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Why learning vi/vim still makes sense in 2007

blog.ngedit.com — 2006 was vi's 30th anniversary, but it's still alive and kicking. Read about some of vi/vim's power, and why it's still as incredible as it ever was!

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 7, 2007

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  • jacobmp92, on 10/12/2007, -8/+79Let the Vim/Emacs flamewar commence.
    I'll start:

    VIM FTW!
  • salinemist, on 10/12/2007, -5/+55Emacs; it has everything except a great text editor.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+38Whatever you do, don't go to Slashdot. If that was your reaction to digg, you'll probably kill yourself after going to slashdot.
  • Naga10, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34Welcome to digg.
  • Robotsu, on 10/12/2007, -9/+29"The reason vim is abandoned by lots of people is it's hellishly steep learning curve. But once you've learned it, everything else is pathetic. It's much more powerful than any other editor out there."

    Yeah. Just like when I learned Rocket Science, after you get over that initial hurtle of actually learning it, it couldn't be easier!




    :P
  • jng0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Because it's the most efficient editing method available. The submission title is a reference to the common misconception that vi/vim editing is for old unix dinosaurs.
  • Markie1006, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18Not sure why you're being dugg down Robotsu.

    Vi/Vim *does* have an incredibly steep learning curve, but after you've struggled (and hated it) for a few weeks, something kinda clicks and everything else pales in comparison.

    20+ years vi user
    12+ years vim user
  • TheOther1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17How about a couple of cheat sheets? Would that help?
    http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/vi.html
    http://www.sm.luth.se/csee/courses/smd/139/smd139_vi.pdf
    http://www.fprintf.net/vimCheatSheet.html
  • topcat5, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Vi is the editor that "real men" use. :)
  • DontSayFanboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15
    When you really think about it, other editors are no more intuitive. Does putting "Exit" under "File" really make any sense at all? You only know it "intuitively" because you're familiar with it. That's not intuition.
  • jstevewhite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Is there a platform that VI/VIM is not available on? That alone adds significantly to the value of learning it.

  • stormgren, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15The reason vim is abandoned by lots of people is it's hellishly steep learning curve. But once you've learned it, everything else is pathetic. It's much more powerful than any other editor out there.
  • DontSayFanboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Are you guys having a contest for the worst analogy ever?
  • weijie90, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Vim might have a steep learning curve, but hey, Linux, and many other powerful tools do too.
  • gthiruva, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12OK. But I'm probably a centrist in that I see the benefits of both Vi/Vim and emacs/XEmacs. I know both editors inside and out. I always use Vim when editing files with a regular format - /etc type files, CSV, etc. Vi/Vim's regular expression processing is second to none.

    However, I am a software engineer at IBM, and when it comes to C/C++/Java/Python/Perl/Ruby/Shell coding I always use XEmacs. Emacs/XEmacs programming modes with syntax checking and auto-indentation are also second to none.
  • whysyn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10@mhuggins:

    pico? are you serious? regardless of the licensing issues with it, (see: nano instead if you insist) we're not talking about writing a 45 line html file here... i think MS's notepad might be more powerful than pico.

    EDIT: bury me... didn't read where everybody else already said what i just said.
  • blackkbot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9He made the argument that since he uses a laptop all the time and hasn't memorized the Fn, PgUp, PgDn, shift and arrow keys are it would be easier to use the raw input type of vi where you don't have to move your hands off the alphabet keys.
  • FluffyArmada, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Leave my modem out of this... [angry face]
  • bleedingdark, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11@mrhuggins:

    Dude, no. Just no.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14article does not address "why learning vi/vim makes sense in 2007"

    so wouldn't the submitter kindly explain?
  • scratched, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I happen to be using it right now to code a website while procrastinating on digg. GUIs may be great for a lot of things, but Vim is still the best thing to use for text editing, especially when working from a remote location like I am at the moment.
  • JoeMerchant, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Actually, it's like trying to rake leaves with a nuclear powered leaf-rake made by three fingered one handed leaf-eating aliens from Alpha Centauri.

    It's really good and simple to use, once you commit all of its power commands to memory.

    If you don't know all the commands, it's going to be hell to do even the simplest things.

    When I'm stuck with a lame UNIX system file that I need to edit, I use nano - it's almost always available, and the commands you need are right there on screen to remind you what you forgot six months ago.

  • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"I'd use VIM if it didn't take a year of training to learn how to type in it."

    Let alone exit it! :-) Sorry, just poking fun. It was a while since I joked about VI/VIM.
  • crckr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10gvim for the rest of us
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Good books, films, music, food, wine and programs are often not too impressive at first glance. It may take some time to get used to these things, but eventually you see why they are better than the more obviously appealing alternatives. The interface of VIM seems to be too difficult to use in the first week or month of usage, but after that your typing will become significantly faster, and you will be able to do amazing things without ever using the mouse, or even the arrow keys.

    If text editing is what you do for a living (programmers, poets, authors), VIM is something that you need to learn.
  • shamu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8i hate you, i hate you, i hate you, I LOVE YOU
  • rnguyen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8vi newfile

    oh it hurts sooo bad typing those 2 words....
  • scratched, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8vi/vim needs convincing because it is not the norm among text-editors today. It is a command line application which just for that alone, could scare people away. vi/vim is still good, but it's obscure since most people don't take the time to notice something that isn't a GUI app these days. Having a higher learning curve than GUI text editors also makes people shy away from it. There are occasions where people need to be shown that something is worth trying or else they won't bother.
  • Markie1006, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I've been using vi for over 15 years, and vim for over 10 years (pretty much every day) - I still find useful tricks every now and then.
  • sidd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The article doesn't mention this specifically. But the main point seems to be how vi's input model lends well to editing on laptops and on the move. And while laptop's may not be anything new, they are always increasing in popularity.

    At least I think this is the submitters point. :/
  • JoeMerchant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Actually, if you read and understand the whole thing, it does explain that the vi input system, as evilly complex as it is, is fast and efficient on any keyboard, and especially useful on a laptop since it doesn't use the special keys....

  • jacobmp92, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5:set mouse=a
    to turn on mouse functionality
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Don't mind Mio. He had a terrible experience years ago and won't touch it again.
  • bradleyland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Here are the all the keys you *must* know in order to do basic editing in vim.

    i - enter edit mode
    Esc (the key, not the letters) - exit edit mode; press twice to cancel any commands you might have accidentally entered
    h - move left when not editing
    j - move down when not editing
    k - move up when not editing
    l - move right when not editing
    :w - write the file you're working on
    :q - quit to the command line
    :q! - quit without writing

    In most vim installs, the arrow keys also work, so you can scratch most of those, most of the time. Otherwise, the backspace key works just like it normally does. Position your cursor where you want to edit and switch to edit mode.

    Not quite a year's worth now, is it? The above pretty much puts you at "notepad" level editing. When you consider that everything you learn on top of this will be time saving, I'd say you've just improved your skillset by quite a margin.

    Happy editing!


    Oh... and one of the best parts about using vim is, uh, "borrowing" someone else's .vimrc. Just Google search and you'll find lots of great examples.
  • diecastbeatdown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5they may be sarcastic about pico/nano but it is the default editor on Gentoo, which I never understood. The nice thing about them is they do exactly what you would expect of them in regards to cursor movement which many notepad.exe users find helpful. however once you need to do something more than write a few lines quickly it becomes useless and awkward.

    to the ibm guy, if you like xemacs for indentation and syntax checking you should try eclipse. plenty of plugins to satisfy. of course the old standbys are great, i use vim constantly in shells and typically use it locally as well.
  • hifigi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Vim is the only way to go, especially for doing editing over ssh. It's lightning-fast once you get used to it, which doesn't take that long.
  • mre5765, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Always nice to see another user join the vi fold.
  • AhmedB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@gthiruva, have you tried tuning vim? It does a pretty good job out of the box, but in order to do what you really want it to do, you might need to fine tune it some and perhaps use c-support.vim plugin, then it works like a charm.

    For me I've tried so many times seeing what's on the other side of the fence (aka Emacs/Xemacs) but I just could never be as fluent with it as vim, in addition to being a memory hog of course :)
  • kelvie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You may want to look into vim-latex:
    vim-latex.sourceforge.net/

    Nowadays I rarely do ANYTHING outside of vim, but since it's the winter break, I've been trying to learn emacs -- latex-preview is just too pretty...

    Also, another tip I found useful is to swap the Escape and Caps_Lock keys (via .Xmodmap or in Windows, AutoHotKey) -- though in my switch to emacs (forcing myself to use it right now), I swapped Caps_Lock and Control instead.

    Vim is a great editor though, and has served me well these last few years. Very terminal friendly also, and you can find vi anywhere you go (even in emacs).
  • tpink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Is there a platform that VI/VIM is not available on?"

    Well since you asked, you can't use vi on z/OS TSO sessions because the 3270 terminal of the mainframe side is fundamentally different than the VT100-style terminals and vi's style of editing just isn't possible. I'll take ISPF EDIT. :)

    For the acronym soup:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/OS
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Sharing_Option
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISPF

    In all seriousness, though, vi is available almost anywhere. DOS, OS/2, OpenVMS are some of the more obscure platforms in the list.
  • DontSayFanboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4
    I don't write huge volumes of code, but I work with code enough to not want to scroll with the mouse, or move my hands to the arrow keys every time I look at some source. I picked up vi in college and my friends used to be blown away with how fast I could make simple edits to our assignment just using the home row keys. Meanwhile, they'd be hunting, clicking and dragging with the mouse...
  • Skyhusker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4http://en.tiraecol.net/modules/comic/cache/images/tiraecol_en-245.png
  • Genady, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4*** DISCLAIMER *** I am a SysAdmin who works on Solaris mainly *** DSICLAIMER ***
    Why learn vi in 2007? Because when you're in at oh-dark-thirty trying to figure out what happened to a system that is sitting at the ctrl-d prompt (The one that tells you to fsck your file systems for you non-Solaris folks out there) on a system that *IS* connected via Serial Connection (like say E2900's that don't SHIP with Video cards) and you can't mount /opt yet... it's what's available.

    I do remember way back to my days as a wee sysadminling when presented with a similar problem I used head and tail on the vfstab to get my system up and running so that I could run the fsck, but that was before I knew my way around Bill Joy's glorious baby.

    Other than being ready when the ***** hits the fan? try this in a shell: set -o vi. best damned addition to the shell EVAR. Yes, there is set -o emacs, but really, who learns emacs anymore?
  • AggroBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Actually, it's more like:
    I couldn't find my damn car keys, so I walked down the road to the shop. And you know what? By the time I hadn't had to get the car started, contend with traffic, wait at lights and find a parking space (twice) it was way quicker! Now I walk to the shop every time and it saves me loads of time, is better for the environment and I'm in better shape to boot. FTW!

    Vi is still relevant to a whole lot of intelligent people, for a whole lot of reasons, the fact that you can't see those reasons doesn't make THEM morons.
  • Markie1006, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@JoeMerchant:

    You don' t have to commit all the commands to memory. In fact I'm not sure it's even possible unless your name is Bram.

    Once you have got the basic movement, and figured out dropping in and out of insert mode, just start off slow and learn a few commands at a time (changeword, deleteword etc).
    Then just keep expanding your vocabulary from there.

    Also if you ever get on to a *real* unix box(Solaris/HPUX/AIX), your choice will be pretty much limited to vi.
  • whysyn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4personally, i use vim incessantly, including writing/maintaining tens of thousands of lines of php & perl.

    with proper config, it will handle indentation and formatting well. i couldn't live without its regex and other mass editing functions, and you can "plug in" syntax checking well enough for whatever you're writing.
  • TripinVA, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Basic knowledge of vi/vim is really important if you're working with a *nix box over ssh. Or if you are trying to fix a broken X setup locally.

    I can do all kinds of things with my home network while I'm away thanks to being able to use vi to modify all kinds of files. I know I don't use it very well (hjkl go unused, for instance), but as long as I can fumble through it okay, knowing the basic commands (q, w, i, x, esc), it's good enough.
  • specv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4funny, just last semister we were learning this in class and my teacher was very persistant and said the same thing that its a must to learn vi. I can use it a little bit but i havent used it enough to be really good
  • AhmedB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yeah but then there's nothing like splitting vim's screen horizontally and vertically as you wish to have as many source files as you have on the screen at the same time.
  • sidd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@Jugulator
    If only the world worked like that: Last time I checked, the vast majority of surfers were still on IE6. Even the best products in the world need propaganda before they are adopted, and indeed to keep people interested.

    Aside from that, vi/vim is not exactly the most visually appealing editor in the world. It's unlikely that it will attract new users on its own in this day and age ;)
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