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Comment by rapferreira | Hacker News Reader

Bro I don't mean to make you the shining example of what I'm talking about but can we please try to be succinct with write-ups? The whole first half of the article could've been summarized with a single sentence: "As is typical with newbie vim enthusiasm, I spent many hours producing a 1000+ line vimrc over a long time that I eventually realized complicates my word editing process more than it helps."

I mean come on..

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Thanks for the honest feedback, but I think everything you want summarized is in the summary at the top:

> Vim is a highly customizable text editor geared towards writing code. But open-ended configuration possibilities often lure users into wasting time while chasing after perceived minute gains in productivity. This article describes my Vim journey, starting from heavy personal customization and ending with a renewed love for defaults.

One can read it, take the message, and move on.

However if another reader wants details, it's hard to know upfront what kinds of details he/she will care about. Hence, based on the premises in the summary, the article expands on: 1) the ways in which Vim can be over-configured; 2) some examples demonstrating the possibilities of changing default behaviour; 3) the benefits of scaling configuration down; 4) Summary and additional notes.

You might only care about one or few of those. However this, I feel, is where you would have to selectively skip some sections, based on your own judgement.

I don‘t agree with rapferreira. I liked that the article included the actual technical details, including these that were the “old” solutions. Some insights are impossible to be achieved if the details are omitted.

An article doesn't have to be a summerization. This is more of a personal story, albeit on a technical issue.

And I'm pretty sure it's not just "noobs" that focus that much on customization, but of course their attempt will more likely be unproductive.

Also drop the first word of the title. Click bait

I think it makes sense in context, where many tech enthusiasts do almost fetishise their or other's configurations as nerd cred. Just look at /g/ board on 4chan, people post their neofetches and compare kernels..

Let's all just move on from this trend of things that are sexy in a category being regarded as 'porn': earthporn, cityporn, natureporn. Maybe I am getting old..

and the poorly named babyporn

I found it informative and enjoyable to read. I'm glad it had the details that it did and would have gotten less out of it if those details had been omitted.

Of course it's fine to value succinctness, but it sounds like your saying the author did something wrong or that he owes you something. Maybe "I found there were too many details and would have preferred it was much more succinct; for example..." would have been a better tone than "can we please try to be succinct"?

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