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Comment by icc97 | Hacker News Reader

The argument people have for Atom / VSCode is that you won't notice the tiny performance improvements with small files and you don't need massive files.

Perhaps I'm just a 'sensitive' soul, but I really do notice these minor differences in performance. If there is ever a slight slow down in the editor then it takes my focus off my work and onto the editor.

I 'feel it', rather than being able to put it down into specific testable specifics.

I use ST3 mostly and I instantly notice if switching tabs is taking fractionally longer or if undos/redos or scrolling is taking longer.

The only reason I don't switch to Vim is that ST3 is much more user friendly. So it means that I have to think too much about the commands in Vim which slows down my thinking - which is the equivalent slow down of having unresponsive editors.

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> So it means that I have to think too much about the commands in Vim which slows down my thinking

If you use anything long enough, you no longer think about it. Indeed, the only time I think about how I do things in Vim is when someone asks "How did you do that?" I only thought it, and it happened. Recreating it can sometimes be a short puzzle.

I'm certain this is true for other people and their editors, or anything that you use so intrinsically that it's like breathing.

Yes, I'm sure this is true. It's just that it takes a really long time to get all the commands into muscle memory. I've been using Vim for over a decade and still don't feel comfortable doing more than quick edits to individual files.

All editors from Notepad to ST / Atom, Browsers and Document editors have the same keys for search, replace, new tab, close tab, new document.

But learning vim is a completely different language. I mean that in the sense of actually learning a spoken language. Until you're fluent in it, it's really awkward.

My latest step has been finally to get round to using tabs which I'd never even really considered for Vim. But even that requires learning all the new tab commands, there's no Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shift + Tab.

I'm in the Windows world which doesn't help with learning Vim as it's just not as pleasant experience as using it in the Linux command prompt.

I also think that ST3 is faster/more-responsive than vim with plugins.

For example, in order to make vim an alternativet to ST, I have to use several plugins, such as snippets, youcompleteme, etc.. Once I do that, vim has a slight delay that I just can't stand.

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