Re:Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, ...
by pmoriarty on Thursday December 22, 2016 @08:45PM
(#13242131)
"About the ugliness, I agree."
I understand how pleasant it is to use a tool that you spend a lot of time in day in and day out that is beautifully designed and just looks and feels nice. I remember slightly drooling at how some fonts in a competing editor seemed to have a subtle glow. I would have liked to have that in vim, and maybe it is possible. There are some other GUI improvements that could make it look/feel nicer.
However, as a power user give me function over form any day. It's like the choice between taking a long, beautiful path vs a short, ugly one. Or maybe the long beautiful path can't even go where the short ugly path goes.
Most of the time, I'm using my editor to get things done, and done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'm not using it to admire how beautiful my editor looks or show its looks off to friends.
If I have a choice between getting my work done in 2 seconds vs 5 minutes, I'll choose the 2 seconds. There must have been hundreds of times in my life where I've done a really complex set of editing tasks in vim (or emacs) in a couple of minutes that I know would have taken me hours and driven me insane in a traditional editor.
After learning vim (and emacs) being forced to use a traditional editor is like cutting off my arms. It's like being forced to drive a car that can go only 5 miles an hour and only make 90 degree turns. Super painful and it may not even be capable of doing what you want, and certainly not quickly, efficiently, or pleasantly. Though certainly the more sophisticated traditional editors are far better than primitive traditional editors like notepad or nano (though some people still swear by those and will not even think of leaving them!).
It's really hard to get across to people only used to traditional editors the sheer power that vim and emacs have. It's something that you really have to be a veteran of these editors to fully appreciate -- and that usually takes years.
I understand how pleasant it is to use a tool that you spend a lot of time in day in and day out that is beautifully designed and just looks and feels nice. I remember slightly drooling at how some fonts in a competing editor seemed to have a subtle glow. I would have liked to have that in vim, and maybe it is possible. There are some other GUI improvements that could make it look/feel nicer.
However, as a power user give me function over form any day. It's like the choice between taking a long, beautiful path vs a short, ugly one. Or maybe the long beautiful path can't even go where the short ugly path goes.
Most of the time, I'm using my editor to get things done, and done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'm not using it to admire how beautiful my editor looks or show its looks off to friends.
If I have a choice between getting my work done in 2 seconds vs 5 minutes, I'll choose the 2 seconds. There must have been hundreds of times in my life where I've done a really complex set of editing tasks in vim (or emacs) in a couple of minutes that I know would have taken me hours and driven me insane in a traditional editor.
After learning vim (and emacs) being forced to use a traditional editor is like cutting off my arms. It's like being forced to drive a car that can go only 5 miles an hour and only make 90 degree turns. Super painful and it may not even be capable of doing what you want, and certainly not quickly, efficiently, or pleasantly. Though certainly the more sophisticated traditional editors are far better than primitive traditional editors like notepad or nano (though some people still swear by those and will not even think of leaving them!).
It's really hard to get across to people only used to traditional editors the sheer power that vim and emacs have. It's something that you really have to be a veteran of these editors to fully appreciate -- and that usually takes years.