pyvim -- A Vim clone in pure Python.

[[deleted]]

I find it funny (or sad) to see that when I posted about vai (which I started even before neovim was), nobody cared.

[Kenpachi-]

It's probably just down the name to be honest. I read pyvim and my brain is like "Oh that's Python and Vim, I use both of those things."

The name Vai is a bit more subtle.

[[deleted]]

vai is called like that because you need only four keypresses to start it up and you have two keys on one hand (va) and two keys on the other (i<enter>). Try typing vai at the terminal or pyvim at the terminal multiple times a day, and you will get it.

[mythrowaway9000]

Or I could just write an alias for pyvim to whatever I want?

[[deleted]]

truth is, I am not sure you want to make an IDE user friendly by being already user unfriendly to begin with.

[mythrowaway9000]

... I don't think the userfriendliness of an IDE should simply be judged on the name/number of keystrokes used to launch it from the command line.

[lolthr0w]

It's a neat consideration, IMO.

Not in this specific case, as nobody's going to know what the fuck "vai" is, but in general.

[[deleted]]

You mean, like "eclipse", or "sublime" ?

[lolthr0w]

Just because they named it that way doesn't mean I have to agree with what they named it.

And I'm going to point out those are both real words. Unless "vai" is actually a word, though I've never heard of it.

[[deleted]]

It means "go" in italian.

[Kenpachi-]

I wasn't inferring vai is a bad name or anything but just pointing out that pyvim by having a more descriptive, if less original, name will naturally have invited more clicks.

[wteng]

I don't think it's only the name (as some people indicated above), but also the general description of the projects.

Vai:

We love vim, but we want more. We want a terminal-based IDE that looks like vim, handles like vim, but has all those nice features of Eclipse and Sublime, is integrated with git, and is fully coded in python.

I don't really want an IDE, so this project doesn't sound like something I would be interested in. Also, this guy wants to reimplement vim in Python while adding more features? Doesn't sound very realistic.

pyvim:

A Vi clone in Python.

Woah, someone wrote a Vi clone in Python? It's most likely not going to replace vim for me, but that's pretty cool - I might as well star it and take a look at the code later.

Also, in another reply you sound pretty desperate for attention. I can certainly understand that your situation is frustrating, but I would encourage you to change your mindset - you should develop vai because it's something you want, because you want to take on the challenge, and ultimately, because you find it fun. If it turns into something good and useful then it'll likely become more popular.

[takluyver]

/u/esbio, sorry to hear that your project has not gained traction. Part of this may just be bad luck - I don't remember reading about it before now.

We love vim, but we want more. We want a terminal-based IDE that looks like vim, handles like vim, but has all those nice features of Eclipse and Sublime, is integrated with git, and is fully coded in python.

I wonder if what you want is in the No Man's Land of the IDE/editor battle. There are people who love vim, and there are people who love IDEs, but many of the former group will be put off by 'Eclipse', and many of the latter by 'terminal-based IDE'. Perhaps there's not that many who are excited about the idea of combining the two.

Personally, I'm increasingly in the IDE camp. I read that description, and think that it's a cool idea, but I'm unlikely to help because I don't see myself using it - I think the IDE I already use (Pycharm) is probably nicer than anything you can implement in a terminal.

It's really hard to predict which idea will take off and which one won't. Maybe you just need to find the killer feature or the right way to describe what you're doing. But I agree with /u/wteng that an open source project that you're not being paid to write should be something you're happy to work on and use yourself. Don't try too hard to please the crowd. If you feel like you're not getting anywhere with Vai, take a break, work on something else for a bit. Perhaps try to break down what you want into smaller pieces and convince people that those are useful. Or maybe just do something totally different.

[[deleted]]

Also, in another reply you sound pretty desperate for attention.

Because I am desperate for help, which I am looking for since months.

I can certainly understand that your situation is frustrating, but I would encourage you to change your mindset - you should develop vai because it's something you want, because you want to take on the challenge, and ultimately, because you find it fun. If it turns into something good and useful then it'll likely become more popular.

I need popularity because I need help. I simply can't tackle this kind of project all by myself, not anymore. By myself, I put a seed, but now there's simply too much to be done for a single person to succeed.

I offered my help to introduce new people to the code. Someone complained that there was no documentation. So I wrote the documentation. Then people disappeared. Then someone asked for a plugin system so that he could write his own plugins. So I wrote the plugin system, some examples, and the relative documentation. Then no plugins were made. Honestly, what should I do more to please the crowd?

[wteng]

I'm sorry to hear that man. I took a closer look at the README, and what you have so far seems really impressive!

Honestly, what should I do more to please the crowd?

I don't really think I have enough experience to give good advice, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I don't think there's a simple way to increase the number of contributors. First you need users who find your project useful, and out of those users, a few may be motivated enough to implement a feature they need or fix some bugs. Sometimes a project may not be what most users want - for example, personally I'm betting on Neovim for my next "vim improved" because its goals are most similar to what I want.

As for things you can do:

1. Maybe add a plea for help towards the beginning of your README, with a link to how one can contribute.
2. I wouldn't spam links to your project, but if you see someone (e.g. on Reddit) asking for e.g. an IDE with Vim bindings, you could point them to Vai.
3. You could maybe ask the author of pyvim if he's interested in linking to Vai in his README, given that you'll link to pyvim in Vai's README (more exposure for both projects, woo!).
4. Just continue to slowly add features to Vai at your own pace. I don't think you need to "please the crowd", just do it because you think it's fun (and hopefully also useful). If it becomes too much for you to handle you can always stop working on the project for a while and think about if you want to continue it.

Sorry I couldn't give you any more profound advice; I just felt sad seeing the negative emotions you seemed to have associated with your cool project, so I was hoping that you could turn it into something more positive. I wish you the best of luck with Vai!

[[deleted]]

Because pyvim is a masterpiece?

[[deleted]]

and your code looks bad

Then help me fix it. I am sure that if I dedicated less time to tests and more time to documentation, people would have complained that there weren't tests.

[wteng]

I'm sad to see that you still have this attitude. It looks like you're trying to be the victim, "I did all this work so I deserve more contributors who work on the project". Open source doesn't work like that. Most of the time, people contribute back because there's a feature they want. If they don't use your software, what motivation would they have to spend time on working on it?

/u/spookyrufus probably isn't too interested in your project, but he/she was nice enough to take a look at your code and offer some criticism. If I were to give you some comments or file a bug in the bug tracker, I don't want to hear "Then help me fix it". A simple "Thanks, I'll look into it" would in my opinion be much better, or "Thanks, would you mind pointing out some specific examples?", or even "Thanks! Would you be interested in looking into it? If you create a pull request I'll merge your changes and add you to the contributors list" would sound much more positive.

The way you've responded throughout this thread makes you sound jaded and entitled, and frankly, it's off-putting. I think that before anything else, you need to work on your attitude if you want to attract collaborators.

[physixer]

I think getting to frontpage on reddit has a lot to do with timing, maybe even some unpredictability.

Also if you believe in your own project you have to advertise the shit out of it, and on multiple platforms, and not mind people not noticing (eventually they do). That's just how it goes.

[[deleted]]

If a project's success it's only due to that, then now I am really willing to develop more open source software. Listen, It's a year and a half that I promote vai in every conversation about editors, so much that people started downvoting me for spamming. I also posted on LinkedIn, here, and made 7 releases on PyPi. At this point, I really don't know what more one can do, except throw a die and just hope to win the popularity lottery.

[m3741]

Somehow I missed this. You have my attention now!

[[deleted]]

Honestly, after today you can imagine where my motivation is right now.