Seven habits of effective text editing

http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html

by olalonde • 14 years ago

132 66 14 years ago

h2s• 14 years ago

A few developers I've known have made the case that they just don't see text editing speed as the bottleneck in their day-to-day work. They're perfectly happy with the speed at which they can edit text and that's fine. What gets to me a bit is the dismissive attitude this type of developer tends to take towards usage of Vim, as if using it makes me some sort of misguided autist.

The reason I think it matters is that there are a limited number of hours in the day. When I get home from work I have maybe three or four hours on a good day to make some progress on my own projects. If during that time I can save 10 minutes of holding down arrow keys and carefully maneouvring the mouse cursor around my code and so on, then in a week that's an extra hour or so of extra project time.

oelmekki• 14 years ago

> They're perfectly happy with the speed at which they can edit text and that's fine.

I think they miss the point. Speed editing with vim is not about how many lines you may produce in the day.

It's about the lag between the moment you think about what you want to write and the moment when it's written. Your editor should not be in the way, and that's what vim, when mastered, is all about : you simply don't think about it anymore.

It's for the same reason that vim tries to reduce hand movements, so you won't feel your editor in those extra displacements.

tyrmored2• 14 years ago

Yes, I think you've nailed it. See my own reply to this comment.

minikomi• 14 years ago

Also, it's extremely satisfying to record a complex macro and then 100@@ it across a wide swath of your file

mistercow• 14 years ago

> It's about the lag between the moment you think about what you want to write and the moment when it's written.

I think this is it exactly. In particular, when people start trying to incorporate typing speed into their arguments, it's a sign that they really don't understand where the bottlenecks are.

snprbob863• 14 years ago

> It's about the lag between the moment you think about what you want to write and the moment when it's written.

Agree 100%. Every other editor just feels like swimming in molasses to me.

tyrmored2• 14 years ago

The time you can save with Vim can be significant, depending on the task. However what I think is far more valuable is that Vim doesn't get in the way; it doesn't impede the all-important "flow", and perhaps most importantly it stops you getting bored.

When your muscle memory develops to a certain point, using Vim becomes a subconscious thing. You don't have to think about how to copy all the text in between two quotes and paste it at the end of the document; there are already words in Vim's vocabulary for doing that, so you just do it. You don't need to build mental steps because it becomes completely natural, as easy as typing natural English; and just like in natural language, the more words you know well, the more likely you are to be able to use the right word at the right time, using language effectively.

Equally valuable: Vim takes the repetition out of everything. A technically versed creative mind is wasted on any repetitive task. You should never, ever have to do anything more than twice in development. You should be able to repeat and automate tasks and scarcely think about it. In Vim, this need is met by skilful use of . to repeat actions and q to record macros.

When you edit text optimally, you can concentrate on the task at hand, and the editor stays out of your way and does exactly what you need it to. You don't need to build the "subtask" of making your editor do what you want; you can just do it. I think that people who focus on the time Vim does or doesn't save you are missing the point.

jamesbritt3• 14 years ago

A technically versed creative mind is wasted on any repetitive task.

I find that certain repetitive tasks help free my mind up to wander around, think more abstractly about my code.

What's important to me is that my tools give me a choice about this.

evoxed• 14 years ago

Sadly every minute gained with vim/emacs/anything is another 10 minutes wasted arguing about it...

Disclaimer: I use vim because I just like it. The key to becoming more efficient in my opinion? Learning to type faster. Saves you all kinda trouble when you're posting to HN as well ;)

Derbasti• 14 years ago

Very true. I think the key to efficiency is alway happiness. When you're happy with your environment, you most likely can work without worries or disturbances and are thus efficient.

So, use the tools that make you happy. Personally, I use Emacs and I love it. But I don't think that Emacs inherently makes me more efficient than, say Vim or Sublime Text. That said, you should use a tool with sufficient power so you are not limited by it. So no Notepad, sorry.

npsimons• 14 years ago

It's more than just time savings; remember in "Peopleware" how they said even a one minute interruption really meant 15+ minutes of getting back into flow? If your dev environment gets in your way every time you use it, it will be like trying to drive a stickshift if you don't know how. As was said in "Pragmatic Programmer", your editor should be an extension of your hand; if you're always having to reach for the mouse to do something, it's like a cache miss (another great analogy, from Steve Yegge's "Effective Emacs").

While this doesn't have a whole lot to do with a specific editor, I have to say that most "modern" IDE's I've ever seen suffer from too much mousing, and you can recreate their useful features in Emacs. I still love vi (and use it for quick sysadmin tasks), but there's a reason I have the Firemacs addon installed in Firefox.

henrik_w• 14 years ago

Good references from Peopleware and Steve Yegge!

As for IDEs and mousing: I hate when I have to reach for the mouse - I try to do as much as I can with keyboard short-cuts. I'm currently using Intellij IDEA for Java coding, and it is definitely possible to do a lot without the mouse. The big advantage is navigation. Most of the time for me is spent navigating the existing code, and there Intellij IDEA really shines compared to just a text editor.

I've written this up in more detail here: http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity-em...

gizmo6863• 14 years ago

The reason I like vim isn't so much about editing speed as reading speed. I spend a large amount of time in source code for projects where I only want to check or change some very minor things. Always being a keystroke away from jumping to anywhere in the code turns this from a boring, hellish ordeal, into an quick, exciting exploration of code. Vim also has the perk of being terminal, so it integrates seemlessly with my flow when want to use cmdline tools (also often). Being able to refactor large amounts of code quickly, and with minimal repatition is also fun.

Interestingly, despite my strong prefence for vim, and the fact that I spend most of my time in it, when I am actually writing new code, the only time I hit ESC (caps-lock) is to save.

Evbn5• 14 years ago

Get better coworkers. I have some, and we are hiring.

prawks• 14 years ago

What I love most about vim:

Whenever I read an article like this I find solutions to problems I didn't even know I had. The abbr trick is awesome!

aerique• 14 years ago

I've always prefered to retrain myself instead of using abbreviations because I was afraid I would need increasingly more of them because of the abbr crutch. However I have never heard of this happening to anyone. Does anyone have any experience with this?

lordlarm• 14 years ago

A great resource in order to learn new key bindings and be more efficient in Vim: https://www.shortcutfoo.com/

Great article by the way. I enabled "hlsearch" and added "map <CR> :noh<cr>" in order to exit the highlighting by pressing return.

alwillis• 14 years ago

shortcutFoo is pretty slick. Bookmarked.

crazydiamond• 14 years ago

Vim lovers would love Steve Losh's Coming Home to Vim: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/

This was on HN a couple years back. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1710702

blahedo• 14 years ago

The great thing about vi[m] is that even after twenty years of using it, as my primary editor for everything (paired with LaTeX for document generation, mutt for email, etc), and much of that time spent teaching students how to effectively use it, I still sometimes learn about useful commands that I didn't know about. (Today: asterisk to jump to next occurrence of current word.)

ColinWright• 14 years ago

... and hash to jump backwards to previous occurrence of current word.

gizmo6863• 14 years ago

Out of curiosity, what were some of the first things you learned?

When I started Vim, the cursor movement commans (/ * ? G ETC) where the first things I learned, followed by yank, cut, paste and registers.

I'm still amazed by the inline editing tricks I see.

white_devil• 14 years ago

.. Or you could, you know, just use whatever IDE is appropriate for your language and be a lot more productive than you ever could with Vim.

jamesbritt3• 14 years ago

What's the appropriate IDE for Haskell that will make me a lot more productive than I could ever be with Vim?

What's the appropriate IDE for Ruby that will make me more a lot more productive than I could ever be with Vim?

Flow4• 14 years ago

I don't know about Haskell.

For Ruby there's RubyMine at least. For Javascript/HTML there are Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ and WebStorm.

bediger40002• 14 years ago

So I'm supposed to learn an HTML IDE, a JavaScript IDE, a PHP IDE, a Java IDE and a PL/SQL IDE? Oh, wait, and a Bash IDE, as well as some "simple" text editor for php.ini and other minor text file editing tasks?

A multiplicity of IDEs, each with somewhat different or even opposing techniques isn't really the answer either, I think.

WayneDB2• 14 years ago

A good PHP IDE would present a GUI for editing the php.ini.

"A multiplicity of IDEs...isn't really the answer either, I think."

Why not? Just because all you have is a hammer, doesn't mean every problem is nail. Different programs for different tasks? Who'da thunk it?

mcantor6• 14 years ago

I know this is bonkers, but maybe some people are more productive with GUI IDEs and some are more productive with vim and a terminal multiplexer.

koningrobot• 14 years ago

Possibly, but I doubt that that is ever the reason for choosing one over the other. These productivity claims only serve as rationalizations of choices already made.

thangalin• 14 years ago

Many GUI IDEs these days have vi or vim plugins (or equivalent), giving you the best of both worlds.

eta_carinae4• 14 years ago

> A few developers I've known have made the case that they just don't see text editing speed as the bottleneck in their day-to-day work.

Right, it's only a bottleneck if you use the wrong tool for the job. As much as I love vi for text editing, it is the wrong tool for HTML editing and for a growing number of other file types for which more specialized editors exist (e.g. Eclipse for Java).

I know that vi experts think they are very fast with vi but they are wrong: if you are using vi for anything but simple text files, you are not being as productive as you could be and you should really consider being more mentally flexible and use the right tool for the job instead of vi for every job.

mcantor6• 14 years ago

Most command-line junkie types actually use vim, not vi. vim is quite practical for editing an enormous variety of file types at breakneck speed, and this is coming from someone who used to exclusively use environments such as Eclipse.

VeejayRampay• 14 years ago

The best programmers use either Emacs or vim. vim goes way beyond "simple text editing" you don't seem to know what you're talking about.

mcantor6• 14 years ago

No! No, no, no, no, no. The best programmers use whatever they use. You are making the same mistake as the guy you're replying to. There is no one best way. We need to get over this mentality as a community. I don't mean to pick on you, as this was clearly just an off-the-cuff comment, but this kind of dialogue is simply worthless. I agree that the grandparent poster seems pretty clueless about vim and its ilk, but an equal and opposite reaction that's just as subjective and baseless will get us nowhere.

Stratoscope• 14 years ago

> The best programmers use either Emacs or vim.

Do you really think that? I can assure you that you're wrong: many world-class programmers use editors other than Emacs or vim.

There are great programmers who use Microsoft Visual Studio, Komodo IDE, Sublime Text 2, and many dozens of different editors.

swah• 14 years ago

The most beautiful women use skirts.

eta_carinae4• 14 years ago

> The best programmers use either Emacs or vim.

No, only the programmers that you know. One thing that makes a programmer great is that they will always pick the best tool for the job, not the tool that they are used to.

The point here is not that Eclipse or XCode is better than vim, it's that no matter how productive you are writing Java or Objective C with vim, you will be more productive using Eclipse or XCode.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

Eclipse seems to be a program that consumes all available memory to turn its windows grey when you type into it. I'm not sure how you think it's suitable for Java programming.

(More seriously: Eclipse is not suited for text editing, but it is suited for dragging and dropping getters and setters. If that's what Java programming is to you, you can save a lot of time with Eclipse.)

jsankey• 14 years ago

Eclipse is bloated, granted, but if you think its strong point is "dragging and dropping getters and setters" then you haven't seriously tried it. I used to think IDEs didn't matter much for basic code editing, but had to change my opinion after using Eclipse and IntelliJ (my preference) for a while. Higher-level (as in -- with knowledge of the programming language) editing and refactoring can make a big difference to your editing experience. Tasks that were tedious become trivial and part of the normal flow. You actually find yourself writing code in a different way once you understand how easily you can manipulate blocks of code (rather than just blocks of text).

eta_carinae4• 14 years ago

> Eclipse seems to be a program that consumes all available memory to turn its windows grey when you type into it. I'm not sure how you think it's suitable for Java programming.

Considering that about half of the Java community uses it and is quite happy with it, did it occur to you that maybe, your experience with it was not representative?

mcantor6• 14 years ago

Trivia: This is written by Bram Moolenaar, maintainer of Vim (the trivia part is that he maintains Vim; hopefully it's quite clear that it was written by a guy named Moolenaar).

Evbn5• 14 years ago

And original author.

jodrellblank• 14 years ago

How much of this is because we still can't have a button which "puts the cursor where I'm looking".

(Or that we can't touch where the cursor should be).

"Go to the next instance of this word, wherever that is" is helpful; having to proxy a leap to somewhere you are looking at, through a vim command, still seems suboptimal.

Evbn5• 14 years ago

> Bram Moolenaar is the main author of Vim.

Note that this article was written in 2000. 12 (!) years later, we have amazing plugins that make :make rather quaint.

Most important vim command?

:help uganda

Seven habits of effective text editing

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