I write unit tests for my personal projects - it might sounds ridiculous but it is the reason why I can grow these projects beyond the initial 12 hours of interest. Since personal project tend to be on the smaller side I usually uses typescript or python but I've never found it an issue where pure vim usage becomes an issue at scale.
It also strongly enforces separation of concern in terms of file organization. I found using vim for development to be a positive feedback loop.
e: never mind, I see Microsoft closed sourced pylance and restricted it to their products. Typical. Of course there is still pyright along with a python language server, but I guess technically not pylance any more.
F f g G jkl; ESC i r R yy p and control A and control E probably cover 90% of my cases.
However. I use a nub on my ThinkPad so I have sort of instant mouse access for location things, I mostly use jumping for inside a line
Tabs are an organized collection of windows, and you can quickly switch between them. I might organize my windows so half the screen is one buffer and on the other half, is split 3 times horizontally. Then I edit some code and realize I need to edit some other part of the codebase. I make a new tab instead of changing buffer, so I can go back to the view I setup already without having to recreate it.
Tabs are the true power of vim, I don't have that functionality in any other editor (apart from Emacs?) and I miss it constantly. Buffers aren't really a novel concept, they work the same in VS code and JetBrains IDEs.
Yeah, Emacs also lets you do that! You can achieve similar workflows via tmux or a tiling window manager as well. It's my favorite way to work! For whatever reason I've never gone down the tiling WM rabbit hole, but I use this kind of thing in Emacs and tmux all the time.
One editor that does support it, is kakoune. I forgot about it when writing my previous comment. Each instance can connect to a server, so they can all share registers/buffers/etc. Then you can use tmux or your window manager to create the layout you want.
It's very clever, I actually think it's superior to vim, as you aren't limited to organizing your views inside a single vim "main" window. You could do stuff like kak | browser | kak, and both kak instances share everything.
Unfortunately I can't get used to the kak commands so I'll probably never change. Perhaps neovim will one day implement something similar.
Vim has been my only code editor for the past 10+ years and I wish I used tabs a little better (ie, the way you describe). As it stands I have some plugins that open in a tab so they are easy to close (like gv.vim) and otherwise use my tabline as a secondary status line (it tells me my working directory and if I'm tracking a session or not).
E.g., if you want to turn,
* a
* b
* c
"a",
"b",
"c",
You could do it with a regex, but I just find it far more natural to list the commands: my brain is already imaging it that way: remove the bullet, add the quotes and the comma.
Good for-loop for "do this to each line". Sometimes takes a bit of back & forth to construct the command, or sometimes it's just easier to do multiple :norm's. One of the best additions to my repertoire in years.
I argue the opposite. Because vim is such a constrained environment, the UX is extremely unified.
An IDE with vim mode is the opposite. Vim mode usually only works in the text buffers and nowhere else (at least not properly). You need to memorize a combination of vim hotkeys and regular ide hotkeys OR spend a long time messing around with your IDE hotkeys (probably comparable to vim config).
In vim, since everything is a buffer and a window, you can use your regular navigation hotkeys to move between them. I just think "I want to shift my focus to the window on the left" and it doesn't matter if the window on the left is a text file or some plugin.
In something like IntelliJ, you can't "just go left". You need to know what the hotkey is for the panel on the left. The "non-modern" UI, which constrains vim actually makes a significantly more unified experience.
> terminal in the ide so you can still run commands easily (typically better than vims term window does)
This is a perfect example. How do you switch back and forth between your terminal and text file in an IDE? How do you copy paste between your terminal and text file? Can you use vim movement in your terminal that you opened in your IDE? Or your registers? In vim, that all works perfectly just like you'd expect without learning anything new, it just works like regular vim.
That being said, I still use IntelliJ if I'm writing Kotlin. The semantic analysis they can do is absolutely top notch, can't get something comparable in vim and the productivity gains out weigh my annoyance with the inconsistent UX. Something like python though? I'll probably stick with vim, jedi is good enough.
It's the 5% of vim that's unavailable (i.e. norm, macros) and 5% of needing to still click the IDE UI occasionally that reminds me that it still isn't vim.
But then again, for some language families there just isn't a choice.
Uh, what? I find it absolutely painful to watch my coworkers click around in their IDEs. It takes them forever to get things done.
Of the handful of hard core Vim users in the office, I’m the least sophisticated. But I’m WAY faster than all the non-Vim users.