Ask Experienced Devs

1232 readers

1 users here now

Icon base by Delapouite under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Users of Vim and similars, what exactly makes it useful compared to other text editors? How much time do you suppose you save when working with it? (programming.dev)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

68 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'd like actual examples instead of "I work faster", something like "I can move straight to the middle of the file with 7mv" or "I can keep 4 different text snippets in memory and paste each with a number+pt, like 2pt", things that you actually use somewhat frequently instead of what you can do, but probably only did once.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

and similars

mg (minimal emacs clone, lighter than nvi) and ed user here, minimal editors integrate well into unix environments. I view IDEs as providing what is missing for people who haven't learned their OS tooling (or their tooling sucks/doesn't exist). I have no need for a heavier editor because I can already do everything I need to and more with shell suspension & job control, find, and regular expression tools (grep, sed, awk, ed), and building similar capabilities into a huge IDE prevents me from having common tooling when working within other parts of my system, and uses up my limited muscle-memory for learning tools that are largely inferior and poorly documented compared to the standardized portable tooling that works almost everywhere.