Porn, Zen, and .vimrc (opens in new tab)

> while ignoring the fact that X's 10000 customers seem to do fine with the default configuration.

Do they?

If you've seen the pattern you describe almost everywhere, and the key second steps (well, “customize out of the gate to fit your business processes”) are exactly what the vendor markets heavily, what makes you think there huge numbers of customers who are both not customizing and doing just fine?

I've seen and heard of a few cases where customers use software of that kind and minimize customization of the software and instead try to adapt their business processes to the software. And usually those are at least as much horror stories as any heavy customizers.

Really, as much as it's not in the vendor’s interests, big bang implementation of this kind of software that becomes immediately central to a wide array of business processes is probably a bad idea for the same reason that big bang software system replacements usually are, even when there is no existing software system being replaced. Incremental, iterative improvements to business processes and supporting tools are probably a better idea. But big-bang, notionally close-ended projects are more succinct “achievements” on manager/executive CVs resumes, and no one is courting buyers and giving out swag for continuous improvement.

Oh yes. I'm going through exactly that with Jira right now. Not that I'm at all a fan of the thing, but when you look at what's there, you get at least a sense of how Atlassian thought it should be used.

Enter some individuals who think that they know better and have determination to force that Jira-shaped peg through their round hole, even if they have to use a jackhammer to do so. The result is the worst possible outcome, and every user gets to pay each day for it. m(

The corollary is: when shipping software, include working defaults.

Then should vim be the only editor used in vim mode?

I actually feel opposite on many of these things:

> but on top of that it wastes two very premium home row keys, h and l, for something that you really shouldn't end up using a whole lot

Even if with all the advanced search and move features, I still use the h and l keys pretty often. Being able to skip to a certain character is nice, but I find pretty often I just need to move a few characters forward or back, and a mindless `lll` is much easier than doing the mental math of which character I want to stop at and using the appropriate navigation command.

I've also grown to appreciate that the default keys are the most basic commands: on the right side, single-unit navigation, and on the left, basic character entry/removal.

> To make matters worse, the one key that's easiest to access on any keyboard, the space bar, is... just doing the same thing as l, it moves right. So now you have two of the best keys on the keyboard mapped redundantly to a relatively little used function.

I'm actually very thankful for this. I never thought about it before, but I realize that I never use my thumb when in Vim (other than to add spaces when typing normally) and I _think_ I like that. It let's me concentrate on the other fingers. Might be a matter of practice, but as it is I don't feel a need to incorporate the space bar or my thumb into my vim commands. It lets my thumb stay "dumb" so it doesn't interfere with any non-vim typing habits.

> If you wanted an IDE and tried to get Vim to do that by adding 3MB of vimscript from various sources to make it work I can't blame you for giving up, it's probably going to end up being a mess.

Agreed with this. For people that want to work in an IDE, they shouldn't work in Vim. Personally I dislike IDEs, and in part use vim to stick to a (relatively) simple editor.

> hjkl is not a reasonable default mapping for motion, for one it doesn't make it obvious that j is down and l is up since the keys are next to one another (which makes it a lot harder to memorise in the first place)

It's the same order as Dance Dance Revolution ;)

https://youtu.be/kaMq1i7BZuM?t=25

This, people in this thread are talking like the defaults like they were handed down by devine beings from the ancient past. The truth is that they are often just warts from and old past that can't be removed for backwards compatibility.

My personal vim ethos: You can, and you SHOULD tailor it to yourself.

Managing servers was why I started using vim other places. I started to use it for basic text editing and for coding, just so I could practice and not feel dumb when I needed it (far too often) on a production box. I also avoided too much customization for this reason too.

Still use vim for as much as I can. The language is too rich, and there’s a lot of muscle memory I’ve built up. It also tickles some part of my brain that’s always looking for better, faster, more effortless ways to do things, so I feel like it prompts learning in ways no other software I’ve used does.

Mouse takes far longer than a second for a selection. Switching between keyboard and mouse already takes longer than typing the usual vim-commands for a simple action.

And casual keyboard-commands just don't scale well. Moving cursor x chars means you must type the movement-key x times. With vi you just type the number x and the movement, and usually save big time.

Aditionally, vi has more knowledge about textual objects, which are all interchangable. So whether you move 3 chars, words, paragraphs, pages or functions, it's all the same, just with different letters.

Vi's command-language is highly composable and thus very dense, so it will alwys be faster than mouse and casual editor-commands. Of course as long as you habit them.

Vim bindings operate on commands that can automate many of the daily work you do in a text editor besides inputting text and search & replace. Deleting or copying text inside delimiters or by lines, changing words in place, recording and replaying macros, etc. are all possible with a few keystrokes. Since commands are generic and composable, once you learn the few basic ones you'll be able to come up with combinations of your own that make you more productive over using a mouse and a traditional graphical IDE. If you've ever seen a Vim master at work you'll notice how quickly they manipulate text on screen. It looks almost magical, which certainly makes it difficult to follow for anyone else watching, but to them it's the most efficient use of their time and brain power, since the binding-to-command mapping has become muscle memory. Using a foreign IDE would cripple their productivity.

While it's true that most programming is spent thinking about the problem rather than manipulating text, the benefit of modal editing and Vim bindings is not only in the saved time, but also in removing the barrier from thinking about how you want to change the code to actually changing it. That leaves you more time to think about the problem, but also doesn't interrupt "the flow" by having to think about moving and positioning a mouse cursor in a GUI, which is always a more mentally draining action than typing a few keystrokes.

It's not about optimizing for speed; it's about optimizing for comfortability. Not having to move your hands at all from the keyboard is highly underrated. If you pair it with a windows manager like i3 and use something like vimium on chrome or zathura for pdf, you always have your hands on your keyboard. You don't realize how great that is until you try it. You can't go back to the mouse.

The whole point of vim binding is to reduce context-switching to the mouse, better maintaining flow.

Once you get good at Vim + a tiling window manager, constantly swapping to a mouse to do things interrupts your flow. It’s akin to forced context-switching, which programmers hate because that also interrupts flow and concentration.

But it does take practice to master enough Vim commands to be able to use it without referring to help docs (which also interrupts flow). You won’t really understand this flow advantage until you’ve done that.

Fwiw, Wall Street culture has something similar around Excel. The best, most proficient Excel masters can use Excel with keyboard only, no mouse, b/c they’ve mastered all the keyboard shortcuts for navigation, data entry, and calculation. They judge each other based on this ability. It’s not unprecedented in the software development community only.

IMHO Vim's strength come from the ability to operate on any logical chunks of text in a unified manner. Being able to jump around text with the keyboard is hardly a big deal compare to that. For example, to delete the entire body of a function in C, you can type "da{", where "d" means delete and "a{" points to text surrounded by braces. To delete a single sentence, I can do "das", etc etc. Of course, you could do the same using the mouse by selecting text manually, but it's way more tedious than Vim commands.

> I have zero interest to optimize deciseconds of my time, or worse, optimize my perceived productivity vs. my actual productivity (e.g. forcing myself away from the mouse by ways of pattern matching that increases both mental overhead and time required).

I think you just said it. Its not interesting/nor a priority for you to optimize things to that level. Those using vim properly and trying to move away from the mouse consider it better for efficiency and ergonomics (debatable).

Its not that you fail to understand. Its more so that you don't care that much.

> One thing I never understood is why Vim bindings are a big gain when you have a mouse.

Vim bindings are a gain because you don’t have to use the mouse.

I've come to the conclusion that the discrete interface of the keyboard and keypresses meshes well with the discrete nature of text versus the analog control the mouse gives. When selecting by individual characters/lines, I'd much rather use my keyboard and know that for each keypress I'm interacting with some X amount of text than fumble with my mouse until I get exactly what I want selected. Vim keybindings specifically are nice because they provide a pretty universal interface - most applications I use implement Vim keybindings, so there's very little context switching when working with my IDE, CLI file browser, Firefox w/ Vim Vixen, etc.

Also, I find that preventing constant movement from the keyboard to my mouse and back helps mitigate wrist pain and discomfort from long sessions at my PC.

To me the interesting part is not having to do precise mouse movements.

With vim bindings it’s easier to do things like rewriting arguments in a function, without having to carefully select them with a cursor or using ctrl+shift+Right arrow the right amount of times.

The speed I find it’s only a plus when having to work with old/sluggish machines, because it breaks my flow way less, but that’s completely personal preference.

The gain is less frustration.

If you don't mind moving back and forth between mouse and keyboard, or smashing ctrl-arrow to move, then it's fine.

You’re being downvoted because that’s nonsense. It comes built-in with formatting, intellisense, a terminal, a debugger, Git support, and syntax highlighting.

Secondly, trying to discern between an “IDE” and a “text editor” in 2020 is a fools errand. It’s pointless because there’s such a grey area between where one definition starts and ends.

I don‘t agree with rapferreira. I liked that the article included the actual technical details, including these that were the “old” solutions. Some insights are impossible to be achieved if the details are omitted.

I think it makes sense in context, where many tech enthusiasts do almost fetishise their or other's configurations as nerd cred. Just look at /g/ board on 4chan, people post their neofetches and compare kernels..

Let's all just move on from this trend of things that are sexy in a category being regarded as 'porn': earthporn, cityporn, natureporn. Maybe I am getting old..

+1 to waiting a bit, incurring the inconvenience, and seeing whether you come across alternate solutions. Often the first thing I think of (customize, or install a new package; both of which incur maintenance costs) is just masking not understanding another aspect of Emacs.

Every few months, if I'm not 100% on the utility of a customization/package, I'll remove it and see if I survive without it.

This beats having to declare config bankruptcy.

Perhaps ironically this will result in longer dotfiles for all the people who were already happy with the existing default behaviour!

I can't stand this. If Chesterton thinks he has all the power, why doesn't the onus to know "the use of it" fall on him? He should be responsible for documenting the purpose and motivations behind the fence, if he thinks he's such a protector.

Anyway, this stance seems to be what separates conservative from a liberal. Conservative want to protect something that exists but he has no knowledge of reason - such as people protecting slavery, racism, etc. Putting up barriers against people trying to change world for the better.

The answer is I don't. I make heavy use of /, but for navigating within a line I make do with *#^$w.

It's kind of cool how you can get two Vim power users (not a group I count myself among, mind) in a room together and find they use a completely different subset of features.

    nnoremap ; :
    nnoremap : ;

Allows me to use : for repeating.

You could instead use F{char},, and then keep hitting , ;)

Exactly! I like being able to log in to any server and use vim/vi without any issues.

I've noticed similar pattern with other tools, e.g. git. I've seen coworkers add all kinds off aliases to simplify git commands, and I'm very much against it since I prefer portability.

There's a standard tool for that:

https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/

What's with this attitude? The guy wrote a blog post and by definition he can write what's in his mind at his desired level of length and verbiage. It's not like he was asked to write the eject procedure manual of a spacecraft...

If you can move your tabs to tmux, you will greatly improve your situation. It's easy.

Then you can, for instance, make your development machine a dedicated cloud server, like digital Ocean etc.

This is what I do and it's very nice to be able to use any hardware I want, including cheap underpowered stuff, since it's just a window to my real machine.

Noo I like tabs! Maybe you can explain to me, I genuinely do not get why people are religious about spaces instead of tabs. You have to backspace more times to get rid of an indent!

I haven't tried Doom/Spacemacs yet. The same thing that keeps me from installing vim plugins probably keeps me from installing large "frameworks" for emacs. Doom does seem relatively lightweight and I'll give it a try at some point this weekend.