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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree with your thesis, but I should point out that I have been using Vim almost exclusively for almost six years now (well, NeoVim for 4 of those years), and my config is only about 40 lines, and most of it is just installing plugins for whatever languages I'm using.

Despite me not hacking it like crazy, I still think it really shines as an editor; Vim macros were sort of life-changing to me once they clicked for me. I also just think that modal editing is superior once you get past the initial learning curve.

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Let me back up a step here.

I use VIM for almost all basic editing. Its muscle memory.

But for code editing, I generally end up on VSCode because it seems to have better language support. I've spent a fair amount of time with configuring VIM trying to get where I feel it needs to be. But whenever I shift to a new stack, it always seems to take an investment of time and effort to get VIM set where it's better than VSCode.

I share your experience, but it should only be a matter of time until the vim LSP clients[1] mature.

One notable exception is Go with its [vim-go](https://github.com/fatih/vim-go) plugin, which feels very mature to me as someone new to the language.

[1]: https://langserver.org/

CoC is already there:

https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim

Having to install node.js for a language server client is sort of a downer. For this reason I've been eagerly awaiting the built-in client in neovim, though it's definitely less polished and feature-complete than CoC today.

Isn't the "built in" neovim language server lua? I personally can't see much difference between having to install nodejs runtime Vs the lua runtime.

The difference is that the lua runtime is embedded (and wicked fast) into Neovim vs nodejs that has to go over the remote plugin interface

Fair enough. I've been using coc for a while now and can't say I've ever had any speed issues that I've noticed. But if the neocvm language server is built in and "as good" as CoC then that'll be one less plugin I'll need to install when it's ready.

Yeah I don't have any node.js speed concerns for it, I just would like to have the simplest editor microservice architecture, and putting the client to a service in a service was a bridge further than I wanted.

CoC looks neat (installing right now), but it's a perfect example of what I mean. Having to poke through and add several dozen lines to my config file to get it working.

I would love to have this functionality with just

  brew install ts-vim

And just be done with it.

I don't use vscode that much, but when I was checking it out I installed some extension which lets you edit text with true neovim (point it to a bianry) while vscode handles chrome and code understanding. Worked pretty well.

You're probably talking about Neo Vim[1] by Alexey Svetliakov. I can't recommend this one enough for a (neo)vim experience in VS Code. It is relatively new and deserves a lot more attention.

[1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetlia...

Yeah that’s the one. Love that it’s not a half baked vim emulation.

There are many ways to use vim and they're all valid! People who love barebones vim are cool. People who love configuring vim are cool. People who love embedding vim in larger programs are cool. We have way more in common than vim squabblers pretend!

Are evil users cool too?

BTW, your main point about using vim is emacs greatest strength.

You wound me greatly, but yes, evil users are cool too. I mean, I first learned vim keybindings from Kile.

(People keep telling me I'd love emacs, and I have nothing against it, I just happened to learn vim first.)

Along with Evil, Emacs org-mode is the thing that eventually lures a number of people like you over from Vim. Evil makes editing in Emacs close enough (very close) to editing in Vim. Org-mode gives useful functionality that you can't get in Vim.

So, I am now a longtime emacs (and evil, love vim-ey things) user, and I've dipped my toes in the org-mode water a few times, but it's never quite stuck.

Have you got any suggestions? The number of people that recommend it makes me sure that there's value to be had there, but it's never really become a habit for me.

The important part is to find a method and then leverage orgmode for it. With out some system is hard to make it stick.

About 40 lines sounds reasonable to me.

I've been using vim and before that other vi clones or actual vi as one of my main editors for 40 years, and my .vimrc is 60 lines.

20 of those are to automatically decrypt on read and encrypt on write .gpg or .asc files, which I copied from somewhere 20-25 years ago and haven't actually used in 15+ years, leaving only 40 lines I actually care about.

Just as an FYI, Vim has built-in support for encryption: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Encryption

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