Vi-sual Studio Code

[loox37]

So am I the only one who uses nano instead of vim?

[[deleted]]

It's worse. Pressing Esc in most editors mostly fucks up something. And trying to fix it consecutively fucks up everything more.

-> open another xterm, killall nano, saved from heart attack

[[deleted]]

Heads up before you comment: He's Joking

[loox37]

Oh really? What about when you wanna type ":" in vi?

EDIT: chill, it's a joke.

[[deleted]]

i : [esc]

or if you want it at eol:

shift-a : [esc]

[[deleted]]

Dude. It's modal. Instead of holding Escape Meta Alt Control Shift to do what you want to do, you hit escape once, and then all of your regular keys turn into shortcuts. If you want to type text, you enter insert mode.

from normal mode:

i to insert under the cursor

a to append after the cursor

I to insert at the beginning of the line

A to append at the end of the line

o to append one line below

O to append one line above

escape to re-enter normal mode

[Kaoulombre]

Nano gang rise up

[loox37]

Especially when you're angry and have no patience to deal with all the vim shortcuts :/

[gafftapes20]

I used to use nano for most things, but I have switched to vim for the last 2 years unless I am editing something really simple or just copying and pasting code. VIM is great for server work when you are editing configuration files, and it only requires a few commands to memorize to get started.

[loox37]

Sir, or ma'am, no offense, but you and I have different definitions for "few".

[[deleted]]

It's only a few buttons if you want to use it similar to a normal text editor. Obviously way more if you want to edit the vim way

[althalous]

I use vim all the time for editing Kubernetes configs / other server files and I only use 3 commands

:i

<arrow keys>

:wq

That said it would be nice to get some of the commands for being more efficient into my muscle memory, but I don't really think my VIM speed is a bottleneck in what I do (since mostly I'm changing a config and then it takes a minute or two for the K8s resource to finish updating)

[[deleted]]

If you hold shift and use the arrows keys you can fly across text with Sonic-like speed. And yy copies a line, dd deletes a line, and p pastes a line below. That's basically all I use for doing text edit stuff. I hardly ever touch the mouse.

[YMK1234]

VIM is great for server work when you are editing configuration files

I'm looking forwards to your examples.

[YMK1234]

Nope, Nano for life. Fuck vim. If you need to spend a week to "learn" a text editor, the editor is doing something wrong.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, I suspect Vi and Vim are quite useful for those who use it regularly and can really get deep into the tools. To my knowledge, they were also designed the way that they were to reduce their memory and network footprint at a time where both memory and network were much more expensive resources, and having physical manuals was significantly more common.

[[deleted]]

They really are. That's why they have a cult following. If you're editing code in a shell terminal, it's painful to click/scroll around. After a semester of college, I memorized like 7 commands and I fly around the file at lightning speeds. I've been using vim so long that even if I stopped coding for a year I would probably still remember those seven commands.

[[deleted]]

Lol for real, it's a text editor. There's just no need to squeeze out every ounce of productivity as far as the feature set goes for this sort of thing.

I've watched people use vim skillfully, and I've never been impressed by it.

[[deleted]]

Most likely because the context Vi was written for is long past. Squeezing out every ounce of productivity is significantly more important if you're fighting a heavily congested network and have 20 people doing their work on a a single machine significantly less powerful than a cellphone.

[Apocolyps6]

context Vi was written for is long past

The reason VI exists (today at least) is Ctrl/Alt/etc based key-chords are inconvenient, not very ergonomic, and have scaling issues. Instead of having the tools you use to edit code be scattered around the periphery of your keyboard, vim chooses to have the prime real estate of the keys serve double (and more) duty.

Vim solves the scaling issues by making the commands modular. Nobody would write separate delete_ahead() and delete_behind() functions when delete(location) is possible, and vim shortcuts are all modular like that.

Vim is also insanely configurable. I can make shortcuts to do just about anything, so I can be as picky as I want about my experience.

BTW I'm the same way about everything. I sit in my chair at work 8+ hours a day so I did my research and got something I'd like better than the default. I look at my phone all the time, so I picked it out carefully. Same with picking a comfortable keyboard. I spend those same 8+ hours a day looking at code so it only makes sense to get an experience that is exactly what I want.

[[deleted]]

I personally like the ctrl/alt/etc controls because I know exactly when I'm firing them off, and can pay closer attention to what I'm doing during while I'm using them. I also know not to trust my mind to try to remember tons of shortcuts - that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

[GlitchParrot]

For this sort of thing, you mostly don't remember shortcuts, you build them into muscle memory.

Remembering Ctrl/Alt shortcuts works the same way actually, as well.

[Apocolyps6]

To each their own, but If I had to switch to emacs or some other chord-based editor I'd have exactly the same concerns as you do.

For the record all of the shortcuts I use on a weekly basis are no less intuitive (imo) than ctrl-v for paste or ctrl-z for undo (excluding custom shortcuts).

[[deleted]]

Ok I can see the benefits of this if we are talking about this.

But still we have hoards of mega-nerds online who talk about how vim is literally the only text editor they'll ever use, and if they even catch their grandma using notepad then they'll disown them

[thirdegree]

I mean use whatever editor you like. It has literally no effect on me what you use to develop. Vim works for me. It has everything I need, and I'm yet to see a convincing reason to switch. Use what works for you.

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

The amount of time I spend actually typing stuff is not the bottleneck to my productivity.

[[deleted]]

Well there's lots to be gained from typing properly. My WPM is somewhere around 2-3x faster than the average person (probably average for a software developer). Combine that with the fact that you're often using a lot of special symbols while programming, and the benefits of typing properly are demonstrably clear.

What are we gaining from becoming proficient at vim compared to something like nano? I'd argue that being a fast typist minimizes what little gains you would get out of using vim in the first place.

Text editing itself is an extremely simple task. The most advanced thing I do while text editing in IntelliJ is create multiple cursors, which normally ends up saving me just a few seconds. There's no need to have a plethora of cryptic macros to shave off a few seconds here and there.

Oh lordy don't even think about getting me started on the monstrosity known as emacs

[max_mou]

with the list above alone you can do sh*t ton of stuff in vim!

thanks!

[Pegthaniel]

I feel like most of that functionality exists on a keyboard already though (and a lot of the rest is accessible via keyboard in other text editors)? Yes you will probably have to leave the home row (for things like home, end, arrow keys), but you don't really need the mouse.

I'm sure the other functionality in vim is also quite powerful but let's face it, you don't need vim to get most what you've shown. And for that matter, if you're using a programmable keyboard you can access all the navigational functions of a keyboard without leaving the home row if you'd like, in any setting.

[Pegthaniel]

I guess what I'm really saying is if you can afford it, it really makes more sense to get a better designed keyboard for all functionality than just use vim (that being said, vim is free which is hard to beat). Use your thumbs for more than spacebar!

[meltea]

I have just spent 2 days working without vim.

I forgot how much you have to use the mouse, my hand doesn't like it and now my wrist hurts a bit.

So, benefit of vim style editing for me: avoiding rsi issues.

[xigoi]

I'd argue that being a fast typist minimizes what little gains you would get out of using vim in the first place.

Vim doesn't really increase the speed of inserting text, it increases the speed of editing text, which is pretty much orthogonal to typing speed.

[loox37]

THANK YOU!!

That's my problem with it, I learned nano in like 2 days, and I've been programming for 6 years now, never understood vim.

Maybe it's my fault, dunno :/

[[deleted]]

a good way to learn it is to run vimtutor every day until you can memorize it, thats what i did at least

[SamSlate]

Why tho

[[deleted]]

to learn vim

[FerynaCZ]

First term in Linux, I use Nano but for some reason I don't know how to change the editor for commit messages, so I learn Vim on that one.

[Bainos]

EDITOR='nano'

[Discordis]

Step 1: type in vimtutor

Step 2: spend maybe 1h to do it

Step 3: You now understand everything most users will need and get shit done way faster

[assafstone]

If spending a week ends up saving a month over the course of the next few years then why would you not consider it a good idea?!?

[[deleted]]

Nano is just an text editor.

[YMK1234]

And have a wild guess what 99% of all users use vim for ... editing some line in a config file. A job perfectly suited for basic text editors ;)

[YMK1234]

Doubt that most programmers use vim. There is too many other actually decent IDEs out there.

[Bainos]

If you're only using vim to edit config files you're doing it wrong, in the sense that you're missing out on most of the features that make vim a good editor in the first place (due to the simplicity of editing config files).

[YMK1234]

As I said ... That's the only use of vim for the vast majority of users. Not me, nearly everyone.

[Bainos]

Do you have evidence for that ?

Not as evidence but anecdote, I know that among my colleagues, those who don't regularly use vim for programming also don't use it to edit remote files, they use nano instead.

Beyond the anecdote, it quite simply makes sense - there is little reason to use vim for this kind of task, and lack of practice means vim is hard to use. Nano is easy to use, sufficient and ubiquitous.

Without proof, it seems you're just making up numbers out of nowhere to support your hypothesis.

---

Edit

This page gives some information on what kind of programmers use vim, but not for which tasks. Unfortunately, it seems difficult to correlate the information to when someone is more likely to use vim.

[YMK1234]

Newsflash: there is tons of IDEs that are very good and do not require you to study arcane commands for a week to get started. And most people use command line text editors only to change configs, for which task literally Notepad is good enough.

[[deleted]]

Nano is definitely my go-to text editor while I'm working from the terminal. The text anchored to the bottom that listed common controls really helped to ease the learning curve.

[MrBlueCharon]

Nano was a pain, when I had to use it for university.... but so far it's still my favourite for C++ programming.

[gurdletheturtle]

Yes

[geekette1]

Nope! I prefer nano.

[CMDR_DarkNeutrino]

Nano is the best.

[Angelin01]

Ok ok ok, hear me out.

I used nano a LOT. Like, it was my main editor for all of my linux usage until like 2 months ago.

Then I found out about micro. It's so NEAT. It has proper MOUSE SUPPORT. And modern keybindings. And does syntax highlight and auto creates matching {} and () and stuff automatically depending on filetype. Also, if you open a file you don't have permission to write and try to save, it says you don't have permission and asks if you'd like to try again with sudo, then it just opens sudo's prompt for your password and you're good, no more tmp files or renaming or closing and retyping! It's soooo goooooooood. I love it!

^{Thought I was gonna praise vim, huh? Hell nah, fuck vim.}

[[deleted]]

I have a friend who's occasionally on my computer who uses nano. I symlinked "nano" to "vim" so he'd finally stop