Hacker News Reader

Comment by darren0 | Hacker News Reader

Number one drawback of VSCode, for me, is poor vim keybindings, especially visual mode. If that was fixed I'd use it extensively.

View on HN

I wanted to use VSCode when I started writing TypeScript three months ago, but I found the Vim plugins super lacking, so I used Atom instead, which has a much more robust Vim plugin.

However, I tried VSCode again last week after being disappointed by continued bugs in atom-typescript, and was happy to discover the Vim plugin (https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim) had made a ton of progress since I'd last given it a shot. It's still not quite as good as Atom's, but it's definitely getting there. Plus, the project's team is very active and friendly - I actually submitted a PR a few days ago fixing a bug (the VSCode extension development workflow is super easy, it turns out!) and they quickly merged it :)

I also found out that the VSCode developers know that it's an important plugin, and they actually have a category of issues on the VSCode repo specifically for extension APIs they need to add to make the Vim plugin as powerful as possible. This new update includes several of those, and I have a feeling by the end of the year the Vim plugin in VSCode will be on par or better than that of plugins for other editors.

Is it as good as the Ideavim plugin for Jetbrains editors?

That is the benchmark that I use to judge other vim plugins.

I don't know what turned at MS exactly but something did, at least in the department where VS and VSC are developped. I've had major bad experiences with reporting bugs to MS in the past (almost as if they had a standard 'by design' or 'wontfix' message generator). The last couple of years however, not so much. Submit a report, get a reply like 'thanks for the detailed report, we're on it' and then the bug is fixed in the next service pack or version. And now they're also doing PRs for VSC and other things and the response times seem ok (well, a tleast yours was, but it's still sorta 'unseen' for MS). If it continues they might reach a point where the competition (including open source) starts to look very bad - there it's sometimes still the usual business as it was with MS: report a bug and/or PR, nothing happens, for months or even years.

They don't get restricted by backward compatibility.

I too wrote a PR a few days ago to not switch to visual mode when selecting text in insert mode (which breaks snippets and wrapping text in braces).

I'm pretty busy right now, though, and will probably not get to finish it in the next week. If anyone wants to pick it up, I'd be really happy: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/pull/544

What advantage is there to Atom or Vscode over vim/neovim? (Honestly curious. I can see why people might prefer it to notepad, but if you're already a vim user..?)

One day we will have a conversation about X text editor without mentioning vim. Not today.

That day will be long after all the non-modal heathens are converted.

I don't see a problem with this. Frankly, there are probably more people using Vim keybindings in another text editor than using raw Vim itself.

The plugin that comes closest is "VimStyle", which ironically has the lowest number of installs and ratings out of the top three. I assume that's because it was a bit later to market. However, the top two are garbage.

Hey, I'm one of the authors of https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim. I'd love to know how we can make our extension better. Feel free to drop by our slack or drop a GH issue of what you think we're missing.

I just tried VimStyle and wow you are right. This extension is smooth!

How does it handle other vim features like window splits, macros and programmability?

A few months ago I compared different Vim plugins for VSCode and found amVim to be the best for my needs. It's not without its bugs and limitations, but it's good enough:

https://github.com/aioutecism/amVim-for-VSCode

VSCodeVim was not that good at that time, but I haven't checked it recently for a fresh comparison. So make sure to also check out VSCodeVim in addition to amVim.

It's easy to modify key bindings to emulate popular editors. For example, Emacs key bindings are trivial to emulate.

But Vim/Vi don't just have keybindings; they have modes. Emulating editor modes is a significant undertaking. It's not just a change to the settings file -- it requires a lot of programming work. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Microsoft to emulate Vim modes in VS Code. A plugin is your best bet.

Came here to find if it had Vim bindings.. I guess I'll wait to use it :/

The current release notes explicitly mention some API changes they implemented to better support the vim extension: https://code.visualstudio.com/Updates#_extension-authoring

Reply on news.ycombinator.com