Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

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I am one of those "not willing" people. I encounter the same issue discussed here without even thinking about it, and solve it as such:

1. Realize I need to check how my new code looked like 5 min back. 2. Copy full file into clipboard, undo by a few steps 3. Do a temp commit on GitHub desktop 4. Paste the new code back and look at the diff on GitHub desktop, and if needed undo the temp commit from above.

Is this more clicks than the vin shortcut? Sure. But I don't have to go learn the internal tree structure representation of my text editor and spend my time in that universe. I have found a way to do what I need to with the tools I have in hand.

This is the same way how the majority of finance runs on excel when they could do better with better programing. In the end whether you get the job done in fields where you're not billed by the second is not dependent on how well you use your tools necessarily.

The other analogy is cars - for most people it's something that gets them places, for others it's a way of life if not at least a more involved proposition.

> The other analogy is cars - for most people it's something that gets them places, for others it's a way of life if not at least a more involved proposition.

But if code is your way of life, which it is for many people here, it is beneficial to learn the tools that allow you to do it easier. If someone can see how their code was 5 minutes ago in a few keystrokes, they’re going to take advantage of that significantly more frequently than someone using your cumbersome method.

As some other comments suggest, vim is the gift that keeps on giving. I'm not going to try and convince you to use it -- do whatever you want.

But for me, every little thing I learn in vim pays off... a thousand times? Macros alone have probably saved me a cumulative few hundred hours. And with every other little thing I learn, compounds with this effect. I write macros much better than I did five years ago, but I still surely have tons of stuff to learn. No IDE will ever compete because vim is just four keystrokes away at any time, no matter where my terminal is.

Not so sure about this, I think it depends on how frequently you have to do that task. If you're doing it every day or even every week you could potentially be saving a huge amount of time and effort by using a tool that does the job well. It's sort of like using a random heavy object as a hammer, sure it's fine in a pinch if you need to occasionally hang a picture but if you're working as a carpenter it's counter productive. Comparing it to the notorious abuse of excel spreadsheets in finance is not doing the argument any favours.

It's not as hard to learn as people say it is. It's just weird at first because it's modal and different than what they're used to. You can get away with using it pretty naively and still get a productivity gain.

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