Hacker News Reader

Comment by uvdn7 | Hacker News Reader

What I like about vim (and other terminal editors alike) the most is the predictability. For any decent tools, you will get used to them over time, things become muscle memories; and that’s good. You learn it once, and you can benefit from it for a looong time. You know how the tool works, you know how to use it, and it won’t change by itself. Remember that feeling when your favorite desktop app, website release a new upgrade and it just stop making sense to you? Or it’s unclear how things work anymore? That’s what I am talking about.

View on HN

A related point is that you can confidently invest in vim knowing that it will be around for a good deal longer. I often find it pointless getting too invested with a shiny bit of proprietary software because I don't know how long I'll be using it for.

It seems worth noting that this is mostly a culture difference.

Many terminal users will be upset if you change a tool out from under them. Many desktop users don't know how to vocalize it.

In addition, it's more common afaict for cli/tui tools to be open source, so if someone does change a tool out from under you it's possible to fork the old version and keep the UI you like.

> predictability... muscle memories

A huge issue with this for me is that it is practically impossible to confine myself to the universe where only vim keybindings exist.

I was always a heavy vim user, and I’ve had a good time switching to doom emacs: it seems easier to do more stuff outside of code editing in emacs, and I’ve got full vim keybindings in pretty much anything I can get emacs to do. I even have a browser plug-in that opens an emacs editing session for any text input on a page!

Here are some of the things I use to increase the range of programs for which I can use vi keybindings:

* vscodevim extension for Vscode

* "set -o vi" in Bash

* Vim Vixen plugin for Firefox

* you can use ctrl-alt-j in gdb. And that might (should?) work in other programs which use GNU Readline to get vi keybindings. The only thing I miss with the vi bindings in bash/readline is "ge/gE" from vim (move backwards to the end of the word).

> Vim Vixen plugin for Firefox

These days, on Firefox, Tridactyl is the way to go for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com