Hacker News Reader

Comment by nocman | Hacker News Reader

> I can hardly imagine that. They would hate me for wasting their time they could use to learn something practical. To me Vim seems a crazy alien technology of particularly questionable usefulness (even for a keyboard-centric user)

I know tons of developers and system administrators that use vim on a daily basis (that includes me). While I agree that I would not necessarily recommend it for a beginning student, it is entirely unfair to describe it as having "particularly questionable usefulness", and "only suitable for fun and for looking cool". I and many others use vim for real work, not for "looking cool".

Yes, the learning curve is high, and it requires investing some time to learn. My experience is that the time I spent learning it was well worth the investment. It's not for everyone, but that doesn't mean that it not for anyone.

View on HN

> it is entirely unfair to describe it as

That's why I wrote "To me Vim seems...". Beyond the fact it's impossible to start using it right away without instruction, everything else is subjective and context-dependent.

> My experience is that the time I spent learning it was well worth the investment.

How? I tried. But I still can't see how its key shortctus are better than the common ones (i.e. how Esc,Shift+G (yes, I just googled it) is better than Ctrl+End) and how its power in applying bulk edits to many places at once can make me more productive (it would mean I write redundant code if it could). What other things does Vim have which other editors/ides don't? I also find coding without JetBrains-level smart code completion a waste of time.

Vim lets you jump through text. Try G for bottom, gg for top, $ for end of line, 5j to jump 5 lines, 0 for start of line, w to jump word, b backwards etc. Once you know the shortcuts it’s very comfy and you can use them in any modern IDE like JetBrains and the terminal. Having one workflow everywhere (term, ssh, IDE) does it for me

> Vim lets you jump through text. Try G for bottom, gg for top, $ for end of line

How is this better than Ctrl+End for bottom, Ctrl+Home for the top, End for end of line? I believe these keys have actually been put on the keyboards right for this and that's why their names are self-descriptive.

> 5j to jump 5 lines

I can't imagine a case when this would be of serious value.

> w to jump word, b backwards etc.

Ctrl+arrows.

So, I still don't get it although I sincerely want to.

The real advantages of Vim start to become clear once you know the basics and start to understand in how many ways you can combine them efficiently.

You can press 'dw' to delete the word right of the cursor. 'd/]' to delete everything from the cursor to the next closing bracket("delete and search next ]"). 'dip' to delete the whole paragraph around the cursor("delete in paragraph"). 'di{' to delete everything between the closest pair of curly brackets.

And this doesn't just apply to deletion but most other operations. Vim lets you just combine delete/copy/replace/... commands with inputs that move your cursor, whether it's just the current line or a whole 100-line table column. And of course you can tell it to repeat those operations by entering a number beforehand, or just repeat the last operation by pressing '.'.

Vim doesn't make you a 10x developer but it will make you think "oh man, was it really that cumbersome?" whenever you go back to a normal editor. Do you like always moving your hand to the mouse and back when you want to select text? Probably not. Vim makes that step completely unnecessary, among other things.

Don't get me wrong, it's not for everyone and that's fine. But if it fits your way of doing things it's a super efficient and flexible tool that is only limited by the user. I've been using it for over 5 years and still learn new, clever ways of doing things quicker.

> You can press 'dw' to delete the word right of the cursor.

And I can press Ctrl+Del to achieve the same. Right here in this commend edit form.

> delete everything from the cursor to the next closing bracket

This seems slightly interesting but not really. Many good text editors would highlight the matching bracket and it usually is just a tiny bit more slow to delete everything to that point.

> 'dip' to delete the whole paragraph around the cursor("delete in paragraph")

Hardly ever needed this in my entire life.

> And of course you can tell it to repeat those operations by entering a number beforehand, or just repeat the last operation by pressing '.'.

I know but can't imagine a use case for this.

I actually want to master Vim, let me be sincere, just to look more cool and professional, impress the boss and feel more of a hacker but that's not enough of motivation for me and I'm desperate to find anything in it which would actually feel handy.

> That's why I wrote "To me Vim seems...".

That's fair. I was left with the impression that you did not think it could be useful to anyone.

>Beyond the fact it's impossible to start using it right away without instruction, everything else is subjective and context-dependent.

It is a very different interface. It does not work like other editors. Some people don't like mode-based editing, and thus they will definitely not like it.

> How? I tried.

This is a common experience for people attempting to learn Vim. Like I said, the learning curve is high. It takes a long time to become proficient. As to how it is worth the investment to me, I think most of the gains come from the fact that it is a keyboard-oriented editor. I can find the piece(s) of a file that I want to edit, and make changes quickly. As 'blackcats' pointed out elsewhere in this thread, vim lets you move around the file quickly.

> I also find coding without JetBrains-level smart code completion a waste of time.

I use the IdeaVim extension for vim-like keybindings in JetBrains IDEs. It's not perfect, but it implements a fair bit of the keybindings in vim. I understand the desire for code completion, it can be very handy.

> As to how it is worth the investment to me, I think most of the gains come from the fact that it is a keyboard-oriented editor

I don't use much mouse when I code in Sublime or PyCharm.

> As 'blackcats' pointed out elsewhere in this thread, vim lets you move around the file quickly.

All the commands he/she mentioned have classic counterparts with Home/End/etc keys, available pretty much everywhere. I use them a lot even now, writing this comment.

> All the commands he/she mentioned have classic counterparts with Home/End/etc keys, available pretty much everywhere. I use them a lot even now, writing this comment.

Many of those keys require you to move your hands far from the home row (in ways that make it slower for me to type them). I find that the vim equivalents are easier to touch type. Plus many of the gains are not just in the motion, but in editing commands (as well as combinations of the two).

To each his own.

> I also find coding without JetBrains-level smart code completion a waste of time.

Meanwhile as a Vim user I am glad it doesn't try to be smart and "help" me by obstructing my view on the code with automatic popups listing suggestions I never asked for, formatting "corrections" while I type that make my sequence of inputs incorrect, and tab management that feels like a struggle without using the mouse. Meanwhile I once spent minutes trying to find a syntax error in intelliJ because while it did indicate with a red box that it found an error there was no indicator for its location...but I sure was glad it marked all warnings and apparently incorrect spelling in comments right beside the taskbar.

Vim respects my time and attention and has virtually no limitation when it comes to defining keyboard shortcuts. No, it doesn't have a bulk replace that's actually semantically aware, but it took me not more than a day to write a "close enough" replacement in Vimscript.

Or, to quote Jonathan Blow's excitement while using VS: "Is there a setting to fire the people who designed this UI?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com