Background¶
Note
This document is taken from my notes for a vim talk I semi-regularly give. It lacks a little context, but is hopefully helpful in understanding where this repository comes from.
I spend literally hours a day using a text editor, and so it matters to me that it works well; fast, featureful, and — most importantly of all — stable. vim fits the bill nicely…
That said, I am fickle, and I’d switch in a heartbeat if another editor improved my workflow in the slightest.
History¶
Perhaps it helps to understand where I’m coming from. The following is a little rambling history of how this repository came to be.
Emacsen¶
emacs, or more truthfully AmigaOS’s MicroEMACS, was my first real editor.
I loved it. Absolutely. Loved. It.
You have to understand that before finding it I’d only seen what I would describe now as Notepad-esque things. MicroEMACS was a breath of fresh air, even if it was alarming how little it conformed to the UI guidelines for the platform.
Later came GNU Emacs, and despite how resource hungry it was, it was the only editor I wanted to use for an incredibly long time. Then about the same time computers became fast enough to use GNU Emacs I switched away, as it simply didn’t fit in to the environment I was using. It didn’t interact correctly with my desktop, the fonts were all screwy for math or foreign languages, and it just felt somehow really dated.
Most of that has changed. GNU Emacs can look and feel modern with a little effort. I still use it from time to time when working at a co-worker’s desk, and occasionally consider switching back to it full time. In all honesty, it is probably only org-mode and proportional fonts for code comments that make me want to switch back.
Tip
Fellow vim users should check out evil-mode, an incredibly usable vi-style layer for emacs. Many common vim plugins have been ported to work with it too!
The dark years¶
For a couple of years I attempted to use various “best of breed” editors for different tasks. It was awful.
I can’t understand how people do it. I mean, iff you only edit Java, then sure a Java editor might be a good idea. However, if you need five different Goliath IDEs installed to work on a single project then you’re simply Doing It Wrong™.
Sublime Text¶
Every now and then I play with Sublime Text, but in the back of my mind I know I won’t settle in to it.
The very idea of a non-Free(note the capital “F”) text editor repulses me. When you spend the amount of time using a tool that I do, then the thought that tomorrow it won’t work is truly shocking1.
There is also the issue of customisability, not being able to fix and extend
your tools is a frightening prospect. I mean it offers some degree of
extensibility, but it is really quite limited. The persistent undo package is
a great example of just how much grief the restrictiveness causes, look at the
undotree branch for some true scariness(also the incredible ingenuity).
An example of how ridiculous closed source editors are can be found by looking at the patches that are applied in the binaries installed on my work machine. It is buggy enough that the current package maintainer is willing to support a stack of no fewer than 15 very dirty patches, each of which have been painstakingly fixed without access to the source. Interestingly they require vim’s xxd to apply2, almost as if to prove a point.
I’ve used it enough that I don’t regret having my employer license a copy for me, and I even jumped through hoops to have them pony up for some mildly interesting plugins too.
So, why do I play with it? Simple, occasionally people show me some cool thing it can do and I want to play too. Also, because for the past few years there has been a constant promise of an Open Source clone floating around.
I’m not sure if an Open Source clone would be enough for me to switch, but
I think it would make it plausible. It might enable me, or someone else, to
make a usable vi mode though(vintage appears to be designed for people
who think vi means “normal or insert”).
NotquiteVIM¶
The neovim fork is interesting in a sort of not-vim kind of way. The attempt to modernise vim is wonderful, but sadly they’ve done it at the expense of half a dozen or so features I rely on.
I’m starting to believe it may be the future of vim though, and that bothers me a little. Many of the additions over stock vim are not my cup of tea, and a few of the removals are breakages in my eyes. Note that I’m not complaining about the actual project, they’re free to do whatever they want.
As I stated above, I am fickle and I’ll change my mind in a heartbeat if it eventually brings some changes that are useful to me. Right now I’ll just thank the developers for the nudge that brought modern IPC to stock vim.
Footnotes