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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe... but OTOH, the IDEs that come after VSCode will still follow the UI guidelines that have been established for GUI tools during the last ~40 years, e.g. having menus where you can find out which functions are available, and then memorize the shortcuts for the functions you use most often, rather than having to learn everything "up front" before being able to become productive. I suspect one reason for the longevity of vim is the time that you have to invest in learning it...

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Yeah, switching from Sublime Text to VSCode had basically 0 adjustment period.

I'm not particularly worried about switching to the next one someday nor do I feel like I'm missing out for taking 15m longer per year for the rare server editing of files compared to if I had spent 100+ hours learning vim.

OTOOH, GUI tools often tie you to a specific workstation setup.

VIM is already installed everywhere you need it and does not require you to have a workstation with a GUI

> GUI tools often tie you to a specific workstation setup.

VS Code and Android Studio can run on all major desktop operating systems, and more cross-platform IDEs are coming out.

> VIM is already installed everywhere you need it and does not require you to have a workstation with a GUI

The chances of you having a workstation without a GUI over the past 30 years has been pretty small unless you're a sysadmin.

> The chances of you having a workstation without a GUI over the past 30 years has been pretty small unless you're a sysadmin.

I spend a lot of time in the terminal and in vim (13 terminals open at the moment)

I don't think I've used vim on a guiless terminal for a decade. The only thing I'm on a physical server for is for installing on bare metal with no ilo - which means a 640x480 text installer, USB stick, and a keyboard to type in the IP and gateway (although Ubuntu has broken that as of this year). Once that's done the install is automatic, and then I can ssh into it a few minutes later.

10 years ago maybe I used the terminal to edit things like /etc/network/interfaces to change network settings once in a blue moon. That's hardly a full featured use of vim though.

However I do ssh into servers and edit files on those servers, and vim is on every server I connect to. I believe vscode will work transparently to do that though, editing over the ssh connection.

VIM or vi?

I don't think that's true. There are precious few UI guidelines that persist, and GUI design has been on the forefront of many fads. Looking at the touch-first UI of today, I have very little confidence that a GUI will look anything like it does now in 10 years.

Meanwhile, I can use vim over ssh from an iPad if I need to - my tools have come with me.

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