There is absolutely nothing I do in an IDE frequently enough to memorize a bunch of arcane commands, especially in 3 days. Regex solves any mass-operations. For everything else the bottleneck is how long it takes to reason about code, not how quickly I can manipulate it.
I will say that if I keep getting jobs where I have to use an IDE on a remote VM on AWS, I might prefer SSH/Vim to that bullshit. The frequency with which IntelliJ locks up all four of those virtual hamster wheel powered CPUs requiring a full restart is basically daily and sometimes multiple times a day.
There is absolutely nothing I do in an IDE frequently enough to memorize a bunch of arcane commands, especially in 3 days. Regex solves any mass-operations.
Yeah, don’t memorize a bunch of arcane commands. Use regex instead!
Regex solves any mass-operations
No it doesn’t not after you’ve used LSP-enabled identifier renaming. But that’s the thing: Emacs, vim, helix, all have LSP integration, they’re actual code editors they aren’t lacking any feature that you’d expect from an IDE.
I can write regex to replace variable names in a matter of seconds despite not needing to do it very often, but I can also use regex to turn a list of data exported to csv into SQL. Or take a list of variable names and turn them into method stubs (or even full methods if they are small and consistent enough).
I don’t even need to think about LSP-enabled identifier renaming. It would be handy if I find myself having to use Vim - I’m not denigrating Vim. Those features are all great if it’s your IDE. But for example I had to look up what that even means because it’s nothing I need to know in any other IDE. And that’s really my point.
Vim has tons of power. The thing it’s really lacking is discoverability. You have to know how to do everything before you can do it. Meanwhile in IntelliJ or VSCode I just find the menu and if I want to be super quick, next to the menu item is the keyboard shortcut which makes it super easy to learn how to do a thing faster while still being able to do the thing. But with vim I have to change to a completely different context and open a browser and Google how to do a thing.
That’s the only problem I have with vim - it takes a huge and consistent investment to get as fast with it as I am with any other IDE out of the gate. Maybe I could eventually even get faster, but could I ever recoup that time investment? It doesn’t seem like it to me since my tools are so rarely the thing slowing me down.
Again, I’ve no doubt vim is great once you learn it thoroughly. Nothing against vim or those who use it. Should the need arise, I’ll put in the effort. But until then I’m just using it for tweaking config files and bash scripts.
I can write regex to replace variable names in a matter of seconds despite not needing to do it very often
You can write a regex to replace a string in a matter of seconds. And so can I. What neither of us can do is write it such that the replacement is limited to the identifier we want to rename (because pumping lemma), that needs syntax if not semantics-aware editing and that’s exactly what LSP is for.
You’re using a screwdriver as a hammer. Does it work, sure, is it advisable? Even if you don’t have a hammer it might be easier and quicker to drive to the hardware store and buy one, depending on the particular nail you’re dealing with.
Meanwhile in IntelliJ or VSCode I just find the menu and if I want to be super quick, next to the menu item is the keyboard shortcut
Helix: <space>? opens function search, enter “rename”, “rename symbol” will be the first hit and it’ll also tell you that it’s bound to <space>r.
Blender: F3 instead of <space>r. Get out of here with clicking through menus. I have no idea where to find recalculate normals in the menus and I don’t care. “face” in edit mode, probably. Nope, just checked: Edit mode, mesh->normals->recalculate [inside, outside]. Kinda makes sense while normals are a property of faces you can’t calculate them without reference to a mesh as you wouldn’t be able to tell outside from inside, only stuff like “face camera”.
This isn’t so much about gui or not gui thing, both IntelliJ and VSCode come from the windows school of GUI design which says “discoverable without a manual, hotkeys are available for power users”. Blender, OTOH, follows the UNIX philosophy of “RTFM, start working like a pro from the beginning it’s worth it, the interface is just a suggestion, adjust it to your workflow”.
Maybe I could eventually even get faster, but could I ever recoup that time investment?
How would you know without giving them an honest spin? Personally I wouldn’t recommend vim, btw, lots of hysterical raisins and inconsistencies to be found there and configuration is a PITA which wouldn’t even be that bad if the out of the box experience was good. Helix cleans up both the command language and the whole configuration shebang (just make sure that LSP servers are installed and you’re good to go) while definitely sticking to the vi/blender style of interface design.
Lol I like your writing. The amount of headless boxes I work on has definitely contributed to my desire to get proficient at vim. Now I feel confident when I have to edit some text on a server, rather than hoping the server has nano and the file isn’t too big.
And that 3 days was how long it took until I was moving faster in neovim than vscode after 4 years of use. Though it’s still perfectly valid to use vim motions in any editor you want. Theres a reason most every editor has vim motions.
