
Just Use Sublime Text - smegmalife
http://delvarworld.github.io/blog/2013/03/16/just-use-sublime-text/
======
Tloewald
I've been coding for a long time. I started on ijkm (Apple II) and editors
that make vim look modern (when I was in college the congnoscenti tried to get
the CS department to provide sed, and eventually implemented their own version
and passed it around), and I've always regarded the vim/emacs crowd as
amusingly deluded.

While there are some great tricks you can do with magic incantations in
vim/emacs, you can do much more far more easily in notepad with a
mouse/trackpad, and moving your hands away from the keyboard now and then is a
Good Thing. Sure, i'll be downmodded by the command line junkies, and I'm sure
there will be a million examples of awesomeness that you can only do with
command lines and macros, and heck, maybe for some tiny number of people
there's an advantage, but for the vast majority of the world's population
sublime (or even just coders), textmate, bbedit, or whatever just crushes
vim/emacs. Every vim/emacs junky who has tried to impress me with their
awesomeness has done something either (a) I can do far easier in BBEdit, or
(b) AppleScript (!) all while not having to memorize useless crap or edit
config files.

But it's still worth learning to use one or more of these editors for when you
need to.

~~~
vladharbuz
> you can do much more far more easily in notepad with a mouse/trackpad

This is just completely bogus. If you think about how large a terminal window
is, on average, you have a grid of (e.g.) 100x50. That means you're trying to
click one out of 5,000 symbols (for example the start of a word), which are
very tiny. If you then think about this in terms of Fitts's law
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law)),
you can see how clicking one tiny character with a tiny mouse on a large
screen isn't the easiest thing.

Compare that to using your keyboard. For instance, if you're looking for the
word "pipe", typing this in vim:

    
    
      /pipe
    

Is obviously much faster. I don't see how anyone could believe that using a
mouse is more efficient for such tasks.

------
sergiotapia
Refreshing to see this after all the Vim gospel programmers out there claiming
it's benefits. I do have to say though, I've seen some videos of real Vim pros
at work and it's -majestic- how swiftly they move through lines and
duplicating lines, editing params, refactoring, etc - a thing of beauty akin
to watching videos on /r/artisanvideos[0].

I'll stick to Sublime Text and Nano when I need some ssh terminal editing. :)

[0] -
[http://www.reddit.com/r/artisanvideos](http://www.reddit.com/r/artisanvideos)

~~~
bphogan
Our industry works this way and I don't understand why programmers who are
always "using the right tool" call anything new that they disagree with
"gospel" or "evangelizing."

SublimeText isn't that old. Somehow you found out about it, learned its
keyboard shortcuts, found out what plugins to install to do your work, and
made it your editor.

That's how I learned Vim. I'll admit that I have a bias, and that learning to
use something else would be harder.

But here's the thing - the Vim knowledge I have can translate to Visual Studio
with a plugin, to XCode with a plugin, and to Eclipse with a plugin. Netbeans,
RubyMine, and Webstorm have a Vim plugin as well.

So does SublimeText.

SublimeText's knowledge transfers to the next paid version of SublimeText.

~~~
vertex-four
The issue, really, is that vim is stuck in terminal land. It can't have easily
navigable GUI menus, it can't really have overlays, it can't have a minimap,
it can't have differently sized text, it can't have all sorts of things as a
result of its dependence on the terminal. It doesn't even have autocomplete
for its commands, at least out of the box, which would make it significantly
more usable without disappearing into help files every time I want to do
something I don't do often.

Add on to that its _awful_ configuration language and the fact that it's not
really usable out of the box unlike Sublime Text, it's easy to see why some
people consider it unmodern and, for them, inferior.

~~~
johncoltrane
The issue, really, is that most Vimmers, including its core devs, don't care
about all the gimmicky features you list.

~~~
vertex-four
They're not gimmicky. I depend on them every day, either for learning or for
regular use, just like vimmers depend on the weird ability to build up
ridiculously complex commands. You may as well call user interfaces aside from
the shell prompt a gimmick altogether.

~~~
johncoltrane
_You_ depend on them everyday but most people don't and nobody cares about
that because nobody is trying to force you to use Vim or even change your
perspective about it. Some retarded bloggers, on the other hand, like to use
their lack of patience/knowledge/willingness to learn as a proof that Vim
sucks. Well… they don't really serve their goal, do they?

> vim is stuck in terminal land

For people who use a terminal it's not a problem at all.

> It can't have easily navigable GUI menus

I suppose MacVim and GVim don't count. Vimmers usually don't use menus,
though.

> it can't really have overlays

And we don't want that gimmick.

> it can't have a minimap

And we don't want that one either.

> it can't have differently sized text

Same.

> It doesn't even have autocomplete for its commands, at least out of the box,
> which would make it significantly more usable without disappearing into help
> files every time I want to do something I don't do often.

It has tab-completion, though.

> Add on to that its awful configuration language
    
    
        set showmode
    

is awful? Oh yes, JSON… the answer to every damn problem on earth.

> and the fact that it's not really usable out of the box unlike Sublime Text,
> it's easy to see why some people consider it unmodern and, for them,
> inferior.

To be honest, if Sublime Text had been available for Mac OS X and Linux when I
was looking for a cross-platform TextMate alternative I would have switched to
it in a heartbeat. But I chose vim out of a very large pool of editors/IDEs
and, frankly, using anything else is now a PITA.

I'm actually quite comfortable with Vim's perceived learning curve: it keeps
the most superficial users out of our ecosystem.

~~~
sergiotapia
>I'm actually quite comfortable with Vim's perceived learning curve: it keeps
the most superficial users out of our ecosystem.

Literally the dumbest thing I've read on HackerNews.
[https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says) material.

Why would you even care who uses what or belongs to your 'ecosystem'? What?!

------
gnuvince
So, in a few thousand words, the author manages to give multiple reasons not
to use Vim and not a single one to use Sublime Text, except this:

> But Sublime has things Vim can never have. It’s the new hotness and has a
> more active community than Vim does.

"Things Vim can never have"? Details please. "It's the new hotness"? Yeah,
because I choose my software based on its hip factor rather than its
suitability to do what I need.

~~~
eudox
>It's the new hotness

These people are the reason we are going to spend the next twenty years
cleaning up after these two-week fad languages/frameworks.

~~~
hazz
Sublime Text is 6 years old. While not comparable to the age of vim or emacs,
it's not exactly a "2 week fad" piece of software.

------
snide
This is what my Vim looks like.

[http://www.webhook.com/webhook-
uploads/1396995440381_1396021...](http://www.webhook.com/webhook-
uploads/1396995440381_1396021629005_vim.png)

I'm a designer, not a programmer. I can't code perl, vimscript, and can barely
read python or javascript. I can use git repos, which really is all I need to
know how to setup Vim properly. That and I guess the ability to read some
instructions. I've done nothing more than edit a .vimrc file.

It took me a month to switch to Vim from Sublime. There are certainly parts of
this article that are true... it is hard to setup initially, but it's not two
years, and it's not ugly. For me, the monospace fonts means that EVERYTHING in
my vim window is aligned correctly.

Believe it or not I use Vim partially because it allowed me to set up the
prettiest editor possible. Sublime just LOOKS bloated to me at this point.

I'd say by month 3 I was doing things faster in Vim. It had NOTHING to do with
movement around my screen (though I certainly love that as well). It had
everything to do with tailoring my editor to do what I wanted it to do when I
performed certain actions / key commands.

In the end I think Vim is a fingerprint. Mine is different than yours. That's
pretty awesome and certain of us really want that.

What I will say is that the vimscripts website is garbage. That is absolutely
true.

~~~
stickperson
Whoa, I had no clue you could do all that. Did you follow any guides? I'd love
to see my folder structure and be able to switch colors.

~~~
snide
If you're someone that is coming from Sublime and are used to its features,
I'd start with this consolidated plugin repo. It's unmaintained now, but was
an excellent primer for me on how to set up the guts of my vim setup.

[https://github.com/fatih/subvim](https://github.com/fatih/subvim)

I ended up modifying it pretty drastically over the course of a month. And
essentially I think that's why the author stopped maintaining it. Everyone
will set up vim their own way. That's kind of the point.

------
nfoz
I don't use Sublime Text because it's not free software and it doesn't run in
a terminal. I like vim, but I'm not "stuck in my ways" and would gladly switch
to a better editor that meets those two requirements.

~~~
pgeorgi
[http://limetext.org/](http://limetext.org/) might be interesting to you at
some point (and despite the suspicious landing page showing event from
November to February and then silence, there's activity in the repository)

------
garrettdreyfus
I don't understand the need to write an article which criticizes a matter of
preference. EDIT: I am also astonished at the authors attack on those who
operate the vim wiki. He suggests that those who operate the site have
personality disorders and are robots and emotionless coders. Come on.

------
EduardoBautista
> For the first 1-2 years of your Vim usage you will be much less efficient
> than your current editor because of the odd yet lovable key bindings.

Seriously? It's about as hard as getting used to the keyboard shortcuts of
Starcraft 2.

~~~
EvilPopsicleDog
Haha, that's a very accurate analogy!

------
wging
I think this article drastically overstates the learning curve. Also,

> It’s probably the most customizable editor ever

Emacs is way more customizable. Its help is also more accessible, its
extension language awesome, its plugin ecosystem thriving.

"God willing Vim will one day have a non-Vimscript language we can use."

That day is today, and has been for years. VimScript is not the only way to
extend vim. It supports scripting via Ruby, Python, and other languages, as
long as you use a version built with this support.)

~~~
spion
If by support you mean "you can generate vimscript to be executed using other
languages as PHP" then yeah.

~~~
wging
Not so! You write that other language (e.g. python) directly, then call it
from vimscript.

[http://www.techrepublic.com/article/extending-vim-with-
pytho...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/extending-vim-with-python/)

------
badman_ting
It's the blog post I was born to read. Thank you for writing this.

The amount of stupid tedious pain you're supposed to go through with vi in
order just to get a basic working editor is ridiculous. Like some kind of
nerdy rite of passage. No thanks.

------
danford
>Vim: The Editor You Need To Read (At Least) Two Books On To Use Well

Is this some kind of joke? If this person is serious I think they're doing
more harm to the image of Sublime than good.

------
danielsamuels
If you did want to use Sublime, I co-authored a post on Friday talking about
how we get the most out of it:
[http://www.onespacemedia.com/news/2014/jun/20/software-
spotl...](http://www.onespacemedia.com/news/2014/jun/20/software-spotlight-
sublime-text/)

------
city41
I would recommend Atom over Sublime Text if for no other reason than it being
open source. But Atom also has the might of github behind it and a very fast
growing community.

I love vim's editing commands: moving through a document, deleting, copying,
etc. I think it's by far the best way to edit text. I hate everything else
about vim. I find project wide search, finding and opening files quickly,
shells and repls inside of vim, etc to all be subpar compared to vim's
competition. I'm currently giving emacs with evil mode a try. Although not
perfect, it does address most of my vim concerns after using vim for about 4
years.

------
carterparks
I think many of these comments are failing to mention one of my primary
reasons for using vim... the power of being able to use the same editor in a
GUI and a shell. It takes me at least a day to setup my workstation for
development but if my laptop crashes I can always SSH into my workstation VPS
and get work done. It's also nice to be able to edit server configuration
files with the same editor that I write code in.

Vim isn't for everyone but if you're a power user that wants to master one
text editor and use it for the rest of your life then Vim is that text editor.

------
bphogan
I just don't get it. The only difference between SublimeText and a GUI version
of Vim is that the keyboard shorcuts in SublimeText don't follow the same
command/movement patterns as Vim.

And unlike the author, I feel qualified to speak on this as I've been using
Vim for 10 years and SublimeText since version 1.

ST is fancy. It's also pricey. I can save you $80 and give you a script that
will set up Vim and all the cool plugins you'll need. In fact I've done just
that for some of my students.

------
tedunangst
Yikes. I've been trying to use vim without plugins for 15 years. I'm glad
somebody told me it's unusable, otherwise I may not have noticed.

~~~
f15h
Same here, 15 years. If it wasn't for this article I would have not noticed as
well.

------
justinhj
This article is very low on content yet appeals to those who really want an
excuse not to learn something. "Oh, I don't need to feel bad about that time I
gave up on learning Vim because of that random guy on the internet."

People end up becoming proficient in Vim because they enjoy using it, because
it works for them. There are thousands of them.

------
zaqokm
As a person who is hovering between a tmux+vim setup and rubymine, I find vim
rather convoluted. I was hoping vim was going to be my goto editor, as I was
looking for something which was multiplatform, and was a polygot platform (
the one thing I really do not like rubymine for).

Maybe it is just me but the idea of having to go from one mode to the other to
use the standard navigation keys seems like a strange thing to do. Having to
hit ESC (now I have CAPSLOCK remapped) also seems rather inefficient. On top
of that having to find the right plugin to install also drove me nuts, then no
intuitive short cut keys and normal vs visual mode again.

Now I did like vim because it was a console app, and with tmux I could run
many terminal windows in the same session. I just do not know if vim is right
for me or I haven't spent the 10,000 hours mastering it yet. I am sure I will
get there with more practice.

:wq

------
norswap
What about Emacs? I always found Vim UI (with the two modes) weird (but that's
my own very subjective opinion).

It did not take me 2 years to take significant improvement in text editing.
Maybe 2 weeks, if even that. Then you have plugins, but honestly I don't
really use them all that much.

I mostly use basic keybindings, ssh access, and the "ace-mode" plugin that
lets you jump around with ease.

The thing which makes me sad is that emacs is nowhere near the quality of IDEs
in almost all languages (maybe the only exception is Emacs Lisp). So I have to
suffer inferior editing capabilities to get all the nice stuff (jumping to
definitions, refactoring).

------
skimmas
Don't use vim... unless you want to. One thing is certain... there's not one
single editor out there that by itself can turn you into a better coder... and
in the end that is the only thing that matters. Try them all use whatever you
like. I'm a designer... I started using vim because I was doing a boring job
and needed something to make it feel like a challenge. I still suck at most
keyboard shortcuts but I like the challenge of finding a way to improve every
now and then. Does using vim make more productive? Probably not. But neither
does this comment :)

------
Keyframe
Over the years I have extensively used (and customized) Vi(m), Emacs,
UltraEdit32, back to Emacs, Sublime2. Every single one of those is a great
editor and completely suitable for fast work. Major reason I am, mostly, in
Sublime2 is that I have fullscreen mode with it (which I prefer) without
resorting to hacks (Emacs on windows for example) or opening up editor in
terminal - and it is all the same all over three OS' I use daily.

Editor wars are over. They are all useful all the same, small details matter
these days... and looks.

------
ignu
"For the first 1-2 years of your Vim usage you will be much less efficient
than your current editor"

years????

This is obviously a typo.

If you used a real editor, it'd be quite easy to change "years" to "days."

~~~
kylec
I don't know, when it comes to navigating and manipulating a single document I
can see vim's advantages, but having spend a few days recently trying to learn
vim I didn't find any replacements for things like jumping to a file by name
or recursive regex searching, things that I've come to rely on in Sublime.
Feel free to point out if I missed them, but it seems based on my initial
experience with vim that there's not really a concept of a "project" or a
"codebase", just the collection of buffers you happen to have open at the
moment.

~~~
MrScruff
Much of what you're looking for is provided by plugins (eg. command-T).

There's no question that vim requires a lot of messing around with initially
to get it configured the way you want it. But that rapidly fades away and it's
not such a big investment of time for something as important as an editor.

~~~
kylec
I think there are two kinds of programmers, those that love tweakability and
configurability and spend lots of time customizing and perfecting their setup,
and those that just want to use stock software with as few modifications as
possible. I'm in the latter camp.

I'd like my skills in using a piece of software to be transferrable - I'd like
to know that if I'm using vim or whatever on my personal machine or on another
machine with no customization, that the experience is the same between both.
For the most part, Sublime provides that.

However, I'm willing to give vim another shot, do you have links to the
plugins that you mentioned?

~~~
MrScruff
I actually don't typically like endlessly tweaking my software either. I was
prepared to do this with vim only because a text editor is such a key tool for
a developer that it justifies the outlay of time. In addition, I wanted an
editor that was available on any platform, and in a shell. It's true that vim
under someone else's login will behave differently, but that's not a common
case for me.

Command-T can be found here:

[https://github.com/wincent/Command-T](https://github.com/wincent/Command-T)

------
aschampion
Or just use vim in Sublime Text through vintage mode or the vintageous plugin.
I use mouse navigation plenty when browsing code, but a mouse is never going
to be as effective at routine tasks like changing text inside a matching
bracket, switching case, etc., none of which require dealing with vim plugins.
Sure, all those things can be done through an IDE like ST without vi bindings,
but only by memorizing even stranger meta key combinations that don't combine
into a powerful grammar like vi.

~~~
taternuts
Yeah I came in to say using vintage mode + VintageEx is fantastic and what I
spend 80% of my time developing in.

------
DrinkWater
I am a vim user and i don't understand how people always exaggerate on the
learning curve of vim. Coming from a group of people that is probably the most
arrogant and stuck-up group of professionals. "We are amongst the smartest
people on earth", "Let's disrupt everything", "lifetime learning...", etc.

However, learning new keybindings and a bit of philiosophy seems to be too
much.

Go on, downvote me. I dont't care, like bitch, i :q! you!

~~~
DanBC
Programmers are programming now, today.

That's why they don't change keyboard layouts even though a different layout
is probably more comfortable; it's why they don't change to VIM even though
it's so powerful.

What they have is good enough for most of the time.

Perhaps universities should be teachin VIM and emacs?

It's not like the days when secretaries would be taught WordPerfect at
colleges and thus WP could get away with a blank blue screen.

------
ax
I considered switching to sublime from vim just for sane line wrapping. If you
have indents, vim forces you to hard wrap or else end up with an unreadable
soup. Sublime, on the other hand, makes the sane choice of preserving
indentation level when a line is wrapped. Sublime's setting makes editing
large HTML files in a variable width window much more pleasant...

------
thejj
but it's non-free software.

you should also consider trying emacs.

------
snitko
_> Vim: The Editor You Need To Read (At Least) Two Books On To Use Well_

No. You need to start using it for 2 weeks and then you can no longer look
back on any other editor. You don't need to read two books. Stopped reading
the article right there.

~~~
stickperson
I hear ya. I'm currently giving vim a after using Sublime since learning how
to code. I'm at the point where I pretty much prefer vim for backend stuff,
but I sometimes like Sublime when I'm working on the frontend, especially
Angular. I have so many different files in different folders, and I'm just
used to being able to get there quickly with Sublime.

~~~
snitko
You should try Vim Command-T plugin, kicks ass in terms of reaching files
quickly.

------
eudox
Sometimes I love my job.

Sometimes I read posts like this and think I should get a job at a research
station in Antarctica so I don't have to watch the collapse of civilization
when one of these people convinces banks to switch to Go and hype.js.

------
geon
> You’re going to be useless in the technology world if you can’t edit a file
> remotely, which will you will be in a terminal for, and which you will be
> using Vim for.

Whenever I _really_ need to edit a file remotely, there is nano.

------
nicolasd
I started learning vim a few weeks ago and had the very same experiences as
the author. However, I am currently use the "Vintage" Package in Sublime, to
get the nice things from both worlds.

------
tbrock
I really want to like sublime but the rules around its extensibility are too
rigid: you can't change the UI.

As a Vim user I feel like we are all just waiting for either Atom to become
fast or for NeoVim mature.

------
300
"Everyone talks about the steep learning curve but no one talks about what
happens once you finally get hjkl in your brain for movement. The answer is
months of frustration, followed by finally having a usable editor, followed by
knowing some cool tricks that you use in 1% of your daily workflow."

I've seen a lot of people saying this. I've met people who actually
experienced this. And I can't listen to it anymore - so I've decided to write
a book about how I learned Vim quickly, and how everyone can do this as
well[0]. People just don't learn Vim the right way.

There's no need for months of frustration!

When I was starting with Vim, my friends were telling me something like "Just
give it a few weeks, and you'll never want to switch back.". However, in every
previous attempt to become good at Vim, I would give up after couple of days.
Not because I'm someone who give up easily, but because I had lots of work to
do.

And with every attempt of switching to Vim, I would spend most of my time on
fighting with my new editor and not on the actual work.

The thing is, I didn't have to put so much effort when I first tried Sublime,
or when I tried to switch to Textmate. They were downright pleasant.

What my friends were telling me (btw, advanced Vim users), was something like:

\- "Turn off the arrow keys, it's not the Vim way..." \- "Force yourself to
use keyboard all the time, don't use mouse at all!" \- "You have to learn x
commands, and y things, so you could do z stuff..."

Then I realized - that was wrong! So, in my last (and the succesful one)
attempt to switch to Vim (and finally learn how to be productive with it), I
decided to don't listen to my "Vim masters" friends. I just decided that in
the first couple of days, I'll try to use Vim as any other editor. Just like
simple Notepad. No commands, no mappings, no plugins, etc. Just editing text.
And that's how it all started.

With using some learning techniques, I've managed to get good at Vim really
fast.

For example, if you can't get used to, or you're not productive with h j k l
keys for movement, just don't use them. I don't use them. I use arrow keys all
the time. Vim "masters" will probably judge me because of this - cause it's
not the "Vim way". So what? I don't care. Arrow keys work for me the best, and
I'm happy with it.

[0] - I'm in the process of writing a book - Mastering Vim Quickly (from WTF
to OMG in no time) link: [http://www.jovicailic.org/mastering-vim-
quickly/](http://www.jovicailic.org/mastering-vim-quickly/)

~~~
thegeomaster
If you don't mind me asking—where are you from?

~~~
300
We're from the same country my friend ;)

~~~
thegeomaster
Nice to see that! Your upcoming book seems promising. I'll make sure I keep an
eye on it :)

------
geeku
there is still emacs out there and getting some fresh air recently.

------
muteh
> We will never have multiple cursors

[https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-
cursors](https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors)

------
johnchristopher
>:set ft=html and then gg=G. Let me know what you get. In all seriousness,
never, ever tell me what you get.

Well, TIL I can easily indent html so there's that.

(thank you)

------
lucisferre
I sort of, but very reluctantly, agree. I would add that modern VIm package
systems like SPF13 make it much easier and more accessible, I'd suggest the
author check that out instead of continuing to maintain that 700 like vimrc
file. That having been said, I still end up fixing a lot of bugs that crop up
even with my SPF13 setup (the bright side is I can now contribute those fixes
back to a project so others don't need to suffer).

However in the end VIm and VIm style modal editing has been, at least in my
opinion, a big improvement in my productivity and flow when coding. It's so
big that I can't actually bring myself to switch back to something like
RubyMine which is arguably a true IDE for what I work on most (Ruby on Rails).

I'm still a bit confused at peoples love of Sublime specifically. Sublime
isn't an IDE, so to be quite honest I'm surprised people choose it over the
tools from Jetbrains such as Webstorm, Rubymine and IntelliJ. Its benefit over
an IDE, or over VIm, is perhaps just that it is fairly simple. It's downside
is that it really isn't very powerful and its VIm mode is awkward and clunky.

The sad thing to me is that there are really just a couple of VIm features
that make me stick around.

1\. Split management that is easy to work with.

I use this all the time. I often need to be able to look at multiple files
that are part of the same context I'm working in (view, controller, service,
etc.). Tab switching is not effective for this in the least. Every other tool
that can do split panes does this poorly. With VIm I can just Ctrl-P<Fuzzy
Search>Ctrl-X/V and it's opened horizontally or vertically relative to the
current pane.

2\. VIm style text navigation and manipulation.

As true as it is that it's not that hard to just click where you want, I
completely disagree with the authors assertion that it's just as effective as
keyboard based text navigation and manipulation. Perhaps it's just a matter of
flow, but being able to select text in multiple ways, manipulate it and repeat
that is amazing. For an example of just how powerful this is in certain cases
look at the VImcast on the "gn".

[http://vimcasts.org/episodes/operating-on-search-matches-
usi...](http://vimcasts.org/episodes/operating-on-search-matches-using-gn/)

I use that one all the time since learning about it a few weeks ago.

The bottom line for me, is that until editors learn the lessons VIm has
already taught us, it's going to be extremely hard for anyone who has learned
to use VIm even half decently to stop using it. Perhaps that's the biggest
reason to not recommend VIm to new people. They'll never forgive you for it.
It's a trap.

~~~
couchand
I agree that the author seems to be missing some of the beauty of keyboard
commands and navigation. Sure Sublime does some things vim can't, but you can
do things in vim you certainly can't with mouse-only input. For instance, I
use visual block mode dozens of times a day, which allows identical edits to
be made to multiple lines simultaneously.

I do complex search and replace very frequently, and almost always on a
particular group of lines. In vim that's as simple as typing
`:{start},{end}s/{needle}/{replacement}/g<ENTER>`, but in a GUI I have to
select the lines with the mouse, likely reselect since I didn't get exactly
the right selection the first time, then find the control key to hit <Ctrl-F>
before I can even start thinking about my search terms.

I think it comes down to giving you the power to make the edits you will be
doing frequently. I find it interesting the author spoke so much about
autocomplete and autotab. It's probably just a matter of preference but I've
always found that those features get in the way of effective coding. Every
time I'm forced to use Visual Studio for something I feel like it's an unloved
little kid that keeps piping up: "hey, hey I know what you want to do" but
it's always sorely mistaken.

Let me replace on lines 6 through 437 of some text dump the leading curly
brace with a function call to turn it into a code file and you'll win my
heart, because those are the sorts of transformations that I want my editor
helping with.

~~~
lucisferre
Actually, Sublimes multi-edit feature is actually pretty good and it's
something I'd love to see VIm able to do. What I want to edit isn't always
organized into neat vertically aligned blocks.

On the subject of VIm's search and replace, the VIm style regex does drive me
nuts, I constantly have to remind myself what needs escaping.

------
dan_bk
Why not LightTable? ->
[http://www.lighttable.com/](http://www.lighttable.com/)

~~~
dragonwriter
LightTable looks like it might be fantastic but seems to be in desperate need
of better documentation. Or maybe just better organization of the
documentation. (My initial impression is that the UI has the same problem as
the documentation -- very poor discoverability.)

------
vezzy-fnord
As a person who doesn't even use elvis/vim as their main editor, I have to
say: the reason people have such an aversion to it is because of all the years
they have been conditioned to accept mediocre user interfaces and computing in
general.

It's a culture shock, overall. It's like moving from Windows 8.1 to Slackware
14.1. Even if the latter is far more transparent, well designed and
productive, it's just so different. You're so used to an inferior paradigm
that you react with disgust and/or fear at the sight of something better,
_and_ that has been around for even longer. We've figured out most of this
stuff ages ago, really.

I've seen people flip their shit when I've installed something as dead simple
as Linux Mint on one of their family members' computers, considering they only
use the machine for web browsing and Skype, which is so much more ergonomic
with a *buntu derivative. Then they go on and reinstall Windows, as if trying
to rebuild their nest that was so violently disturbed.

Conditioning is some powerful stuff. We'd rather stick with goofy point-and-
click interfaces that slow us down, rather than invest some time to learn a
keystroke-based interface that will make us faster, more productive, and dare
I say it... increase our admiration of computing?

It's why people want their eyecandy, which most of the time is little more
than background noise, than use a tiling WM or something light in general.
Dijkstra sardonically quipped that COBOL cripples the mind and BASIC leads to
irrecoverable mental mutilation. This goes for most of our modern, consumer-
oriented computing, as well.

I'm not directing this to the author, specifically. It looks like they tried,
at least. We're content with inferiority. Try getting a person who's used to
20 years of QWERTY to switch to DVORAK. It may not be that difficult at all,
but it requires stepping out of our comfort zone.

And in our staying with the subpar, we've erected a huge wall of inefficient
software in the process. It may be invisible to the end user, but to
programmers it's all too obvious, if not often admitted.

People need a consumer technology detox, I think. Personally, if you want a
more standard editor/mini-IDE that conforms to the average person's
expectations, go for Geany. At least it isn't proprietary.

~~~
coldtea
> _It 's a culture shock, overall. It's like moving from Windows 8.1 to
> Slackware 14.1. Even if the latter is far more transparent, well designed
> and productive, it's just so different. _

Nope, Slackware 14.1 is not "more well designed and productive". I want a
graphics editor with full CMYK proofing support and Smart Objects. Do you have
one for your Slackware? Didn't think so. How about a DAW I can collaborate
with any major studio, like say Pro Tools? Didn't think so again.

Of course those are MY use cases. But you can't generally talk about it "being
more productive" (in general) unless you specify for what uses. For mine, it's
very near useless. And that's the case for millions of people too, even if
their needs doesn't include Pro Tools or Photoshop. They invariably include
other stuff that Gnome/KDE don't give them. And the myth that "most people
just use web and email" is also BS. Normal, everyday people, do tons of stuff
Linux doesn't cater to well, from wanting to edit their child's birthday video
on the PC, to wanting their laptop to sleep when they close the lid.

Slackware 14.1 might be a better for a server OS (but then again Centos and
even Ubuntu LTS have eaten its lunch), but not for what lots of people use
Windows for.

> _Dijkstra sardonically quipped that COBOL cripples the mind and BASIC leads
> to irrecoverable mental mutilation._

Yeah, but then again he was all theory, and could snark about everything. Most
of it is to be taken with huge grains of salt. Not to mention that the snide
against those languages is ironic, coming from the guy who gave us ALGOL.

> _I 'm not directing this to the author, specifically. It looks like they
> tried, at least. We're content with inferiority. Try getting a person who's
> used to 20 years of QWERTY to switch to DVORAK. It may not be that difficult
> at all, but it requires stepping out of our comfort zone._

And what for? To adopt a ho-hum keyboard system, that's presented as a magic
bullet for gullible people. DVORAK, the 80+ year old late-night-tv-special of
keyboard systems.

[http://www.economist.com/node/196071](http://www.economist.com/node/196071)

[https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html](https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html)

------
nonzer0
i learned as much as I needed to be productive in vim in one semester during
one class in college. Been steadily picking things up since then. Not a high
barrier to entry and definitely more efficient than sublime etc.

A little bit of effort never hurt anyone.

------
LoganCale
No. I'll keep using vim, because I'm efficient in it and I enjoy using it.

~~~
itsame
To be fair, the article explicitly states the following:

> TL;DR I cannot in good faith recommend Vim to a new developer, even though I
> use it.

Since you're already familiar with vim, you clearly aren't in the target
audience.

------
seymores
Read 2 books to use Vim? Seriously, w.t.f? Just give it 2 weeks using Vim.

------
liveoneggs
Just use real vi without a million plugins.

~~~
gnuvince
I've been wondering lately if the "modern" Vim setup is closer in spirit to vi
from which it descends or to Emacs. Seeing as how people are trying to enable
all sorts of non-editor tasks inside Vim, I'm inclined to say the latter.

------
johncoltrane
The author refused to learn how to use his editor so he recommends others to
avoid it.

Well done.

