HN Gopher Feed (2017-08-12) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Vi is not vim
33 points by HugoDaniel
http://www.hugodaniel.pt/posts/2017-08-12-vi-is-not-vim.htmlngopher.com___________________________________________________________________
EduardoBautista - 40 minutes ago
Unless you know what you are doing, a heavily configured vim can be
really slow. It can approach a level of slowness comparable to
atom at times. If you have to heavily configure vim to get it to a
point that it's useful for your workflow, I highly recommend giving
sublime a try, it has truly made writing code more enjoyable for
me.
anon335dtzbvc - 31 minutes ago
Well modern plugin managers have lazy plugin loading based on the
current filetype. You open .cpp vim transforms into a cpp "ide".
You open .hs ghc-mod and friends has you covered. Lazy plugin
solved the old problem of having hundred vim plugins loaded at
the same time resulting in an slow ide like experience.
nerdponx - 31 minutes ago
I stopped having performance problems when I switched to NeoVim.
reificator - 26 minutes ago
Moved from Sublime to VS Code for font ligature support. (I like
Fira Code)Stayed for:* Integrated terminal that also supports
ligatures* Pluggable debugger: one interface across gdb, delve,
node, Chrome and other browsers, etc...* Built in git support
that's nicer in my opinion than any of the plugins for Sublime*
Markdown previews* Seriously good Intellisense, it even tells me
the schema of nested objects returned from another function in
JavaScript.* Probably some more that I forgot...I don't regret
buying Sublime, but VS Code targets the same platforms, has way
more features and a faster release cycle, and did I mention it's
free and open source?
[deleted]
jrs95 - 1 minutes ago
Personally I've had Sublime approach near Atom levels of slowness
from plugins as well. I'd imagine it depends on the plugins, but
that's essentially what slows any of these editors down a lot.For
what it's worth, I always use Sublime for really large files.
Diti - 39 minutes ago
I feel confused and even suspicious when people tell, non-jokingly,
that they couldn?t find a way to exit vim. Have they never used ^C
in their terminal?
rocqua - 32 minutes ago
I feel confused at this comment, even suspicious. But did you
know that ^C does not actually exit vim?:q!
[deleted]
tasuki - 20 minutes ago
Pressing ^C in normal mode tells you how to exit vim.
pedrocr - 28 minutes ago
It's possible he was actually trying to exit a non-vim vi that
doesn't pop up a useful message explaining how to quit when you
hit ^C.
SubiculumCode - 25 minutes ago
He mentioned that this occurred very early in his career, perhaps
as a child.
jakob223 - 36 minutes ago
>No syntax highlighting>If you still struggle with syntax then
please use syntax highlighting, it will help those special words
stand out.I find syntax-highlighted code far easier to read, in
part because it becomes less just a blob of amorphous text. Our
eyes are better at noticing blobs of text that are green than blobs
of text which happen to be preceded by a "//" or some such.
rhabarba - 35 minutes ago
I find syntax highlighting to be quite distracting. There are
reasons why it is still an option and not mandatory.
anon335dtzbvc - 30 minutes ago
The best option is to have a option.
reificator - 23 minutes ago
As long as I can use it, doesn't bother me at all that you
don't. Doesn't affect the code at all.
anon335dtzbvc - 12 minutes ago
Its a open discussion, no bothering required
btym - 10 minutes ago
I found that line beyond pretentious. You don't need to "struggle
with syntax" to find highlighting useful.
jrs95 - 3 minutes ago
I actually find that this "blob of amorphous text" is helpful for
me, I seem to read code more thoroughly with syntax highlighting
off
rhabarba - 36 minutes ago
Vi is not nvi either, by the way.
chongli - 28 minutes ago
Unless you're on a BSD!
ams6110 - 3 minutes ago
One reason to learn the basics of plain vi (not vim) even if
you are in the emacs camp -- if you find yourself needing to do
something in a pinch on an unfamiliar unix machine, it's very
rare to find one that doesn't have vi installed.
anon335dtzbvc - 27 minutes ago
nvi is a acronym for "not vi" :)
gwn7 - 33 minutes ago
vis is another lightweight but modern alternative to vim these
days. I recently switched from vim and sam to vis myself, and
recommend it.https://github.com/martanne/vis
Inityx - 28 minutes ago
>Syntax Highlighting>Your focus will be in semantics and it is
easier to get into it without the syntax aggressively jumping at
your face.I'm not sure I agree with this. As a programmer, your
tool for expressing semantics is through syntax. While the author
argues that disabling syntax highlighting makes the syntax less
important, I feel that removing syntax highlighting places undue
stress on the author by removing the first level of immediate
validation that the syntax is correct.I find myself jumping between
languages far too often to trust myself to use the correct syntax
on the first try, so much so that I consider in-editor linting to
be an indispensable tool.Perhaps if someone only ever wrote one or
a few very different languages, they wouldn't have to worry about
if their language indexes by range with [a:b], [a..b], or
.slice(a,b).
ams6110 - 7 minutes ago
Syntax highlighting doesn't bother me; I don't disable it. But
when I learned to program I used monochrome terminals like VT100
or ADM-3a and it just wasn't a thing that could be done, so I
also feel quite comfortable without it.Syntax highlighting is
most useful to me to make things like unclosed quotes stand out.
I don't find the highlighted reserved words and other highlights
to be all that beneficial.
chongli - 3 minutes ago
I find myself jumping between languages far too often to trust
myself to use the correct syntax on the first try, so much so
that I consider in-editor linting to be an indispensable tool...
I find myself jumping between languages far too oftenThese two
statements jumped out at me. I'd conjecture that they're causally
related. As a non-syntax-highlighting user, I feel the same
stress when I jump between languages. I felt this exact same
stress when I first turned syntax highlighting off. After the
initial period of stress, I felt more comfortable reading code
than before.One argument against syntax highlighting I've heard
is that we don't use it on prose text. They show an example of
English prose with nouns, verbs, and adjectives in different
colours and it looks absolutely garish.Without doing some
extremely problematic studies, it's really hard to say whether
syntax highlighting is beneficial or not for long term
programming. Personally, I feel that it is not beneficial because
it gives your brain a shortcut to rely on. By taking away the
shortcut, you engage the language part of your brain a bit more,
which may help strengthen your ability to read and understand
code. I don't know, it seems that way anyway.
haolez - 25 minutes ago
I've managed to disable syntax highlighting in the past and not
miss it, but at least the comments must be different from normal
source code! Comments can get really noisy without any
highlighting.
vesche - 25 minutes ago
Pssh, yes it is- alias vi='vim'
anon335dtzbvc - 15 minutes ago
Your post reads a bit like, hey you think my config is too small?
i'll show small!
Scarbutt - 12 minutes ago
A feature he didn't mentioned was language indentation support.
bitwize - 6 minutes ago
My Slackware boxen come with 'vi' symlinked to 'elvis'. I'm an
Emacs user but I'm conversant with bare-bones vi enough to use vim
or elvis to do quick config changes or bang out short scripts.
bobajeff - 6 minutes ago
Lately I've been wishing there was a way to use Vim's plugins
without having to use vim.But alas there is none. :(
rocky1138 - 46 minutes ago
OT: This website breaks the back button in Chrome on Windows.
gmrple - 42 minutes ago
Android too.