
Why Vim? - pauljonas
http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2012/03/21/why-vim/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TerminallyIncoherent+%28Terminally+Incoherent%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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jff
Christ, am I the only person getting sick of the unending Vim evangelism here?
It's a good editor, I use it a lot. So, apparently does the rest of HN,
because not a day goes by without some Vim evangelism blog post on the front
page. Is it really so terrible if there are a few holdouts on HN using Emacs
or whatever? Does it truly destroy your life?

~~~
revscat
I'm of two minds about this.

a) Yes, there are quite a few articles about vim that show up on HN's front
page.

b) I am a long time -- 20 years now? Really? Gah! -- vim user, and some of the
articles have shown me things that even I didn't know.

Insofar as emacs is concerned, I'm not sure why you are mentioning it. It is a
good, respectable editor.

~~~
thekungfuman
A complicated bit of text editing software if after 20 years of daily use
you're still learning significant new tricks. Statements like yours are why
vim seems completely unapproachable to me.

~~~
viscanti
The fact that someone could use it for 20 years without knowing everything
makes it seem more approachable to me. It shows that you don't need to know
everything, or even most things to be productive with it.

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tarr11
As a new vim user, I've found that learning vim is like learning to play an
instrument.

You are constantly challenging yourself to move your hands and fingers in the
most efficient way possible. It is incredibly frustrating up front but then
you occasionally find yourself elevated and doing something that you had
previously thought impossible.

Single key commands strung together make a melody. Editing a document is like
playing a song.

Great vim practitioners can elegantly keep tempo and flow with advanced
technique and focus.

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the_cat_kittles
One reason that sounds silly, but is totally legitimate- When your Vim-fu
finally gets better than your regular text editor-fu, it FEELS great, and its
FUN.

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mmj48
Mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.terminally-
incoherent.com/blog/2012/03/21/why-vim/&hl=en&strip=1)

~~~
manojlds
Seems like the site has become terminally-inaccessible

~~~
tuxmentat
Yup. You guys hammered it to pieces. WP-Cache is nothing faced with HN
traffic. When the dust settles I'm going to try installing Ngnix proxy to do
more aggressive caching.

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peter_l_downs
The same reason for using any editor: it helps you get things done. Other
editors also help you get things done. A lot of these "You should use VIM
because of x, y, and z" posts seem to follow a standard pattern: claim that
VIM is good, give examples of "how easy!" it is to delete or paste text, show
some advanced features ("ooh, macros!"), and then claim that it's the best
editor. It's a good editor – I use it, too – but any editor that lets you be
as productive is just as good.

~~~
tuxmentat
Exactly. That's more or less the sentiment in the conclusion to the article:

"If you are using Emacs, keep using it.

Hell, if you are using Java you should probably keep using Eclipse. Similarly
you probably shouldn’t ditch Visual Studio and hack your C# code in vim. Emacs
and IDE’s are useful – they have tools that will make your life easier. The
IDE’s don’t have vim’s raw text manipulation power, but they make up for it by
having great integrated debuggers, GUI building tools and etc. But if you are
hacking in Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby or something like that, vim is usually a
good choice.

Is it the best editor in the world? I don’t know. I guess it depends what you
are doing. The bottom line is that you should choose a tool that fits the
particular problem you are trying to solve. Not all problems are nails. If you
try to apply a hammer to a philipsh-head you are probably gonna screw things
up somewhere down the line. But vim is a great editor and you should
definitely give it a chance."

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smacktoward
Why Vim?

1\. Because it's installed everywhere.

2\. There is no 2.

~~~
adestefan
Except it's not.

vi is installed everywhere.

~~~
dudus
Except it's not.

I used to log on Windows servers on a daily basis that had only Notepad.

