
Vim rendered on a cube for no reason - ohjeez
https://github.com/oakes/vim_cubed
======
willberman
"I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep
fun in computing. When it started out it was an awful lot of fun. Of course
the paying customers got shafted every now and then and after a while we began
to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were
responsible for the successful error-free perfect use of these machines. I
don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them setting them
off in new directions and keeping fun in the house."

\- Alan J. Perlis

~~~
themodelplumber
"How dare you insinuate that my latest amateur radio transceiver firmware is
capable of loading a working copy of Contra for the NES!"

-People who give me hope

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBE-
BQNaCh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBE-BQNaCh4)

~~~
anon891
I've been trying to change my MacBook startup chime to the Contra intro sound
for quite a while now...

~~~
toxik
Dang didn't know I wanted this. Would be real cool to get the SEGA startup
from the Megadrive.

------
cscurmudgeon
From the Q&A:

    
    
      How do i stop the cube from spinning
    
      no

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Really, the whole FAQ is gold.

~~~
ISL
It was a wonderful chaser to [https://xkcd.com/2287/](https://xkcd.com/2287/)
, which I encountered minutes before.

Humans are good.

~~~
perl4ever
I suspect that cartoon implies a deep and chilling insight. COVID-19, or HIV,
people notice. But does that mean we notice everything? The greatest
vulnerability of pathogens is our brains, so wouldn't that mean strong
evolutionary pressure to mess with our brains in such a way that we don't
notice we're ill? How much of human social evolution is driven by that?

~~~
mercer
Something like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii)
?

------
nicoburns
The issues are great, but especially
[https://github.com/oakes/vim_cubed/issues/1](https://github.com/oakes/vim_cubed/issues/1)

~~~
neumann
Oh man - that is the best first post. The issues are fantastic.

------
doctor_eval
This is awesome. The best kind of programming: doing something for the fun of
it.

Also, what is Nim? How popular is it? What popular products is it used in?

Would it be a useful language for a python developer to learn? I have a friend
who is a python dev and he has lamented that he’d like to learn something
else. Should I recommend nim? Is it good for numerical analysis?

~~~
eindiran
Nim is a relatively small programming language that uses a Pythonic style of
syntax. It adds some features that make it better suited to systems
development, like type safety and better performance. It can be compiled using
a few backends, to eg C or JavaScript.

Nim recently hit 1.0 and has grown a lot of the years, but it still isn't
particularly common to see in industry. You can see some Nim related projects
on GitHub: [https://github.com/topics/nim](https://github.com/topics/nim)

I used it to write a few things/just play around with in the pre-1.0 days, and
found it quite nice to write and easy to read.

Regarding your question about numerical analysis and Python, this post touches
on using Nim for tasks that you might reach for numpy for:
[http://rnduja.github.io/2015/10/21/scientific-
nim/](http://rnduja.github.io/2015/10/21/scientific-nim/)

This one has a brief comparison of Nim and Python + numpy:
[https://narimiran.github.io/2018/05/10/python-numpy-
nim.html](https://narimiran.github.io/2018/05/10/python-numpy-nim.html)

Note that both are for pre-1.0 Nim.

Nim's site: [https://nim-lang.org/](https://nim-lang.org/)

~~~
logicchains
What are Nim's compile times like? I write a lot of C++, and by far my biggest
issue is compile times for large projects. I'd love a systems language that
had decent compile times for template-heavy code.

~~~
sp33der89
As girvo mentioned, compile times are really fast. Might not be as fast if
you're heavy user of metaprogramming but it's still really good.

For example see:
[https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer](https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer)
in the README it mentions:

> Note: While Nim is compiled and does not offer an interactive REPL yet (like
> Jupyter), it allows much faster prototyping than C++ due to extremely fast
> compilation times. Arraymancer compiles in about 5 seconds on my dual-core
> MacBook.

------
thelazydogsback
Funny thing is, I think this is just about as useful as every attempt I've
ever seen (real or Hollywood) to add value to GUI by adding 3D gfx...

~~~
dahart
I actually really liked the 3d view in firefox
([https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/3D_View](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/3D_View))

A lot of people said it was silly, and I think IIRC the help pages for it used
to have cheeky comments like "Why? Because we can." There's probably a good
reason it was deprecated, but I thought it was useful for debugging my often
deeply nested DOM layers.

~~~
pierrec
I wanted to try this out, and the closest thing I found is this bookmarklet
for Chrome:

[https://github.com/chrisprice/explodz](https://github.com/chrisprice/explodz)

It appears to still work and it even sort-of works on Firefox except for the
mouse-click feature that shows the sides. Clearly not as polished as the old
Firefox feature though.

------
jsjolen
Now we just need to render Emacs onto a tesseract.

~~~
ashton314
Is that what the `C-x 4` keybinding is _really_ for? /s

------
juped
In the 2000s we used to do this, but with the proverbial Linux Desktop.

~~~
lfowles
Whatever happened to the promise of cube desktops with wobbly windows?

~~~
the_pwner224
I am using Wobbly Windows right now in KDE. Desktop Cube works too but I don't
like it (I use 16 desktops instead of 4 :).

When I have to use Windows every once in a while I am viscerally disgusted by
the lack of wobbly windows. Moving windows just feels wrong - very, very
wrong. Takes a second to realize they're not wobbling. To me it makes the
computer seem less robotic and more natural in a way, I guess. Like haptic
feedback on smartphones when you tap stuff.

~~~
O_H_E
Exactly what I told my sister few months ago. The windows just feel stiff and
unnatural.

------
foxfired
And here I was making fun of the Swordfish hack scene [1]. Turns out he was
just assembling the crypto algorithm using vim.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-
VY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-VY)

------
leshokunin
Can someone make this work in VR and multiplayer? I can imagine it’d increase
productivity if you could fly to someone’s cube and collaborate by doing
Minority Report gestures.

~~~
mulmen
Yeah if people stopping by my desk in an open office is good then people
dropping in to my desktop environment must be better.

~~~
leshokunin
It’s basically the remote work equivalent of asking for TPS Reports

------
kovac
Judging by the feature requests in the open issues, I'd say we are witnessing
the inception of the text editor of the century.

------
m4r35n357
[https://github.com/paranim/paravim](https://github.com/paranim/paravim) \- A
Vim-based editor for Nim
[https://sekao.net/paravim/nim/](https://sekao.net/paravim/nim/)

[https://github.com/paranim/pvim](https://github.com/paranim/pvim) \- A Vim-
based editor for Nim
[https://sekao.net/paravim/nim/](https://sekao.net/paravim/nim/)

So what the fuck is what? paranim? paravim? pvim?

------
tomjakubowski
Cool. Looking forward to seeing Vim on a torus some day.

------
jylam
Remembers me an effect I wrote (in text mode) for neercs, a GNU screen clone
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQr42LjaNCY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQr42LjaNCY)

------
glenvdb
This is weird combo of "movie hacking" and "real hacking".

------
threeer4234234
Technically you're _still_ using it in "two dimensions", only the topology of
S^2 requires an embedding dimension 3.

You're still a pleb, only "richer".

------
amelius
Perfect for slowing down those pesky 10x developers.

------
kyuudou
Thanks for the comic relief of the day; sure needed it. I like your goofy
sense of humor. Please keep doing fun stuff like this.

------
devit
When Compiz came out about several years ago this kind of thing was all the
rage.

------
purerandomness
Ah, classic BeOS, love it!

------
peter_retief
Is this the lockdown speaking? Thanks, I needed something light.

------
_anastasia
There's also vim^4 which is great for writing in Forth

------
bagol
This is like Hacker's computer in movies!

------
xtiansimon
VIM BORG CUBE!

~~~
linkdd
:set resistance=futile

------
tinybug
it's funny.

------
djohnston
Well done

------
soheil
whats the cmd to exit vim3?

~~~
skitter
One of the issues suggests holding down your device's power button.

------
travbrack
Almost as useless as this comment.

------
Cyberdog
This makes it to the front page? Guess it's a slow day on HN land. Is everyone
else waiting for the April job threads too?

~~~
kking50
I quite appreciate these kinds of posts. Fun and silly, yet make you think
about the way computers work outside the box.

~~~
Kuinox
Outside the box... Oh thanks...

