9mo ago

My wife was unimpressed by Vim

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As someone who's been a software developer for over a decade and in IT even longer, I still don't use vi/vim for anything other than when crontabs have it set as the editor.
- alias vi=nano
  
  export EDITOR=nano.
  But (neo)vim is amazing so there is no need to do that.
  
  I transfer all my files over to a Windows machine and edit them in Notepad
  
  Based nano user
  From my .zshrc (typing this on mobile so cope if it's wrong)
  undefined
  
  case "$OSTYPE" in linux*) export EDITOR=nano ;; freebsd*) export EDITOR=ee ;;
  
  I guess shell languages can't do this:
  undefined
  
  export EDITOR=case "$OSTYPE" in linux*) nano ;; freebsd*) ee ;;
  
  Put backticks around the entire case statement, and you can.
  
  That would be too smart. Smells like kotlin's when
  
  You can set your default editor (maybe in .bashrc or .bash_profile? I forget), but I'm far too lazy.
- Honestly if you don't use vim motions in your ide of choice, you're missing out big time. Being able to do things like "Delete everything inside these parentheses". di( or "wrap this line and the two lines below r in a pair of {}" ys2j{ , or "swap this parameter with the next one" cxia]a. with a single shortcut is game changing.
  Even just being able to repeat an action a number of times is ridiculously useful. I use relative line numbers, so I can see how many lines away a target is and just go "I need to move down 17 lines" and hit 17j.
  Absolutely insane how much quicker it is too do stuff with vim motions than ctrl-shift-arrows and the like
  
  That's really neat, but I don't think I do that often enough to really make the performance hit of learning a whole new thing and memorizing keyboard shortcuts and commands worth it. I don't find myself refactoring code a ton, especially after moving to a more TDD-like model.
  
  It's less about refactoring and more about navigation of your code while editing. Ever wanted to delete a single word? daw deletes the word your cursor is currently in. How about "copy everything up to (but not including) the nearest "D" on the current line? yfD.
  The whole point is that editing code in the middle of writing it, not just refactoring it, is immensely faster.
  
  Absolutely insane how much quicker it is too do stuff with vim motions than ctrl-shift-arrows and the like
  Those tasks are a very small part of work time, so most people don't feel the need to optimize it.
  
  As a software dev, they're significant parts of what I do
  
  Are you one of those rare developers who spend most of their day actually coding?
  
  Yes, absolutely. And I refuse to let my day be anything else! :-)
  
  Only if you use a qwerty keyboard, otherwise it's just annoying as shit

185 comments