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Comment by babarock | Hacker News Reader

Also, years of evangelism will teach you that you cannot convince someone that Vim is better, let alone great. A lot of the propaganda out there starts by telling people "you're doing it wrong! Let me show you the better way!".

Vim is one of these tools that isn't obviously better, so that you don't really understand its power until you try it (for a few months or so).

I enjoyed this article exactly because the author didn't try to rationalize the superiority of his tool, rather depict in an entertaining way, a familiar (to me) feeling of empowerment said tool can give you.

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Exactly. This is one reason why I never tell people they are wrong regarding a choice of text editors. Keep in mind I usually have multiple VIM instances open and an instance of gedit (because I do some things that VIM is a little clumsy at regarding my todo list).

What I usually say is something like:

There are text editors and then there are text editors. If you are only spending a few hours a month in front of a text editor, you are probably better off with something simple. If, on the other hand, you are going to be using it all the time, it is well worth your time to learn an industrial strength one like VIM or EMACS. These have learning curves, but they have big payoffs as well regarding productivity.

W.r.t your Todo list, have you tried VimOutliner? It's excellent for that, even having macros for checkboxes and such.

I haven't tried it. I will take a look. If it has a bunch of useful macros it might work. I might be able to program my own macros as well.

The thing is that Cut this text and past it here is still a very useful paradigm for my todo list, while remove line 47, change the "* " at the beginning of the line to "3) " and replace the current line starting with "3) " is a little less helpful. Note that items in the queue to make my short to-do list are coded either * for larger tasks or % for smaller ones. In theory VIM + macros would work. Just not sure I want to write the macros.

why not use Emacs Org mode/ VimOrganizer?

Many worthwhile revelations are inherently experiential. There are a very, very few people who are sufficiently gifted in communication to be able to sell large numbers of people on them. In most cases, though, people simply have to achieve enlightenment or experience the concept for themselves.

The Zen koan of the seeker told he would find enlightenment by acquiring the shirt of the happiest man in the world ... who turns out to be shirtless ... captures something of this essence.

I love Vim, but I don't ever recommend it to anyone. I think it gives me an advantage. Whey would I want other people using it and thus lose that advantage?

Even if it was for purely selfish reasons, it can make great sense to recommend better things to improve others. The world is not zero sum.

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