Why Neovim nerds are so obsessed with the terminal
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
- My Angular course: angularstart.com/
I recently made some improvements to my workflow and it struck me as the perfect example of why I like Neovim so much - it's not just about vim bindings
I walk through my process for building a CLI program in Go for taking notes in my Neovim Zettelkasten system.
Source code: github.com/joshuamorony/go-in
More on Neovim ChatGPT plugin: • Better than Copilot? T...
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#neovim #go #chatgpt
0:00 Introduction
0:53 My note taking system
2:08 Writing a CLI program in GO
3:16 Using ChatGPT in Neovim
5:12 Using the program
6:01 Benefits
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I am tired of the argument: Why terminal? Because it feels good. I know terminal. I work in it every day. And the only valid reason I can agree with to like a terminal app more than a GUI one, is "It does a better job in some task". And I do not think that is a controversial take. Yes I understand why people like vimbindings. No I do not understand why people are so adamant on using vimbindings purely in the terminal. Every major editor/IDE has vimbindings available. And it doesn't need to take a space of a full character every time it wants to draw 1px wide line for a spacer or something. I do not have to tinker with some weird fonts that put symbols instead of real usually unused characters. It's a spit in the face of the Unicode Consortium. And not only that, why does every terminal render each of these fonts differently and depending on the combination of the terminal and font, I get weird glitches like powerline symbols being weirdly offset from one another, or scaled differently. GUI just plainly works. Now a lot of GUI applications are bloated, yes, I do not like them then. But to make an IDE out of VIM takes more extensions, more weird terminal hacks and more work than making a new GUI app (not a good one, but one non the less). And that definitely takes more work than downloading one extension for vimbindings in an already capable IDE.
So no, I do not accept the argument, because it feels good, when the question is GUI vs Terminal. It depends on the app, whether it gives you control. Ransomware is usually a single CLI app also. If you want to answer this generic question, give a better answer.
I would argue that the sense of control stems from the fact that writing (and testing) a CLI interface is much easier than writing (and testing) a GUI interface, therefore CLI support for all the different features and capabilities of your machine come to CLI first and therefore make a better job at it. But good TUI is not that much easier than actual GUI. And good TUI tools can be counted on 3 people's hands. So I do understand the sentiment around CLI, but I do not understand the sentiment around TUI. Just use GUI at that point for f... sake.
Never leaving terminal ... I do not accept this as an answer. I do not leave my desktop session either, most of the time. What is the differece?
Never leaving keyboard ... Ok I get that it may be comfortable once you get used to all the bindings.
So maybe I would draw the conclusion that the lack of functionaliti and support for mouse in the terminal lead the developers of those apps to create a more keyboard centric control scheme for their apps? Is that it? That would seem like a reasonable take. I do not have to like the lack of mouse support, but I accept that argument. But I would be carefull, You would be surprised how much stuff you can do with just a keyboard in certain desktop environments.
Optimising workflow is only the skill of picking the right tool for the job, no generic statement about CLIvGUI can be made here, if the tool does the job well, that's all you need to care about. Learning a bunch on the way may be usefull, but I would argue that the reason you had to learn something new means your workflow encountered an issue it could not solve. Which is valid, but I do not see the connection to the CLI v GUI argument again.
Awesome viedo. I would love a video dedicated to your note workflow on how structure them and use them
PLUS ONE
Damn, this is exactly what I've been looking for. Nice explanation and use of a new language to get things done! Keep the content coming it's great.
Love the workflow. One of the unique videos about nvim workflow!
Nice session manager 👀
I love this note taking workflow, I prefer Raycast AI for LLM but it's very cool seeing what's possible inside Neovim!
Nice, we have a lot in common. I haven't tried one pw, however, but I'll be checking it out. Keep up the good work, enjoying your work flow!
Bitwarden is a nice pw manager too
That is some crazy in terminal workflow you got there! I am really tempted to do so but the learning curve is slightly discouraging me
That's why u start small, I started with a nvim distribution which didn't require any configuration and just gives u a ready made ide. Then you start to configure it according to your needs, add more plugins, lsp, custom keybinds, and soon enough, that pre-made distro becomes a hindrance to your customizability, so u start from scratch or maybe Kickstarter, and then u feel like it's a bit lacking in features. Which makes u go to look up how other people do their config, and then u yoink from them which leads to everything breaking sooner or later. So u start from scratch again but this time u know what u want and eventually end up here, everything exactly how u want which features. It is a journey I'm still on the way on, and I love it. You learn so much about everything. Definitely worth the time and effort for me.
Or you can just end up liking the distro as it is and not make any changes, that works as well.
Learned ":vnew" today and damn that is so much nicer than ":vs l :ene" thank you!
I love how you can do everything and anything being in the terminal without lifting the hand from the keyboard even once but that comes with the initial cost of time , that is required to first setup everything
and that's where I lack : I love neovim , I use vim bindings on the most possible way
I would make alias, scripts and shortcuts for the most basic thing I would repeat again and again but when it comes to configuring the nvim , I lack because I know that will take a sufficient amount of time
-- and I assume That's a problem only I got
and it's important because currently I don't have time and what I mostly do is programming and zed is something what is stopping me : if that goes well when it will arrive in linux
I could conclude if I have to setup the nvim for the programming purposes or not
Btw , this is a great video !
I have an interesting setup, where at home I use neovim but at school I use vim on a computer there (I don't have a laptop). So I don't actually have a configured vim setup when I code a lot of the time (except for a small vimrc with line nums and tab mapped to :bnext). So I have been learning a lot of new vim commands and getting a use out of macros.
Like instead of vnew, I can do cntrl+w+cntrl+v and then do cntrl+w+cntrl+w to go to that other split and then tab and then back and then I got fast split screen. The commands daw and dap and da( and da{ are super useful (and also the change version of the commands instead of delete). So is t and f. The commands are fun to learn
Good config ive been using it for an year and have an amazing config and basically live ij terminal if not in an browser
Looks cool! So many times "ChatGPT" said ))
Please can I know what font are you using for your editor? I like it.
It's convenient having the same IDE on my PC and my smartphone.
Im thinking in learning Neovim, you should make a video about it, I'm shure there are many content creators outhere that has some videos but I allways come to this channel to learn in the correct way
I do have a video about how I learned neovim if you want to check it out: ua-cam.com/video/aCgDs8Nv-jo/v-deo.html
@@JoshuaMorony jeje thx, I'm going to watch it!!!
I wonder how marksman would work with vimwiki. Is it a replacement, or would they work well together?
Such a great video. Do you have any idea for having terminal experience for android development as well? I know this is an absurd question but just hoping
Not the creator but have worked in corporate roles for software and hardware for 15 years. There are a few CLI dev tools to check out.
Curious though, is there a practical use case for keeping it terminal when you aren't actually interfacing with a server or client? Just wanting to know context and may be able to recommend what engineers/devs would actually do from there. Is there a real constraint or are you just wanting to stay in terminal?
@@goofballbiscuits3647 I only want to try developing android apps in the terminal hoping for a better dev experience.
I am always struggling with the huge resource of android studio as I am only developing in a low spec laptop, and it occasionally hangs up for about 3-5 seconds. It really is annoying experience to work with.
Great video. Question: What plugin/setup do you use for having the file explorer to the right?
It's NeoTree and you can check out my full setup here if you like: github.com/joshuamorony/lazyvim/
Not gonna lie this does seem a lot more complex than just having two VS Code windows open and a ChatGPT window
neovim is scam, mouse is better for UI
Elitism
Ui is designed that way btw 🤡@@robosergTV
Can you make a video of your neovim setup. Especially for angular.
I'm not sure if I could make an interesting video out of it, but I have recently switch to lazyvim and there isn't a whole lot of Angular specific configuration - should be reasonably straightforward to set up lazyvim and even just use my config if you want: github.com/joshuamorony/lazyvim
"Neovim", sounds like a trap.. I'm still trying to get over the trauma of the last time I got stuck in VIM...
Exiting vim is really easy. All you have to do is unplug your computer, throw it out the window and buy a new one. With these simple steps exiting vim should be a breeze.
It is a trap you should avoid using it ever....It is NOT the super power I use to Excel....seriously never use it you are WAY better off....
Skill issues
elaborate please
This is the person who struck their own car to people.
hey, great video. Can you please say what kinde of plugin do you use for git signs? Couldn't find out in your config
where is the config. I am also looking for something like this;)
For years I have a folder with my todo.md file and I can fairly quickly access it with tmux (single shortcut to create and/or navigate to the session with this file + open it). Then I can remove things that are already done/irrelevant, or add new idea to the place where it belongs (long-term goals, things for today, etc). Whenever I open my terminal, this session pops up so I see what I wanted to accomplish and start doing things.
Interesting idea with sending the todo-item through command so it can be added to the list by a tool. Now I want to integrate something like this in my workflow :)
Also, I'm not sure if that was a part of your real flow, but typing quotes in the command every time is kind of annoying, you can aggregate the input string using ...args
Waooh. The problem you solve using the CLI program is amazing
I scrolled through your videos trying to find one about your note taking but could not find one.
How do you incorporate note taking on the go while not on your pc/laptop?
That's still one thing holding me back from switching to a solution like yours.
This is something I still want to address, but at the moment I just use Google Tasks on my phone and then move them manually later - I am considering putting together a little app that I can hook up to my notes repo to get rid of this. For things like ebooks/audiobooks I use the reader app to make highlights which I come back to later, and for physical books I mark out things with sticky notes which again I come back to later to organise into my notes
this is really really nice! It's a nice notetaking system but do you have a system to capture ideas when you're on the go with your mobile phone?
I just use Google Tasks on my phone for this, these then show up when I have my emails open on my computer and I deal with them then (essentially Google Tasks is like a secondary in tray for me). I've considered setting something up that would allow me to add these notes to my system directly, but haven't really felt much of a need to
got it. thank you. can’t wait to set this up for myself 🥶
How do you get the file explorer on the right? Could you write a tutorial on your neovim setup? This looks great!!
My set up now is mostly just the default LazyVim configuration, I do have some extra config on top of that though (it's public here: github.com/joshuamorony/lazyvim/)
@@JoshuaMoronyawesome thank you for your quick reply!! Hoping to get on this setup soon
Great video! Let's not get into a frontend fight about frameworks 😅, but I would be interested in your gardening markownfile 😋. I love using neovim in conjunction with tmux since two years and I seldomly want to go back to IDEs like VSCode. But I have to confess that sometimes I still like the IDE in favor of neovim. But it gets less and less occasionally.
Cool for editing configs... For everything else, I need a debugger or live environment to test snippets.
you can use basically all debuggers in neovim, with really good interface too. you can also just run code in neovim.
@@Laura-hl3hg There's more to debuggers than just setting breakpoints
Great video, thank you! I have pretty much the same system. One downside is that running multiple vims for some time eats up RAM when each instance can use 1GB+. I assume it’s related to lsps, but I haven’t debugged this yet. Do you have a similar problem? If yes, do you have a solution apart from restarting all of them? Thanks! :)
Yes definitely have this problem, it's annoying but I need to deal with it infrequently enough that I have just been living with it so far. I definitely want/need a better solution, but basically if things are going slow I pull up Activity Monitor and search nvim/node and force quit all of the processes at once lol
Yep, doing the same thing lol. Thanks for the quick answer! Any plans to make a video about your note taking system? It’s currently a very popular topic :)
@@vdmgolub I'd like to if I can make it interesting - the note taking aspect is mostly just a pretty typical zettelkasten system - but I think specifically how I use it in my workflow could potentially make an interesting video
I resisted chatgpt at the start but now i embrace it and use it for everything I can. I basically look at it like a new programming language, where I have to describe what I want and generate it. I don't flinch at using scaffolding tools, so I view AI as just an extension of that. The important thing is that ai is still very much a developers tool. You need to already know the correct way it should be structured, to be able to review its output and use it confidently, but I feel there is no point wasting time writing what is now boilerplate code in the world of AI, and then wasting more time fixing the bugs you introduced, or looking up the syntax of that thing thats on the tip of your tounge.
Right, the entire generation of the go code could have been done with 1 detailed and well structured prompt in most cases. He's using gpt in a very bizarre way, doing 3 prompts for extremely basic info just so he can then write the actual code himself. If you're already using gpt what's the point of doing this?
@@onlycasual1 because I want to learn Go, and if I have the entire solution generated for me I wouldn't be learning Go (or at most only very minimally). In other cases where I don't care as much I will use entirely generated code - I do a lot of custom config with Lua for example and I almost always entirely rely on ChatGPT to just do it all for me. These are usually small/isolated examples and I don't really care at the moment about actually knowing how to use Lua (and indeed despite the amount of custom Lua stuff I've done now, I have learned almost nothing about it). With Go, I will eventually want to build much more complex things that I couldn't entirely rely on ChatGPT for, so I want to learn the language rather than just getting straight to a solution.
Regarding nevim set up, I did not notice if you use like :w for writting changes or not. Cause I also use Neovim and everytime I need to write changes using like :w.
You could just add a keymap for ctrl + S to run :w
what's your file manager?
do you use dual-pane one?
and other guys using nvim - how do you perform your file managemen?
with telescope and harpoon.
Also tree plugins like nerdtree neotree...etc.
More or less my setup and workflow. But since I also work with React Native and there isn’t super good support for the native parts, I sadly must switch to VSCode at my new job for RN after many years of working as an Angular/Python/C++ dev in my previous job
I sometimes bust out VSCode for some larger refactoring type of things, for example if I want to move/rename a bunch of files/symbols I am more confident in executing that correctly in VSCode that basically just handles it for you. I'm sure I probably can get a nice workflow for this in neovim too but I haven't invested the time into figuring that out yet though.
Try slime plugin. It will catapult your relationship with the terminal. It basically reads a line and executes it in the next tmux pane.
theme?? looks lovely
tokyodark :)
Solid video. Content wise you are currently way better than Fireship. Keep it up Joshua!
I would love to be able to work like that. But I spent 3 days getting Neovim up and running, fixing things that weren't working and adding my keymappings. And now Neovim is still doing weird things with indentation, but I have no power to fight it. I'm leaving this terminal nightmare.
I think regardless there is always going to be some pain learning vim and configuring the editor, but LazyVim is pretty great for just having a great out of the box configuration ready to go that you can then tweak with your own preferences
@@JoshuaMorony I use LazyVim and out of the box it is unusable. I've kept everything simple and yet I'm still dealing with some nonsense. I've been using Vim for a long time. Then LSP started dropping out and since I couldn't get it to work, I switched to VSCode. I downloaded plugins for Ruby, CSS, Slim, etc, picked a colour scheme and have been working in it for 2 years without having to touch or fix anything.
I tried Zed today. I went through the documentation, made a few adjustments to the settings and I'm good to go.
For notes I have Obsidian, a much smarter program than just a notes directory, ChatGPT is in my browser, and switching between all the tools definitely doesn't take long enough to balance the days of setup and the constant stress of having to fix something in Neovim.
Neovim + Tmux are very powerful
Cool. Personally, I'm not sold on integrating ChatGPT into my editor. ChatGPT is useful sometimes. When it is, I have no problem navigating the browser, I do that with my keyboard only anyway
This is like the Arch Linux of editors.
What theme did you use in this video?
It's tokyodark
what distro do u use?
I'm using LazyVim
Are you prepending "$" on those folder names just to float them to the top of the list?
Yes
Thats pretty much my macos workflow 😄
I love TUI editors, but the reality is that almost everything people love about nvim comes from plugins that can just as easily be written for any other editor, including keyboard bindings.
some input how you manage you notes will be nice ;)
I ended up doing a sort of follow up video on this here: ua-cam.com/video/ZKNL8Yt8_dE/v-deo.html
What about adding images?
I generally just don't use images in my notes but you can just use a markdown image (there's plugins available for neovim if you want things like image previews too, I've never used them though)
I think this idea of neovim or modal editors being faster is over hyped. It can be but I think you hit the nail in the head, using the terminal is just more flexible and can be tailored more to your needs. There are so many cli tools out there for almost anything and they tend to be faster once you have them setup for your needs.
I love nvim, but the problem is I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I first started with lazyvim, I learned a bit Lua, but their docs was not working for me, so I couldn't even set my environment up properly 😅. I then tried lunarvim, that one too the same thing.
I don't know it seems it's not a good place to start for beginners, if you could do a video on how to get started and setting it up for Angular, and NextJs I will appreciate it 🙏
It isn't. Don't focus on looking cool, focus on learning how to get shit done... Configuring your editor is the last thing you want to learn, because you first need to know why you're doing it. Vim (and its derivatives) are a huge time sink. Give it a whirl, but do so when you're comfortable with everything else.
I think a good very very basic starting point would be kickstart nvim. It's made by TJDevries, who is a core neovim contributor and it's a single init.lua config hence pretty easy to understand and branch out later, which was the path I took. Sorry, the path neovim took me through.
@@shreyasas3128 Thanks I'll check it out
typecraft has a good series regarding nvim setup with lazy. do not jump head first into neovim, take some time, dont completely omit your main editor/ide of choice. you dont HAVE to use neovim as well
what theme is that ?
tokyodark
damn... what is your theme?
tokyodark: github.com/tiagovla/tokyodark.nvim
Idk... I prefer keeping my notes and things in Notion so I can refer to them from any device and have a lot of features built in
This is all compatible with Obsidian, I actually created these notes with Obsidian initially and it still works using Obsidian's app (though I don't really ever use it anymore)
I dont quite get it.
I kinda want to use neovim because everyone tells me that its great.
But everytime I use it, I am slow, I dont see anything that is going on, I cant even copy paste. I just cannot do anything lol
and my VScode auto formats my go code and i couldnt get my terminal to do it for me yet
Learn vim motions before seriously using nvim. VSCode has plugins for them, but they are poor imitations.
I learned vim motions before doing anything else. At first, I spent a few days doing the basic exercises, until I managed to get "decent" at it. After that, I just started opening my obsidian notes with neovim and editing them. After some time, I got good enough at it, so I started installing plugins.
You can build your config from scratch, but it is painful, especially for beginners. So I recommend you use a distro like lazyvim, which does most of the things for you. But you still have to configure the LSPs, Linters, formatters, debuggers..., which can be a pain. I am currently at this step.
Tldr, You have to struggle to learn.
You should spend two years learning to save 3 seconds xd
Pursue the grind @@kerojey4442
Btw I use Arch
Good luck debugging thousands of lines of Java spring boot code on neovim.
I just use vim for leetcode style quick prototyping things, I'm mostly on intellij.
The point is clear. But I would better go for making a plugin for my IDE instead of this path.
*hits wrong keyboard shortcut, environment explodes:* sometimes dont you wish you could just right-click, and change symbol, find references, etc etc.....
Eww
neovim has lsp support so i can find references and change symbols.
arguably better because it opens all references in my fuzzy finder i use for everything else instead of in another toolbox tab.
@@thekatze Its funny to me watching vim users slam the arrow keys, while devs who use other envs debate the efficiency of using tabs or spaces :D
1. Vim users never use the arrow keys. 2. Dont you just wish you could just set your cursor on a variable and press gd to go to definition, gr to list references, gR to rename variable etc?
Was right there with you
And then you said Angular 💀
Just telling it like it is 💯
Ctrl + p and ctrl + f in vscode cover 90% of the cases… using your mouse it’s not a bad thing you know 😂
i've been using vim bindings for 10 years, but i just cant use neovim, it's too much of a hastle to setup. The plugin managers are also not my favorite.
But that ChatGPT will be very expensive, isnt it?
Unless you are very heavily using it I think it will probably be far cheaper - for example I loaded up $20 credit for the API which expires after a year, for the month of February I used $0.12 versus the fixed $20/month I'm paying for ChatGPT
@@JoshuaMorony really? That's encouraging.
I have it setup but I've been afraid to use it haha.
Are you using the 3.5 turbo or the gpt 4?
@@macmanuelodumeru3708 I've got auto recharge turned off so I don't need to worry about accidentally using tons of tokens or something, and I've been using 3.5 turbo for my notes and the ChatGPT plugin for neovim defaults to that as well
I use nvim because I could not exit
64 times spelling word "chatGPT" 😢😢come on dude
Yeah, yet another vim user trying to sell the "tools working for me" and "amazing productivity gains" ideias like using other IDEs are the opposite.
I've used vim for a little over 1 year and started when I finally got courage to try it after all those people saying these amazing things.
The facts are: all those statements are not true.
You can be productive the exact same amount with any other tool. The terminal is only a convenient way to work with.
Later I went back to VSCode and now I'm way more productive with it wihout a quarter of the rasttle setting all up when I need a new tool/language support.
But, a major positive point of vim is the memory usage of couse.
I'm commenting here mostly because there will be any starting developer that may think that he/she needs to learn vim to be a good professional.
I want to throw up every time someone says ChatGPT
Sounds great... until you have to access _any_ of this on a touch device, the whole logic of "i am in the flow", 'I do not need to leave the terminal', "i can do all from the keyboard" - all of this goes down the drain much quicker than one can receive a response from chatGPT. That's the reality and if you'd like you can ignore this next bit because it is a personal experience but for what it's worth - leave the keyboard, move more and use touch and voice. The keyboard is killing health. 25 years of programming (and mind you - we did not have the luxury of touch and voice back then) and I know how to run and script and code everything you can and cannot imagine... and yet I still prefer to use voice and touch because it allows me to be detached from the screen and the desk. And if you wander how I can code then - I type as little as possible, code gens for everything, omit types always, do as little as possible - always!
cringe af
Awesome work. I cloned the project and modified it a bit to prompt the user for the note if it wasn't passed as an argument, so now I can press mod-i in tmux to give me a pop up prompt for the note - `bind i display-popup -E "~/.local/bin/custom-scripts/in"`. If this interests you and you would like to see the changes to the program source, let me know.
Very nice, and sure I'll check it out if you have a public repo
but how do beginners like me even start to learn how to use it?
d