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> The 19/34 year old defaults of vim/vi aren't good enough for the hipster rubyists. However they seemed to be just fine for the hundreds or even thousands of systems developers and hackers who developed the foundation for the systems the take for granted.

Yes, because as we know these hackers have empty .vimrc files. No sirree, just the defaults thanks!

That is a very true point.

However, as you are point out, every body has a .exrc/.vimrc In my useless opinion the current defaults are as general as they can be. I believe they are currently set so that both 20 year veterans and beginners can use any instance of vim if they happen to be without their favorite .vimrc config.

I do. The only time I set a .vimrc is on Debian-derived distros where they don't set nocompatible or syntax on.

vi has good defaults. If I used emacs, I'd have to drag around my config everywhere to set usable keybindings. With vi and vim I can just use the defaults everywhere.

I've gotten to the point where I'd rather use vi than MS notepad, but I'm still better with vanilla Emacs.

I hope I didn't give the impression I think Vim is terrible. If I did, I wouldn't have said at the beginning that I'd moved to it completely. I think it's just suffered under the weight of it's age, where defaults, audiences and expectations were different. What I found interesting was that the things that turned me off were really easily solved; there's nothing wrong with the core of Vim at all. It's just window-dressing issues that someone with more skills than I would be able to solve relatively easily.

I wouldn't call myself a Rubyist (I like Scala more), but I'd prefer the hipster tag to loser ;)

I actually don't think depending on bundles and snippet features is bad at all. I think that indicates the flexibility of TextMate from first boot, and it means users are getting to the power the editor is providing, rather than skimming across the top. But when I watch a Vim pro though, it's light years faster than how quickly I can move around. As the other commenter mentioned, they do have highly customized .vimrc's and such to get to that place though.

Just FYI my comment wasn't really a personal attack on you or your post. I was talking more in general, I've seen several within the last week through many different channels.

Vim with sane defaults was create a few years ago, it's called cream http://cream.sourceforge.net It didn't really take off, at least as far as I know.

The problem here is that no matter how much you like vim, when you argue against the most important paradigm (defaulting to normal mode) that makes vim so powerful, the people who understand and appreciate this feature will assume that you don't like vim itself. And then you'll get people saying that you're utterly clueless.

Vim is a tool. Let me say that again. VIM IS A TOOL. It's purpose in life is not to be easy to use or to garner the biggest user base. It's purpose in life is to make text editing as efficient as possible. That means that you default to normal mode. Period. If you don't live in normal mode, then you just don't grok vi(m).

I'm not sure what's different about our use cases, but I find the vim defaults to be quite reasonable. I have a .vimrc file, but pretty much consists of syntax highlighting and tabstop settings. And I differ from the mainstream here anyway.

I'm just surprised they're all stampeding to vim. Emacs seems like a better fit for the rails world. I'm certainly not getting pried away from my /usr/bin/emacs.

I'm a hipster rubyist and I've only ever used vim as a serious text editor. I'm sure there are other hipster rubyists who feel the same way.

Ya I think it's a bit of the dunning-kruger effect at work. He's been using the editor for 2 weeks and can see what it needs more than people who have been using it for years.

I totally agree.

I honestly feel like a old man on my porch, screaming "Get of my editor lawn!".

I think you've misread my post, which is probably my fault. I don't see "what it needs" I tried to state "what made my life hard when I started using it, and what it seems would make that curve easier". I think they are different statements, and I hope that comes out of the text.

I am absolutely not saying that Vim is broken or that Vim is bad for the people that love Vim, I'm saying that Vim doesn't seem to meet expectations of people coming to it fresh. I think the idea of having different distros would help alleviate some of the pain. It looks like Cream has made a good go of it, but sadly no Mac version :(