programming in GUI is much better. What it comes down to is pretty boring and unsatisfying-- both have strengths and weaknesses, and these depend on the specific application.

vacri8• 14 years ago

if you're on linux, ctrl+shift+T usually brings up a new terminal window if you're running a desktop. you can alt+tab between these just like you can alt+tab between GUI editor windows.

ilaksh• 14 years ago

I agree. I just use vim because its available in any terminal and easier than emacs. But you can't pretend it isn't relatively primitive.

splat• 14 years ago

Have you tried using gvim? It has the best of both worlds.

daniel_iversen• 14 years ago

I really don't get how its more efficient than a modern editor!

I use vi(m?) when I am working on a unix/linux/mac terminal and have done so for 10+ years. But I never bothered learning it properly so I only know a handful or two of commands. So I can't appreciate both perspectives clearly.

However, how can it be faster and more efficient to edit in vi than in a modern editor? I'd assume that if you can use multi gesture scrolling, point and click location, the modern editor type keyboard shortcuts (with multiple keys pressed) that it would lend itself to be faster to work with and more "efficient" somehow (hard to explain).

Would love to know what vi-people think about that because I am most likely wrong (as I said, very one-sided experience) but would love to get that level of detail (I don't think the story was iron clad on that point).

Is there anyone who has switched from many years of very happy vi onto modern editors and love that more?

Thanks..

jimrhoskins• 14 years ago

I feel like such a tool for saying this, because I thought people who said this were tools before I 'got it'. Taking your fingers off the keyboard and to the mouse and trackpad is slow. I now even get how moving your fingers to the arrow keys is slow. I never thought I would believe it, but somehow here I am, spouting the same nonsense.

It's true. I think there is just some mind-body-editor connection that develops with vi(m) usage (and emacs, I don't know). When you really start thinking in vim, your mind starts describing what you need to do in vim commands, that magically flow out of your fingers, and vim responds.

In other editors, for any task I need to do, instead of telling my editor to do something, I have to show my editor how to do it by selecting text and menu items with the mouse, it just feels clumsy.

Once the keystrokes are muscle memory, it's impossible to beat with point and click in terms of speed.

That's just an opinion from a vim novice that can never go back.

blindhippo• 14 years ago

I've used Vi(m) enough to know that I'm far more efficient in an editor designed to work with my OS.

Knowing Vi (or Emacs) is essential as a software developer, but using it as your local code editor has never made sense to me.

What most people who pontificated about Vi/Emacs/editor-of-choice often fail to realize is that there isn't a "One True Way To Do Things Bestest". Everyone works differently. Using Vi for 30+ hours isn't going to make me a better developer - and it certainly isn't going to speed up anything.

DennisP2• 14 years ago

To start with, the way vim keystrokes combine is pretty nifty. To move forward a word, w. To delete the next word, dw. To delete the next 6 words, 6dw. To move to the next "g" character on the line, fg. To delete everything to that character, dfg. To delete everything inside the parens surrounding the cursor, di(. Something I do a lot with viemu in ms sql: Select everything inside parens with vi(, then hit F5 to execute the subquery.

But it got really fun when I started using macros. Once you're doing everything with keystrokes and text objects, you can record a macro while you're doing it. So, keeping with sql, let's say I want an update statement.

First I use an IDE feature to give me a list of all columns in a table, comma-delimited.

qa starts recording a macro into register a

Wi<return> advances to the next column name and inserts a carriage return

<Esc> q stops recording macro

10@a plays the macro ten times

Now I've got each column on a different line. I go back to the first line.

qw starts recording a macro into register w

ia.<Esc> puts "a." at the beginning of the line

yw copies the column name

A = b.<Esc> goes to end of line and adds " = b."

pA, pastes the column name and adds a comma to the end

j^q moves to beginning of next line and stops macro recording

10@w does the same macro ten more times

Now with a few keystrokes, I've changed this: column1, column2, column3, ...

To this:

a.column1 = b.column1,

a.column2 = b.column2,

a.column3 = b.column3, ...

And the key point is, I did it without having to think about it much. I used the same editing techniques I would have used to make that change for just one line, and with half a dozen extra keystrokes I made it apply to as many lines as I needed.

Possibly I made small mistakes in the exact keystrokes above. When doing it for real, you see all the changes on that first line as you do them, so if something isn't quite right, just hit u to undo and keep going. It's so easy, I can record and replay new macros all the time. I almost never have to do repetitive editing.

Another trick, not available in viemu but available in vim: select a bunch of lines, then type :norm and your next editing commands after that will get applied to all the lines. For example, to add a comma to the end of every selected line, :norm A,

itmag• 14 years ago

What I want to know: how good is the best autocompletion available? Does it stack up to Visual Studio's Intellisense? (For statically typed languages, that is; Intellisense doesn't work very well for eg Javascript).

JanezStupar• 14 years ago

For all your programming needs I would highly recommend JetBrains products.

I am currently evaluating PyCharm and their JavaScript and Python editors are awesome. I was mostly using vim and tmux for Django development until now. Using vim plugin in PyCharm feels really 21st century.

It kinda feels like VisualStudio + ReSharper (also a JetBrains product) for .NET

LearnYouALisp• 14 years ago

We await the day when they produce the last word in parenthesis-based IDEs.

qdog3• 14 years ago

I used to hook up auto completion to my tab key in vim, worked fine in c/c++ at the time. It would pop up a window of the options, but I stopped using that feature at some point.

mattmanser3• 14 years ago

To be completely honest if you were impressed you shouldn't have been. Learn your IDE!

Apart from the douchey tone of the article, the thing he misses is that most editors can do this stuff, you've just got to make a bit of an effort to find out how.

Emacs/Vim force you to learn this stuff as they suck without it. That's one of the big difference between Vim/Emacs and others, people don't realise they can do so much more with IDEs.

For example in VS2010 with the MS productivity tools extension:

Example 1: Use ctrl-shift-r/ctrl-shift-p (temp macro), actually less typing than his example due to auto-bracketing. Also learn how to use snippets.

Example 2: I'm dubious on the value as believe this would require cognitive effort that I'm using for the code. I suspect hunt-and-peck (and only 4 or 5 keystrokes using ctrl-arrow at that) is probably better than switching mind modes to figure out the best cmd. For example won't handling entry.key().equals(qk.key) instead require different keystrokes, hence thought?

Example 3: Use End, Shift-Home or Home, Shift-End instead

Example 4: Use home, end, ctrl-pageUp, ctrl-pageDn to mostly deal with this

Example 5: VS does this automatically on paste, so no typing at all required. If it really struggles you can use shift-},tab to indent an entire block, assuming starting on the { as the article does.

Example 6: VS highlights end tags automatically without you even having to press anything, there's probably a command to select the enclosing block but I've never looked as it happens so quickly I don't think it's worth the time, here I just End, shift-upArrow a few times or go to the mouse. Deleting a whole block of code generally requires some thought about what it was doing, you're not in edit mode at the point of deletion. If you're looking for multiples then ctrl-F (find) will highlight all instances of the word your cursor is on, this is easier with productivity tools installed as it doesn't open a dialog. And VS also has the excellent rename all instances of this variable only in the right scope.

He keeps banging on about fingers staying on the home row, but I don't really notice moving to the arrow keys, perhaps it's cognitively similar to switching to/from insert mode.

I had to actually do all of them a few times to be able to write them down as just like Vim/Emacs, that's all muscle memory to me now.

NB for example 5/6 I highly recommend changing the default colour of highlighted start/close tags in C#, the gray MS uses is far too light given how important it is. This is pretty much the only colour I have ever bothered changing from default.

The other massive productivity thing in all editors if you didn't know it is ctrl-arrow, moves along words instead of single instances. Holding shift works as expected and you can hold shift-ctrl with one little finger. But I'm sure everyone knows that one.

In regard to the productivity tools, I would turn off the auto-correct mixed tabs as it moans all the time when you look at downloaded code and also 'Quick Access' too as that's annoying.

All that power without months of learning a new way of using a text editor.

vacri8• 14 years ago

How does VS2010 compare to vi when making a change to a config file on a remote machine?

He keeps banging on about fingers staying on the home row, but I don't really notice moving to the arrow keys, perhaps it's cognitively similar to switching to/from insert mode.

It's slower. I still move to the arrow keys in vi for some reason, and it noticeable slows me down when I do so. The physical movement of your arm there and back takes time, plus you can't run any other "right-hand commands" while your right hand is out of place. In terms of workflow there's no difference, but in terms of speed there definitely is.

I've not seen an emacs master at work, but I've seen a vi master at work and they are simply stunningly fast at manipulating the text. I've never seen a gui editor master come anywhere close.

weaksauce5• 14 years ago

Example 1: use q to make a macro and then invoke it with @ and it would be even less typing. There are many, many ways to edit in vim.

Example 2: If you press dW it deletes the whole word. which would be the entire entry.key().equals(qk.key) string. dw would delete up to the period. d2f) would delete up to and including the second right paren from where you are. I personally use delete whole word a lot.

Example 3: the di> would delete everything inside the brackets even if they spanned multiple lines. you also can be anywhere inside the bracket and this will still work. This also works with other types of tags. di) would do the same for the current level of nested parens.

Example 4: really only offering one way to do granular navigation vs. many different ways that might work for a particular situation. learning them is not that hard when you take into consideration the mnemonics involved. you need to learn some verbs to be effective: d is delete, v is visual, c is change, w is word, f is find, t is find unTil, p is put, y is yank, a is after, b is back, etc....

Example 5: There are plugins that can do this automatically in vim too. The larger, more interesting thing is the ability to do entire operations on text blocks and I think that is more important than the particular case of automatic indenting.

Example 6: you can also get a plugin that does the highlighting automatically.

The fingers on the home row is pretty awesome. there is a cognitive load to navigation to precisely put your hands on the arrow keys correctly. To get back to normal mode you can either slap the escape key(not as good) or remap escape to jj(or some other not commonly used key sequence) while in insert mode.

The macro system in vim is excellent. everything is text so you can look at the macro commands and edit them if you made a mistake. There are a lot of registers(basically named clipboards that you can use to copy and paste text the " is the default clipboard when you don't actually specify a yank target.)

Your point was that the ide is great and can do all that vim can do, but you only showed that aside from some special case things with snippets and auto indenting. After you have gone past the special case stuff that your ide can do you have to resort to hunting with the arrow keys.

You can be productive in macvim quite quickly as it affords all the fun copy and paste stuff like you are expecting to have at the os level but still have all the vim goodness underneath. at the end of the day go for whatever you feel most productive in but there really is a reason that after you get competent with vim/emacs you are extremely productive.

Derbasti2• 14 years ago

I used to think that, too. Then I actually tried Vim. I was wrong. Vim is significantly faster for text editing.

Go check out some screencasts from experienced Vimmers or Emacsers.

Jayasimhan• 14 years ago

I wish every editor/language/product could have a blog like this that explained the philosophy behind its design.

javajosh2• 14 years ago

I'm realizing that the distinction between vim/emacs and typical IDE editors is entropy. Vim is extraordinarily precise - very low entropy at all times. An IDE editor is constantly moving between high entropy (e.g. mouse motion) and low entropy (e.g. the interpretation of the mouse motion as a precise command). This implies that vim appeals to minds that desire constant precision, and GUI editors appeal to minds that prefer to vacillate between levels of precision.

Decoupled from this is the question of which pattern of thought lends itself to being a better programmer. There is a good argument either way: staying at a very precise level of thought is wonderful when solving problems; and yet it is better to loosen up when figuring out which problems to solve.

I tend to take the view that a programmer's actions while programming should ideally be unambiguous, precise, and regular at all times. Higher level thought should have a distinct place, time and another set of tools (pencil and paper being foremost among the alternatives).

maxerickson• 14 years ago

Is such a split between types of minds a real thing?

javajosh2• 14 years ago

That is my belief, although it is based on anecdotal evidence. Some (most?) hackers enjoy descending into and inhabiting continuously a low-entropy mind-state. There are others that would rather maintain some sort of fluidity between states, as inhabiting that low-entropy mind-state tends to come at the cost of human connectivity.

TheCapn• 14 years ago

I guess a nitpick on the article. When you say a "Steep learning curve" doesn't that mean the time to learn is quick? (Think X/Y plot with Time being independant, steeper slope indicates faster learning?)

esrauch• 14 years ago

He is using "steep learning curve" correctly, in your example X-axis is what you want to achieve and Y-axis is how much you need to know to achieve it. The beginning part is a sharply increasing line for vim, you have to learn more to achieve the same amount on the low end.

vacri8• 14 years ago

a different way to represent esrauch's point: time is the dependent variable, not the independent.

joshhart• 14 years ago

In his first example, implementing a header file/interface is only CMD-I in IntellJ. Everything else is done automatically.

I can understand why text editing is a big deal, but having an editor that actually understands your code is a powerful thing. Think of an IDE as a gigantic set of macros.

methodin• 14 years ago

I believe I had two ah-hah moments about vim when reading this article. I love those moments! How I never knew about ]p is beyond me! I guess I should assume that something I'm doing that is annoying means I'm doing it the wrong way.

rwos• 14 years ago

Reading the article and the comments here, I came to the conclusion that I seemingly don't really use vi. As in: I don't live in it.

On a typical day, I work with my files using grep, awk, bash, python, sed, make, cat, xargs, etc. And, of course, vi.

But I don't really use it like some (most?) people here seem to do. I don't list and navigate through files in vi (I use tree, ls and find for that). When I use vi, it's mostly for short bursts of manual editing. Occasionally, vim's syntax highlighting comes in handy - but that's about it.

Don't get me wrong: that is exactly why I _love_ vi. It starts fast[0]. It fits in pretty well with the rest of the unix environment (it can read stdin, for example; and with vim you can open multiple files given on the command line - and you can construct that file list with any of the standard unix tools, of course).

So, for me, the question "IDE or vi" ends much earlier. I don't even come to the point where I could discuss editing features. Can't read from stdin? Doesn't start in less than 1 second? Doesn't fit into my work-flow.

Of course, vi(m) is a great editor, for all the reasons mentioned here and in the article. But the unix user-land has some great tools, too. And it includes vi. So it is by definition an even better editor than vi. :-)

So that's what I use.

[0] Believe it or not, emacs starts still too slow for me. These one or two seconds tend to disrupt me a lot (I've tried it, with GNU emacs). And, as I said before, I invoke my editor pretty often, maybe 50 times a day.

Aga• 14 years ago

A couple of years ago I was recommended to read this article as I was doubting if vim was anything for me. It convinced me to give it a try and after two weeks of learning it felt I could never go back. Since then I have vimified everything I can.

Later I have recommended this article to others of whom some have had similar experiences...

The author does a fine job describing the vim-philosophy instead of just a bag of tricks.

Zakharov• 14 years ago

Wow, I used vim for five years and never knew about '.'. Glad to have found this article!

nerdfiles• 14 years ago

Vi/m is a funny hat that I put on and that gives me powers. Let's call it meta-learning! I'm writing code; now, I'm writing code with a funny hat on. _This_ computer's funny hat!

The great thing about Vi/m is that it compels you to read by withholding input entry. Key-bindings are secondary, but no less significant in that you can use two different object languages for dealing with text. Being forced to read through navigation of text with a robust language aids in presenting analogies to the coder. Who is entering the text? Does VISUAL feel like a finger pointing at the screen?

davvid• 14 years ago

If you use vim then I highly recommend mapping spacebar to page-down and shift-spacebar to page-up. This key is kinda useless otherwise and super-helpful afterwards. It is also the largest key on your keyboard. usability++

    nmap <space> <c-d>
    nmap <s-space> <c-u>
    vmap <space> <c-d>
    vmap <s-space> <c-u>

platz3• 14 years ago

Im a fan of using the spacebar as my leader key.

cjr• 14 years ago

I started attempting to properly learn vim a couple of weekends back, watched a load of vimcasts (http://vimcasts.org) and got my vimrc file all set up, but rushing to get things done before a release meant I switched back to sublime within a couple hours. Perhaps not the best timing!

Can anyone recommend a good plugin for switching between files frequently - as in the Command-T shortcut in textmate/sublime. I did try the CommandT vim plugin, but didn't find it as good as the implementation in sublime.

tedkalaw• 14 years ago

I grew to love vim after being introduced to it in my data structures class.

One of my favorite tools is much older than me - which seems kind of weird in the current state of technology. I find it very humbling.

no-espam• 14 years ago

Vim is great but learning requires a good investment of time. If somebody tells you, you can be as productive as with your current editor in a few weeks, don't believe it. If all you need is notepad or gEdit, Vim is not worth the debt. Spend your time learning another language or create an open source project.

I live in a terminal so Vim is my weapon of choice. I tried and bought a license for Sublime 2, which is awesome n vintage mode, but Sublime is not Vim.

platz3• 14 years ago

ViEmu or VsVim?

Karunamon• 14 years ago

I used to be in the "eww, vi" camp before taking a sysadmin job that basically forced me to use it. I used to remove vi at my first opportunity and link /bin/vi to nano instead.

Well, almost a year later, and I can't use nano without being irritated. All of the jumping around the keyboard for functions seems really inefficient all of a sudden.

Vim - :wq! :D

Nano - C-o <ret> <ret> C-x >:(

Probably the reason that emacs feels so wrong right now, though I'm doing my damnedest to become at least basically proficient with it, if nothing else for all of the ancillary features (like a really nice IRC client or the best text-mode organizer I've ever seen).

becasse2• 14 years ago

This article has been linked to 1,210 times on hacker news alone since it was first published 4½ years ago (according to Google: https://encrypted.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&s...).

It's fascinating how excited people get when given the chance to talk about their favourite editor!

Further down in the comments it always gets to the point where someone asks: "Yeah, I'm trying to learn vi, but how do you delete 3 lines?", or something like that.

Reminds me of this article: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/16/replyall/

Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?

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