Hacker News Reader

Comment by p-e-w | Hacker News Reader

> It's straight up bad for linux adoption even if technically superior.

I think the idea that Vim is "technically superior" should be challenged as well. I've watched, and participated in, dozens of discussions on text editors, and have never been shown a concrete piece of scientific evidence demonstrating Vim's claimed superiority according to any real-world metric. All we have are artificial comparisons where it takes Vim 37 keystrokes to transform a Christmas carol into the lyrics of a death metal song, while it takes Nano an unacceptable 51 keystrokes to do the same (of course, this only works if you take half an hour beforehand to mentally construct that 37-keystroke sequence).

View on HN

Well there's no convincing you then.

The pros of modal editing is well documented, and I'm not even arguing about the superiority of vim over the likes of emacs.

People who believe using cursor to select, move, copy stuff are better than modal editing, even after all the argument, is probably not going to be swayed ever. As an almost pure vim user, I know how my own speed are significantly improved ever since I adopted vim and its modals, and I don't need to mentally construct keystrokes just like most people don't need to look at a keyboard to type.

The demonstration are mostly some edge cases that don't really happen, but the general speed over general editing, some `V}y` here, some `ci(` there, some `Vjj2>`, `c-vwwGx` etc is what makes vim really shine. And no we don't have to dig a dictionary to type those things, all I had to do was to open vim since that's how muscle memory works.

> The pros of modal editing is well documented

Finally! Someone who knows where that elusive data is hidden that actually shows why modal editing is better.

Wait, did you forget to link to the study?

Like I said, there's no convincing you.

On previous tens of discussion surely someone has came up with something, only for you to dismiss it as gimmicky. I am not going to spend much effort on a lost cause, but quick googling came up with this blog: https://eli-rodriguez.com/en/posts/modal-editing-the-superio...

Enjoy moving your cursor around when you edit text, but welcome to the club if I am wrong and you can be convinced.

Making a claim followed by only providing anecdotes in support just to then immediately hiding behind the "there's no convincing you"...

Impressive.

Please read the entire the comment chain, the burden of proof is set arbitrarily high, which was suspected from the beginning due to the comment that was initially replied to, hence "no convincing you".

This is made especially difficult by the subjective nature of discussion.

So no data at all, just anecdotes from zealots.

You're right, that's not going to convince me. Because I apply the same basic standard of plausibility that I do to all claims I hear. When someone tells me I should start using homeopathy, and there's no need for any actual evidence in favor of it because the benefits are "well known" to its practitioners, I don't need to hear any more to make up my mind. This is really no different.

Considering this is a subjective interest, what kind of data are you looking for? A measuring contest that happen to control on individual skills? What kind of data may satisfy your high bar of acceptance?

Let's take a step back from vim: what kind of data will demonstrate satisfactory performance over any kind of editor for your liking?

Any published study comparing performance of experienced modal vs. non-modal editor users on common tasks would be interesting already. Basically, standard UX research stuff. Figuring out how to control for differences in skill etc. is literally the job of people who conduct such research.

I mean, there are studies examining how the quality of Git commits is affected by blood alcohol levels, so that doesn't seem like an overly exotic topic by comparison.

Does any such academic study exist for any editor comparison? Since according to you these are "literally the job of people" and "standard UX research stuff".

This seems like a classic case of setting the bar arbitrarily high to stifle discussion - I cannot find any, but would love to be proven wrong.

> Does any such academic study exist for any editor comparison?

I don't know, you tell me. You're making the claim that one is superior. The burden of proof is on you.

The burden of proof is not infinite.

Asking specifically to a level of proof that does not exist either way on a subject that does not pertains to such a level of proof is merely stifling discussion, not to mention that the claim that the editors are equal in capability are not immediately obvious and proof absolving.

Expecting a single scientific study is not infinite burden of proof, in response to someone making a claim. It's the least to expect.

Though it's convenient for you that you consider anything higher than your own standards "infinite".

My favourite is rST headlines:

  yypVr-

> have never been shown a concrete piece of scientific evidence demonstrating Vim's claimed superiority according to any real-world metric

I wonder if you've ever seen scientific evidence of the contrary? Or any kind of scientific evidence on this matter?

If not, it seems that you're just using this as an excuse to rationalize your own prejudice, and the counter-argument is really easy: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (in this case, or vim's advantages)

I don't need evidence to the contrary because I'm not making any claim. I'm simply doubting the folklore claim (made without evidence) that Vim is technically superior / more efficient in practice. I'm not trying to convince anyone (and indeed I don't believe) that Vim is worse than other editors. But I don't see any reason to believe it is better either, and people merely repeating that claim isn't going to change my mind.

Generally when a discussion of vim comes up the people who use it claim that it's more efficient or whatever. Just look in this thread!

Is difference in number of keystrokes (keychords) not fairly convincing evidence that, at the very least, vim results in less finger effort (and therefore lower risk of RSI) than other editors?

Even if you don't believe that there's a speed advantage (it's entirely plausible that the delay from cognitive processing necessary to navigate vim's more complex interface dwarfs the speed increase of pressing fewer keys), I find it hard to defend the idea that pressing significantly more keys is not ergonomically worse than pressing fewer (controlling for effort variables e.g. using the Carpalx model[0]).

[0] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?typing_effort

I’m not sure any such study exists for any editors, so it’s hard to argue this. However, anecdotally, Vim’s basic navigation (hjkl) and a few common shortcuts (delete entire line dd, new line and type o, change word ciw) are so useful it’s difficult to believe you can’t type can change things faster than an editor without those shortcuts.

I can’t really compare to eg. Emacs bindings, as I have no experience with those, but most text editors have nothing, and if you have to reach for a mouse or arrow keys instead Vim is imo going to be much better once you’ve learnt it.

Yeah. I think it's silly to make the claim, by and large. For me, using vim is like a hobby. It helps me get into flow state because I have fun writing and editing code using an editor I know well, have configured, and can zip around in fast without touching the mouse. I never try to convince anyone else to use it, though if a coworker shows interest I'm more than happy to oblige. It's the right tool for me. VS Code and IntelliJ products are the right tools for others, and that's cool too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com