this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
81 points (97.6% liked)

Ask Experienced Devs

1064 readers
1 users here now

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

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
81
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 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
69 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] 9 points 4 months ago (9 children)

I use vim bindings in vscode, but I'm trying to switch to neovim.

It's hard to talk about efficiencies without use cases but here's some that I like:

  • Compared to using mouse, text selection is just much easier in vim. Instead of accidentally highlighting an extra space and clicking somewhere on accident which gets rid of my selection, vim lets me go directly to the end of the word and be precise about where I'm selecting.
  • I remember before I used vim, I would count the number of times I hit the backspace or delete when I had heavily nested parentheses. With vim I just type the exact number I want, and if I were to undo that operation I also know exactly what was changed, whereas when counting there's always the possibility of miscounting or pressing delete without counting.
  • I don't have to scroll. I can jump 100 lines in less than a second. Instead of searching through long files to find where I left off, I just generally remember what line number I was at, then I can simply just jump back.
  • Forces me to type better. Before vim I had really shitty typing form(I don't know what it's actually called) but switching to vim shone a light on exactly how I was typing wrong, and now I type faster.
  • Using the % operator you can jump between brackets or parentheses. This comes in handy especially when you want to highlight the inside of a function call, or just jump to the end of a pair of brackets
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (7 children)
  1. Ctrl-left/right jump to the beginning/end of words
  2. No exactly sure what you mean here.
  3. Page up/down let you scroll up/down quickly. Ctrl-P :123 lets you jump to a specific line, but I generally use editing history (alt-left) instead.
  4. I can type perfectly well...
  5. Ctrl-{ or } does this I think.

Do you have any more compelling examples?

[–] abruptly8951 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ooh fun, these all take 2-3 key presses

  • Delete the contents inside a function delimiter by {
  • Delete the next nine words
  • Delete the contents inside long text quotes

And these more/less key presses

  • Start a regex search with a single button
  • Perform the same edit 100 times in a jagged files (good luck not f'ing up your multi cursor)

But it misses the point, of course every editor can do just about anything, but there is a lot more mouse involved and learning it is more difficult because the keybinds aren't combinatorial

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)
  1. Ctrl-shift-}
  2. How often do you want to delete exactly 9 words? It's much easier if this is interactive.
  3. Not a common task IMO.
  4. Ctrl-F and click a button. This is rare enough that a button click is fine.
  5. Not sure what you mean by "jagger files" but I find multiple cursors are a lot easier to get right than e.g. regex replace because they give you instant feedback. Vim sequences are more like "oh you got it wrong, better start from scratch".
[–] abruptly8951 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

1 is just going to highlight right?

2, how about 6 words, 10 words, 100 words

3, 4 I use all the time

5 if your edit locations don't line up so that you can alt drag a single column, this is what I mean by jagged. I would use a combination of find and repeat action.

Start from scratch - skill issue :p

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

how about 6 words, 10 words, 100 words

Yes exactly my point. How often do you need to delete exactly 100 words? Do you count them? Obviously not - you probably guess and delete 50, and then 25 and then 20 etc.

[–] abruptly8951 0 points 4 months ago

10dw . . .

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)