Re:Vim Koans
by anonymouz on Sunday September 23, 2012 @06:09AM
(#4560525)
Seems to be somewhat incoherent flamebait about Vi, mainly giving contrived examples where other tools do a better job (how many people think that vim is the right tool for editing CSV? Or vimscript the right language to write a Markdown processor?). If only it were at least funny...
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Re:Vim Koans
by janogonzalez on Sunday September 23, 2012 @11:01AM
(#4561085)
According to Wikipedia (I know, not the most reliable source) a Kōan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen-practice to provoke the "great doubt", and test a student's progress in Zen practice.
The main themes in this particular article are that Vi is not a silver bullet, that even using a great tool you can do a lousy lob and that tools are just tools.
So more than an "incoherent flamebait" this is a list of Kōans about Vi created by someone that uses it and other Unix tools on a daily basis (as you can see on his other posts: http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/)
no. it means "right tool for the right job". vim makes integration with unix pretty easy. that's a main feature and it is highlighted in the koans.
:!markdown
The part about the Windows user is pretty funny, but the whole essay is about using vi when vi is the appropriate tool.
I have to admit I snickered a bit when the student was told to come back when he'd mastered emacs. I struggled to learn it before switching to vi and would still call myself a novice.
You missed the point of those koans. Vim can use external tools like awk to edit CSV and markdown to process markdown. The author was discouraging use of vim itself for things like that.
Edit: And I missed the point of your comment.
Re:Vim Koans
by johncoltrane on Sunday September 23, 2012 @06:53AM
(#4560579)
Just take a look at the questions on Stack Overflow/Super User and you will see that those silly ideas (and others) are more common than you think.