Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to use Vim was Wrong (2010)

Re:Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to use Vim was Wrong (2... by archagon on Thursday April 04, 2013 @04:33PM (#5495115)

I don't think it's a matter of insecurity. In the decades since vim was released, we've made drastic improvements in UX design that have made computing much more accessible and intuitive. (And we're still moving forward at a rapid rate — just look at the stuff that people like Bret Victor and Chris Granger doing!) And yet, so many programmers are adamant on sticking to 20th century editors and obscure key commands, even sometimes (sometimes!) at the expense of usability. I don't think it's particularly offensive to wonder why such old tools are still so popular, especially when for most people the thinking part of programming is what takes the most time.

Additionally, your tools shouldn't define you as a programmer, and yet I often see people getting shamed for using an IDE instead of vim/emacs/whatever.

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Re:Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to use Vim was Wrong (2... by abraininavat on Thursday April 04, 2013 @05:13PM (#5495342)

But there's this misconception that we who use vim are simply ignorant of these amazing IDEs that have changed the way everyone program and which will make your coffee in the morning.

I've used IDEs, a lot. And not decades ago, I try new IDEs out all the time. When I write Jenkins plugins it's in NetBeans. I have tried out SublimeText 2 quite a bit. I used to write games so I spent all my time in Visual Studio with Visual Assist X.

Given all that, when I want to write some C++ I fire up vim. Not because I'm unaware of all the IDEs out there and all they can do. But because I'm very efficient using vim, find, grep, sed/awk, etc.

It's not offensive to wonder why such old tools are still so popular, but it's offensive to assume that they're popular because their users are ignorant. Maybe you just haven't gotten it yet (and won't). Or maybe we just have different use-cases. The vim commands obviously aren't obscure to me since I know them.

I agree that your tools shouldn't define you as a programmer. Clearly I wouldn't shame anyone for using an IDE, since I do all the time when it makes sense to. The problem is that many IDE users just can't accept that I use vim because I work well in it, not because I think it's trendy. I can work well in any environment you throw me into, because 90% chance it has vi, and otherwise it has Notepad. Most VisualStudio users can't say the same. Fine, they don't think that's an important skill, I can accept that, just don't tell me it's not important to me.

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