The first time my fellow juniors saw my terminal and I told them "I use vim, btw", the wave of euphoria that washed over me was so strong I passed out.
I get the opposite effect.. a wave of pure cringe when I mention it 😔 I mentioned it in an interview today.. ~am I worried out a small -> big company shift.. “nope! As long as I can use my editor 🤠” ..then they ask what it was and I felt a wave of cringe as I answered ☹️
I had the opposite. I was a junior dev, a senior told me he was using vim. I asked him if he could rename some variable. He broke the code. He either didn't have an LSP or his LSP wasn't good enough to follow reflexive code. Then I told him that's why I use JetBrains.
One guy asked - is it a mechanical keyboard, I said - yep. And he said - oh, you are using vim, right. And I thought - ok, looks like I am in trend now
First leaned vim when I was 12 years old. I had just put linux on my old Toshiba laptop. Graphics Interface didn't work off of the bat because old gpu had 16 mb of ram. That was the day that I went to the library and they the linux book brought home (literally a printed copy of the x11 manual) and they scolded anyone using nano to edit config files. That is the day I became a man.
By the way. The x11 manual did nothing. Not what I needed. I should have just used just asked someone. I don't remember how I got it working but I still remember how it felt to see gnome boot up for the first time. Also, pro tip, if you think it is a problem with your windowing server ie a bug in x11 or Wayland, try looking at your desktop environment first. Generally x11 and Wayland are bulletproof and it comes down to a bad install or a all to commonly your desktop environment having a silly configuration for your hardware.
@Rudolfucius Yes. Left out a lot of context. I am only 17 now. I am a Math&CS major at college. I am a little ahead of the curve. The laptop was made in 2000 so it was really slow. As for using the X11 manual, I am pretty sure it wasn't the actual x11 manual, just from what I recall it was written like a manual and was about the protocol and not about guis. Sorry for any confusion, I am not good at collecting my thoughts before writing comments and stuff.
@@Kira_x86_64 I'm not trying to suss you out: if you somehow have the need to spin yarn that's your thing, so sincerely: the numbers don't totally add up from a cursory google search the Satellite 4000 series seemed had 2 MB of VRAM and the 5000 had 32. Doesn't really matter. If you at your young age somehow made that kind of a junker work: I respect you for that kind of stubbornness although I'm somewhat assuming that that was born out of necessity in a way. Who cares. Go hard, go far!.
@@robosergTV Or tmux split pane and a TUI for GPT chat (e.g. elia). There's Neovim debugging plugins as well. With that said, I use mostly JetBrains and Helix back to back depending on the task I'm doing. Debug, complex rebase, refactoring -> JetBrains. Quick edits or system config -> Helix. ssh to a server -> Vim. Heck, I even use VSCode for some stuff. None of them fit well for all use cases to me.
@@robosergTV neovim is a bare-bone thing, we use plugins to make it an IDE, fugitive or lazygit (for git) and dap (for debugging) are plugins for the features you mentioned like VSCode, but there is a catch, Nvim with these plugins offers a workflow, VSCode users can't even dream to have because they are ignorant enough to not realize the thing...........
24:05 There is also to paste the content of a register in insert mode. It's pretty useful if you need to paste the content of some special register like q, for example when writing/debugging macros.
I'm of that generation, btw. I learned vi on a Lear Siegler terminal. I made my pocket money in college typing people's papers in vi, then using troff' to format and print out on the line printer. Profs loved not having to read hand-written papers and my knowing how to create properly formatted academic papers was something not many others knew how to do.
@@redpillsatori3020 What happens if you use both Arch Linux and Vim/Nvim? Do you just gain 100 pounds automatically and start growing a neckbeard in 1-2 business days?
@@redpillsatori3020 except for the fact that you can get actual work done with a text editor like vim, instead of messing around with config files for weeks just to get a waifu on ur desktop...
I received the Kinesis keyboard last week, and my wpm dropped from 80 to 10, lmao. I am progressing slowly and using my pinkies more than ever. Solid recommendation.
dropped all the way from 90 to 40 myself when i switched and started properly using my kinesis pro and made some nice custom layers. Now I can consistently type 130wpm and it feels lovely
@@IQof2 no thats not the whole point. the whole point is to not have your pinkies on your most used symbols, and not having to strain your hand having to reach far for stuff such as backspace. you want your most used characters as close to home position
13:25 I bought a set of blank keycaps and switched to vim at the same time. Best decision I've made so far because it forced me adapt fast and the skill of typing while looking my girlfriend in her eyes makes even "I use vim btw" sexy
I opened VI(M) by accident, managed to create a file with an invalid name so windows couldn't even look at it, or change its name... Not even CMD in admin was able to delete or rename it. Was in C:, so it was there until I got a new computer
The ability to select, edit, delete, copy - between or around anything : < ... >, ( ... ) , [ ... ] , { ... } , ' ... ' , " ... ", ... , etc... feels natural and way more ergonomic (and efficient) Make a change inside parenthesis : just ci( or ci) that stands for c.hange i.nside ( ) Copy what is inside the quote with the quote : ya' or ya" : y.ank a.round " " Amazing
I started learning Vim in a browser game called Vim Adventures before adopting vim keybinds in VS code in my work before finally adopting Vim entirely. There’s no going back.
I've spent more time configuring VSCode than Neovim. I just followed Typecraft's noob playlist for setting up your own Neovim config from scratch, and it got me 85% to where I wanted. I just try to use as few plugins as possible and I often end up using the default keybindings for the plugins, so my config is very basic and intuitive.
The default keybindings and behaviour did not fit me at all. I had to spend a lot of time setting up comfortable keybindings for navigating the terminal and tabs.@@mattymattffs
Surround is ace. For the first two weeks of using it I kept saying to myself "You suck, I win" to help me remember how to use it. I think the docs says the mnemonic is meant to be "You surround inner word" but I like mine better. Great vid!
i started to use vim motions cuz' i was writing some html(react) and my inner-hand started to pain. basically opening and closing html brackets and moving to next line is really painful without vim. your hands goes to mouse or arrow keys too much and that occurs pain. so i took the advice and start vim motions on vsc and my pain is gone. for me vim is not speed issue, it is medical issue.
Fun fact there is some science behind a clean room and helping stay focus with adhd. The gist of it is that it takes a lot of will power for your brain to ignore something. Similar to how you feel exhausted from ignoring your feelings. So minimizing what you need to ignore CAN help concentration
As someone with ADHD and who is also naturally very messy, there is a massive correlation between my mood and the tidyness of my house. So I'm depressed all the time lol.
To pastein insert you can " instead of p it's especially useful when dealing with the other registers casue it's direct so + is clipboard rather than "+p
In general, I just don't have the type of brain to remember massive combinations of keys, that sometimes even have no letters in common with the action they represent. I press the wrong keys, get no feedback on what actually happened and wonder what I've just activated or broken. I know a fixed number of keybinds in VSCode and rely on the fuzzy command palette for the rest
The way I started learning was with the VS Vim plugin for VS Code. At the start I spent 99% of my time in insert mode, moving around with arrow keys and sometimes even the mouse. But then, every once in a while I would learn a new Vim motion or action (e.g. ci" (change in quote) was a huge one) I would start incorporating it into my everyday code editing until it became second nature. At first, I was slow (possibly slower than I was before starting to learn it), but now I am way faster than I was before (though nowhere near as fast as Prime). It has nothing to do with having the "right brain". 99% of the Vim motions I do now are muscle memory
4:11 I couldn't touch type until I started using vim. Used to type at 10 to 20 wpm (didn't feel good about it either), but within a year of starting to use using vim I was consistently hitting 40 to 50 wpm. This taught me a really valuable lesson, that it's a lot easier to learn something when there's a strong immediate application for it. I don't know how true this is for others, but it's certainly true for me.
10 years ago coding in Vim with no X11 because I was running VMware + NSX stack on my laptop and needed all the RAM I could get, 1920x800 SVGA, decent custom console font, raw doggin it on the terminal
I started out as a sys admin and using Vi/Vim was a necessity. I found myself working a lot on old *Nix servers via SSH and no matter how old the OS version was, there would always be Vi or Vim installed. Nowadays I have transitioned into cloud engineering but old habits die hard.
1:38 He highlighted the whole sentence 1:48 Decides to obliterate it by missing out the first and last letter. Proceeds to continue doing it for the rest of the vid
He has said himself that he does it on purpose (because he finds it "visually appealing" from what I remember). If anything, him highlighting the whole line was an accident
My first big software purchase was literally the BRIEF (emacs port) editor for DOS! I Could work so efficiently in it... NOW I understand your VIM love...
Yeah, the biggest downside of Helix is that it is not a shared standard. I like how it does advanced stuff and which-key like guide to advanced combination. I found it very neat. Nothing you can’t implement in Lua in NeoVim but at this time I am learning too many things to focus on modding with Lua. I am back to VSC + Vim motions 😢
I may not be good at Vim (yet), but at least I can edit text and write-quit the editor w/out force-closing the terminal. Pretty cool, even though I'm still stuck on the Nano and VSCode mindsets.
I couldn't agree more. I'm new to Neovim and after installing kickstarter, I am able to see the hints, like if I press D I would see that $ is end of line, so takes me a second longer to enter. I can type pretty fast but have to sometimes shamefully look at the keys, I certainly can't touch type. I am getting faster and need less reminders over time. I still enjoy it and feel more productive than VS Code despite being a fair bit slower than others. It is not at all essential to be super fast IMO. It's also a myth that it takes ages to set up, when you can download entire init.lua files prepared with everything and copy paste a couple of other bits you want. There are NO excuses for not using Neovim everyone.
I'm a bit doubtful that you can realistically do Java with vim instead of IntelliJ. It has became a code manipulation tool that generates tons of boilerplate, removes all kinds java-specific friction. Moving quickly one word forward or backward is the least of my problems when working on a massive Java project :-[
Java has a good LSP though. It's a little annoying, not having your hand held all the way (i.e., auto imports without thinking about them), but you can absolutely use vim for Java. Edit: I stand corrected; your comment is about the BS boilerplate needed for Java. That's more of a Java problem though. Try pushing for Kotlin, since that was the problem space it's designed to address.
@@jayands unfortunately, can't choose what the legacy code is :-) I agree, but some languages are just boilerplate heavy, like Ada 2012 with it's "hard to write, easy to read". They are not kidding, it really is hard to write.
I use vim, because vi was the only real choice of editor on SunOS when I was in university. 30+ years later it's served me well. I'm by no means an expert, but vim with a good set of plugins rivals and IDE for the work I do. And for all the complaints about vim being obtuse, yep sure is. Have you seen the javascript ecosystem?
9:37 I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Vim, is in fact, Vim/Vim-motions, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Vim plus Vim-motions. Vim-motions is not an editor unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Vim system made useful by the Vim keybindings, custom remaps and custom user commands comprising a full editor as defined by ThePrimagen.
As someone with ADHD, it's not just about the going faster and having fun, but not needing to touch the mouse and get distracted with constant pings and notifications. Every time I open outlook to look at my calendar, I get distracted by a new email, and when I go to look at my email, I get distracted by when my next meeting is. And slack is just as bad. The terminal is my safe focus space now.
I use Excel at work most of the time without touching the mouse and the productivity difference of using shortcuts and sequence or keys (to reach other commands in the ribbon bar) to get this done is ABYSMAL. I guess Vim Motios is the next step for me as my new responsibilities imply maintaining lots of code and configurations on existing files. This is an amazing video. Thank you!
10:04 No! The amount of resources while operating [neo]vi[m] is like 5% compared to any GUI based IDE. I'm a part of the Discord OR Slack on Sunday crowd BTW. Not both.
34:50 the way I put it is that Vim gives you a language to clearly express your intentions to the editor, it lets you think about what you want to do instead of how to do it, because you know if you press those keys it will do that thing.
Been using Vim (Motions, in IntelliJ) for a year or so now, and I don't feel a second faster. I often switch to mouse to move the cursor or select something, because it's either faster or just as fast. I think Vim Motions is more enjoyable to use, I have a lot of fun using it, but I don't find it faster at all.
How would you use d% within a language that uses keywords like END-IF and END-REPEAT instead of braces? Is there a way to get Vim to consider those words as containers?
The first time i really knew what vim was about was when i paired with a dev who was junior to me and was insanely fast. Since then, I've had the same effect on others and it's just awesome. I love vim its fantastic
5:10 - Vim people can be pretentious, and the person that wrote that StackOverflow blog post can also be pretentious. The two are not mutually exclusive. How about people mind their own effing business and not care what IDE or text editor other people are using? How about that for a novel concept.
Long time listener, first time caller The extension for Vim motions in Visual Studio (not Code) changes the game. I’ve been wanting to get away from using my mouse and didn’t realize that you’ve been mentioning my perfect solution in almost every video; Vim… Thank you
How do you search for code in your dependencies in (Neo)vim? Let's say I have a package in my Python env and want to search for a specific class there, how do I do that? As far as I understand, you can only grep in the project directory
If you are already using the class in your code and you have an lsp, then you can put your cursor over its name and type gd (goto declaration). If one or both of those are not true, you could use ripgrep to search the source files
re: vim vs helix, I think ubiquity is a niche concern unless you spend most of your time SSHing into server environments that you explicitly don't have control over.
I'm fine with SSHing to remote hosts and using basic VI and VIM. But recently started Nvim after half a year in Helix and could not remember how to use LSP in it. Helix has much better organised hotkeys and help dialogues everywhere.
@@ildarakhmetgaleev yep, the few times I had to do it I used vi just fine. There's enough overlap that as long as I remember that it's verb-object and don't try to do anything fancy it's perfectly fine for changing a couple config/env vars.
After 30+ years of chasing the latest IDE trends, I've realized that the most efficient tool is often the simplest. I was distracted by shiny interfaces and complex features for too long. Coming back to Neovim, there's a learning curve, but the rewards are unparalleled. I have never felt as productive (even with those moments when I was searching for the proper motion) as I am now. I switched from learning an editor to properly deep-diving into a language, like in the 90s, exploring and discovering Linux without much assistance apart from the man pages and the primitive web.
As someone who's spent a lot of time playing guitar, do you think moving from home row to mouse and back is as much of a hurdle as people make it out to be? I hear people say they use vim bindings because they only want to touch the keyboard, and i kinda have to assume that the repositioning isnt a priblem because of countless hours of practice changing hand position on guitar and piano... Curious if any others share my experience or think otherwise
As a pianist, I have often thought that my decisions 1) to learn touch typing, 2) to learn the Dvorak layout, 3) to buy an ergonomic programmable keyboard, and 4) to use Helix, have all been influenced by knowing piano technique. If you are a musician you know about economy of movement, about its health benefits and efficiency gains; I expect the normal crowd doesn't know about it so much. Game controllers are ergonomically terrible, by the way.
How to use vim without touch typing. I present gamer vim. Aswd and ijkl are where your hands are. Mine are too big and I hate having them touch during touch typing. So I change my keybinds accordingly. I'm semi touch typing. Using 3 fingers per hand. I'll learn touch typing with 5 fingers one day. For now, every new keybinds I learn means modifying and configuring, fixing clashes and stuff. But, it really helps because I know the key as I learn them. It also means I need to git push and pull my config on every machine. Fix merge conflicts... but its worth it. I mean, I learn in all cases. Didn't really know how to use git 2 months ago. Learned a lot.
I kinda like helix, but I don't like the whole select then act way of doing things. I prefer the press an action, then say where to do it. I've also used the emacs default bindings, and they're ok (I could see them being easier to use on layouts like dvorak), but I always come back to evil mode when I'm using emacs.
If you select first, you have visual feedback, you know what portion of the text is going to be affected by the verb. If there is no selection, your command is error prone.
@@nandoflorestan maybe, but that's not an issue I've ever dealt with. Maybe it's because I don't tend to use the motions where it would be an issue, or maybe it's just because of lots of practice. Either way, I'm not saying you're wrong; there's certainly the potential for errors if you're using character, word, line etc. motions for commands; it's largely a question of being able to delete or change an entire text object without needing to move to one end and then select until the other to do so. If I need to delete everything inside a set of parentheses, it's easier to do so with di( than moving to the start of the parens, selecting everything within, and finally pressing d.
Very first point is laughable because there's plenty of text-related tasks like extracting the 4th field in a 100k+ line file that has a weird format which would take 40+ minutes to do manually that can be done with a macro in less than 30 seconds. So yes, it can actually make you many minutes faster if you learn a bit about how vim macros work.
Coding is like being in a bustling street market. Text editors are like being in a 3 wheeler mini truck with heavy cargo in the back. Vim is like being on a motorbike that can just swing through those sharp turns.
The only reason why I have not (yet) learned to use Vim motions is that I'm already pretty blazing fast when writing code. Might eventually switch sometime in the future, but at the end of the day the speed at which I get things done is fast enough that learning Vim is not mandatory, as long as I've learned how to use the editors of my choice.
What I don't get about the speed argument is that the actual typing is such a small part of programming. If you are just typing nonstop, you can write 10k+ lines of code in one day. So if in practice you write just a couple hundred lines in an actual day of programming, how does the speed with which you actually type it matter?
A lot of people _cannot_ touch-type, due to all kinds of disabilities, and many programmers have tried it and decided it's not for them (it's uncomfortable, unless you sit upright, at a desk, using two halves of an expensive, ugly keyboard), so they use modal editors to be productive without having to type as fast.
@@Electric_Bill I mean he doesn't he does have the nuance but he muddles it with so much "joking" insults and such that you can never really see that, like he expects you to know everything about him to know that is the case. Like I am sometimes confused whether he actually realises the way he speaks is quite alienating and unhelpful, I have watched his content because I quite like it but for the longest time I just didn't agree with a lot of his takes until I watched enough where I was like "oh ok that is what he means". (And even then I still don't agree a lot) Like how do you expect anything to actually constructively listen to you when you just put down anyone at every turn. I really hate when people just go "hard truths deal with it" because at least for me that has NEVER worked, for myself or for anyone I know, it always takes meeting someone in the middle to actually do anything.
I really don't remember when I discovered or learned Vim (I'm barely in my thirties btw) If I were to guess, though, it was shortly after I installed Wubuntu on a whim during a rainy day in 2008. There was some period after that when I started looking into terminal programs (including web browsers) just because I thought it felt and looked cool to do things in the terminal
But selection-first is simpler, easier and more effective than verb-first, that's why I prefer Kakoune and Helix to Vim. It's not about using fewer keys in each command, it's about getting all commands right the first time, as opposed to having to redo them. Command discoverability is important too. In both Kakoune and Helix, evidently there are good ways of discovering commands inside the editor. In vim, I don't think that exists, if it does, I am ignorant of it. Most VSCode features are delivered by Helix with very little configuration (just 2 files, both short). Try that with neovim...
10:23 I used nvim and switched to helix since I really like the features helix provides ootb. The selection-first model amd key popup especially helped me learnig the keybinds. After having to use vim keybindings for IDEs I tried switching back to nvim but wasnt able find a way to make a setup as good as helix, so I started using both instead and it isnt nearly as confusing as I expected.
Nothing wrong with that, think prime himself started with vim bindings in another ide. It's at least a good way to try it out and if you find you like motions but don't care to go deeper just stop there.
That's what I do, but there are cases where it's just too slow. Perhaps the plugins are too heavy or something, but nevertheless. Vim is also useful for quick config edits, etc., simply because it starts faster
I'd argue VSCode is easier to get to a decent speed due to Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + p. you can just search what you're trying to do, and it says the shortcut keybinding on there, too. Eventually you'll just learn the keybind. (Though Kickstart has which-keys installed by default, so 🤷♂)
I like Helix because I can learn it from within the editor. There are g for go commands, m for match and so on. Much lower learning curve. Then I like to keep things vanilla.
"You'll be a much happier individual if you spend your day doing anything else than being angry on the internet". If only I could subscribe 30 more times. lol
I learned some basic vim motions a few years ago as a history major and started writing my papers in vim and then formatting in a different piece of software. Switched majors to CS, met a guy that uses emacs this semester. Switched to emacs. Couldnt get used to standard emacs editor behavior. Configured emacs to default to vim motions. What kind of rollercoaster have I been on?
I don't think that's rare tbh, well relatively speaking. I've seen lots of comments on reddit and youtube where people want things like org mode but prefer editing in vim, emacs with vim bindings is a happy medium.
goddamn prime out here dropping all the lovely takes non stop. Yes it's not just faster. it's not just skimming seconds off. it's about keeping you engaged, keeping the flow going. you don't have to get it to reach a point of it being actually fun to get there, you just have to do enough damage on the frustration part and reduce enough friction. it's a compounding effect whose impact is closer to being exponential (or at least quadratic...) than linear when it comes to what you end up achieving, or at least, feeling at the end of the day. This aint about vim either. Vim is our jam but it may not be yours. But do do yourself a favor and start giving a shit about the tools you use because they infleunce how you think and go about your life.
I'm trying to learn how to use nvim now but stuck with inability to find how to do some convenient actions which I was using in VSCode. Maybe there is some guide for switchers like me? For example in VSCode I comment/uncomment selected lines of code with ctrl+/ but there is no shorcuts for it in nvim. Also cannot find how to do proper interactive multicursor in nvim and actions like "create one more cursor at the next word that matches selection (ctrl+d in VSCode)".
Young programmer here: the history of my system setup has been the following on loop: 1. Huh. That thing looks weird and hard. 2. Why would I ever need that, I'm fine now. 3. Fine, I'll try it. 4. Pain 5. OMG THIS IS AMAZING
I think short pauses are important when performing a thinking task. It gives you time to process information. Nothing drives me crazier than instructional videos where they purposely edit out the tiny pauses between expressing thoughts. I need those pauses. When I'm editing using a mouse I use those pauses to process what I'm doing.
Funny how I use vim is because... I learnt it first. The linux textbook that I read presented vim as THE "text editing command" (took me some years before realizing that the "commands" are actually independent programs that the shell searched up for me), and only after the lengthly tutorial it mentions nano as a side node, by that time I've already get used to the basics of vim and was intimidated by nano's completely different UI.
@ThePrimeagen After 5 years of neovim i moved to vscode i think you did config the vscode vim binding properly, my bindings exactly same as it was in neovim, i just don't have to deal with lsp (lsp is the reason i moved to vscode, managing it in vs code is much simpler)
Another better analogy: IDE vs vim is like factory worker vs creative artists. As a factory worker, you don't need specialized/personal tools, you just need the tools provided by the company. You are just a resource. However as a creative artists, you take control of your work creation, you need the right tools that can allow your maximum creative output.
Not that into the duality but I agree. Even someone like me, doing erp automations, can have they joy of using tools that makes me do my job more comfortably (that said, I use vim motions with vscode in my work machine, but it’s a compromise)
I'm not sure which one you're saying is the factory worker in that analogy. The analogy could be made to work both ways depending on what the person making the analogy thinks about both the value of maximizing productivity vs artistic ideals and their opinion on vim/IDEs.
Like a tool allowing custom extensions with custom views and rendering? Both have limitations, one more than the other and not the way you try to make it seem. Your metaphor can also easily be reversed.
@@mjiii I'm not sure what is confusing about the analogy. e.g. If workers are on a conveyer belt working to get a food item out, the tools and stuff is designed and placed not by the worker, but by their employers. And the project is already taken shape, the workers have no choice for freedom of expression, they can only follow the assignments.
@@jeanlasalle2351 I don't see how this is confusing. Factory means all the tools, process are designed by the employers. As a worker, you have to learn everything to use the tools correctly. Your freedom of expression is limited by the employers. They wouldn't want you to have whatever you want.
Vim is perfect editor for configuring remote servers when you’re connecting to them by ssh. Vim may not always be there and you may no permissions to install it yourself, but vi editor should be. Vi you s a basic version of vim with basic functions like multiline copy/pasting and deleting, moving to line by number or search file by pattern
similarly to how prime switched to dvorak and kinesis because of wrist pain, i get pretty bad shoulder pain, and switching from mouse to keyboard exaserbates that, so i prefer tiling wms, terminal applications, and, of course, vim. i've actually found that having my wrists close together (how they get put on a small-ish qwerty keyboard) is more comfortable for my shoulders (and my wrists dont notice a difference between it and ergonomic setups), versus having them spread out.
yeah I thnk the thing with vim is that is hooks in to what we are as a species, its a portal so that text can be edited by habit, it hooks into the brain
Using helix vs vim motions, is like the comparison between using markdown vs neorg formatting. One is ubiquitous, one is maybe slightly cooler, but not found elsewhere. Vim verb-motion syntax is more like the structure of the English language. Delete around paragraph -> dap. Helix uses the selection-verb order.
I prefer selection then verb, it is a much better UI design. The user should see the affected objects on screen first, then commit the action. This prevents mistakes and prevents undoing. I use Helix btw
If not for your VIM passion, I'd never have revisited VIM after throwing up all over it the first time around. I'm about 2 months in now. The first couple weeks were painful. After about a month I hit an inflection point where productivity was on par w/ mainstream editors. Now. I can't see myself going back to mainstream. No question I'm more efficient in VIM w/ just the basics under me feet, and no more dreading needing to edit text files when ssh'ing to the server. Plus just more fun, and fewer windows to manage when combined w/ tmux. The biggest downside so far is I'm thrown off my pace some when using productive apps like Excel.
I was taught vi in college, but I didn't really learn in till years later when I borked my Slackware install so badly that termcaps wasn't working, and I had to learn ed/ex just to repair the installation. After that I decided to use vi because if was always available on any system no matter how restricted the system.
Everytime I try to use vim for work I end up reducing my productivity. If my editor has fuzzy search then I can be faster than most of my co-workers. Speed has nothing to do with vim. If you touch type and navigate files by fuzzy search, by an MRU list or by go to definition/declaration shortcuts then you can get really fast. I have seniors on my team that still slow type. It gets on my nerves every time I have to see them type😁.
I started using Vim motions to stop my growing TSI (pain in the backhand because of using arrow keys on a shitty MacBook keeb). I then moved to Neovim because it's better than VS Code for what I do and what I want tooling-wise.
My system has vim. I’ve looked at it before, but I didn’t know about this black magic that is vim motions. As a fledgling, I’ve been using Kate to practice bash because it’s intuitive enough that I was able to just jump in. I may revisit vim in the future.
The first time my fellow juniors saw my terminal and I told them "I use vim, btw", the wave of euphoria that washed over me was so strong I passed out.
for the first time in my life i'm on a team where out of 6 devs me and another person use neovim! so we get to geek out together on it.
I get the opposite effect.. a wave of pure cringe when I mention it 😔
I mentioned it in an interview today.. ~am I worried out a small -> big company shift.. “nope! As long as I can use my editor 🤠” ..then they ask what it was and I felt a wave of cringe as I answered ☹️
I had the opposite. I was a junior dev, a senior told me he was using vim. I asked him if he could rename some variable. He broke the code. He either didn't have an LSP or his LSP wasn't good enough to follow reflexive code. Then I told him that's why I use JetBrains.
One guy asked - is it a mechanical keyboard, I said - yep.
And he said - oh, you are using vim, right.
And I thought - ok, looks like I am in trend now
@@emptystuff1593So you use JetBrains just because HE doesnt know how to use Vim plugins properly? bruh
"I could go faster because I could go longer." You can't spell Viagra without V-I.
You can't spell virgin without V-I
"I could go longer because I was having fun."
It's an important aspect programmers of both sexes forget.
Viagra improved
You can just say sildenafil
Woah
It's not about speed. It's about sending a message!
that's what i say when waiting on emacs to do something
you wanna know how I got these scars? *shows fingertips*
@zZGzHD then why you using emacs if you don't know how to use it??
I was thinking: “Dang! He's fast!” Then I realized I was watching the video at 2x.
But he can go longer 😉
@@HackionSTx he can go longer if you play it at 0.5x 😳
@@sutirk🤤
Does he have a plugin that lets him work in 2x speed?
First leaned vim when I was 12 years old. I had just put linux on my old Toshiba laptop. Graphics Interface didn't work off of the bat because old gpu had 16 mb of ram. That was the day that I went to the library and they the linux book brought home (literally a printed copy of the x11 manual) and they scolded anyone using nano to edit config files. That is the day I became a man.
By the way. The x11 manual did nothing. Not what I needed. I should have just used just asked someone. I don't remember how I got it working but I still remember how it felt to see gnome boot up for the first time. Also, pro tip, if you think it is a problem with your windowing server ie a bug in x11 or Wayland, try looking at your desktop environment first. Generally x11 and Wayland are bulletproof and it comes down to a bad install or a all to commonly your desktop environment having a silly configuration for your hardware.
you were a 100 years old at 12. I respect you (I use micro, Im a beta rn)
your story doesn't add up.
@Rudolfucius Yes. Left out a lot of context. I am only 17 now. I am a Math&CS major at college. I am a little ahead of the curve. The laptop was made in 2000 so it was really slow. As for using the X11 manual, I am pretty sure it wasn't the actual x11 manual, just from what I recall it was written like a manual and was about the protocol and not about guis. Sorry for any confusion, I am not good at collecting my thoughts before writing comments and stuff.
@@Kira_x86_64 I'm not trying to suss you out: if you somehow have the need to spin yarn that's your thing, so sincerely: the numbers don't totally add up from a cursory google search the Satellite 4000 series seemed had 2 MB of VRAM and the 5000 had 32. Doesn't really matter. If you at your young age somehow made that kind of a junker work: I respect you for that kind of stubbornness although I'm somewhat assuming that that was born out of necessity in a way. Who cares. Go hard, go far!.
The cursed ones use Vim from a VS Code terminal moved into the editor area.
as one should. VS code has co-pilot chat which neovim lacks. Also Git and debugging UI and other plug-ins not in neovim
@@robosergTV Or tmux split pane and a TUI for GPT chat (e.g. elia). There's Neovim debugging plugins as well. With that said, I use mostly JetBrains and Helix back to back depending on the task I'm doing. Debug, complex rebase, refactoring -> JetBrains. Quick edits or system config -> Helix. ssh to a server -> Vim. Heck, I even use VSCode for some stuff. None of them fit well for all use cases to me.
@@robosergTVthat's.. not what he means
@@robosergTV neovim is a bare-bone thing, we use plugins to make it an IDE, fugitive or lazygit (for git) and dap (for debugging) are plugins for the features you mentioned like VSCode, but there is a catch, Nvim with these plugins offers a workflow, VSCode users can't even dream to have because they are ignorant enough to not realize the thing...........
yup thats me! when i want to check out a file from other project i just use terminal to go to that file and open it in vs code terminal in vim
24:05 There is also to paste the content of a register in insert mode.
It's pretty useful if you need to paste the content of some special register like q, for example when writing/debugging macros.
I'm different, I just hate mouses.
Me too, little fuckers keep getting in my roof
I use trackpad btw
Mad Catz R.A.T. 5 anyone?
My mouse is eaten by cat 😢
I believe it's spelled mice
I'm of that generation, btw. I learned vi on a Lear Siegler terminal. I made my pocket money in college typing people's papers in vi, then using troff' to format and print out on the line printer. Profs loved not having to read hand-written papers and my knowing how to create properly formatted academic papers was something not many others knew how to do.
I long for the day I get hired and can finally say "I use vim, btw" to a colleague.
Your comment just proves that it's the Arch Linux of IDEs
@@redpillsatori3020 What happens if you use both Arch Linux and Vim/Nvim? Do you just gain 100 pounds automatically and start growing a neckbeard in 1-2 business days?
@@redpillsatori3020 except for the fact that you can get actual work done with a text editor like vim, instead of messing around with config files for weeks just to get a waifu on ur desktop...
VSCode is not an IDE, let alone Vim@@redpillsatori3020
@@redpillsatori3020 What if I use neovim on arch and I'm hired?
I received the Kinesis keyboard last week, and my wpm dropped from 80 to 10, lmao. I am progressing slowly and using my pinkies more than ever. Solid recommendation.
dropped all the way from 90 to 40 myself when i switched and started properly using my kinesis pro and made some nice custom layers. Now I can consistently type 130wpm and it feels lovely
I switched to qwerty and touch typing and went from 10 to 60 wpm in one week but it was rough
Yeah mine went from 130 to about a solid 8.. Came back up to about 80% after a few days though.
Isn't the whole point to not use pinkies too much
@@IQof2 no thats not the whole point. the whole point is to not have your pinkies on your most used symbols, and not having to strain your hand having to reach far for stuff such as backspace. you want your most used characters as close to home position
13:25 I bought a set of blank keycaps and switched to vim at the same time. Best decision I've made so far because it forced me adapt fast and the skill of typing while looking my girlfriend in her eyes makes even "I use vim btw" sexy
Fun fact: "vim" is Portuguese for "I came." (as in, "arrived") Brazil mentioned!
I came (as in "I came")
Brazil mentioned 🇧🇷
And it's also "I know" in Czech
Goza? Goza dentro?
@@d3vilscry666 brother WHAT?
I opened VI(M) by accident, managed to create a file with an invalid name so windows couldn't even look at it, or change its name... Not even CMD in admin was able to delete or rename it. Was in C:, so it was there until I got a new computer
The ability to select, edit, delete, copy - between or around anything : < ... >, ( ... ) , [ ... ] , { ... } , ' ... ' , " ... ", ... , etc...
feels natural and way more ergonomic (and efficient)
Make a change inside parenthesis : just ci( or ci) that stands for c.hange i.nside ( )
Copy what is inside the quote with the quote : ya' or ya" : y.ank a.round " "
Amazing
Why use ci( when you can use cib? Saves a shift press. :)
I use vim because I switch between headless Linux often. I have nested tmux and screen, vim makes it the icing on the cake
I started learning Vim in a browser game called Vim Adventures before adopting vim keybinds in VS code in my work before finally adopting Vim entirely. There’s no going back.
I've spent more time configuring VSCode than Neovim. I just followed Typecraft's noob playlist for setting up your own Neovim config from scratch, and it got me 85% to where I wanted. I just try to use as few plugins as possible and I often end up using the default keybindings for the plugins, so my config is very basic and intuitive.
the same for me. Typecraft helped me a ton to learn how things worked. I just recently jumped to kickstart, I also like it a ton
Dude, how. Vs code is install and go.
The default keybindings and behaviour did not fit me at all. I had to spend a lot of time setting up comfortable keybindings for navigating the terminal and tabs.@@mattymattffs
@@mattymattffs Shh he just wants to feel better due to shitty ide, he cant process facts
@@mattymattffsi always have problems with lsps and extensions memory leaking on vscode. Also projects of enterprise size slow down vscode so much.
These bots are so fast to comment because the use vim
Surround is ace. For the first two weeks of using it I kept saying to myself "You suck, I win" to help me remember how to use it. I think the docs says the mnemonic is meant to be "You surround inner word" but I like mine better. Great vid!
It's not about the speed; It's about the flex.
i started to use vim motions cuz' i was writing some html(react) and my inner-hand started to pain. basically opening and closing html brackets and moving to next line is really painful without vim. your hands goes to mouse or arrow keys too much and that occurs pain. so i took the advice and start vim motions on vsc and my pain is gone. for me vim is not speed issue, it is medical issue.
Completely agree; after switching to vim motions myself it feels like an ergonomic necessity.
Same here! Vim + Colemak + Split keeb + trackball + standing desk. It's all about that sweet sweet ergo, baby
@@Conman9310 How long did it take you learn them?
@@smnomad9276I'm barely getting started, but I was already as productive as I was without them after abt a week
I absolutely hate repositioning my arm for the mouse. Vim motions I'm coming!
Mouse is for managers
I just like working from my bed and the trackpad is bad. That's why I use vim
Its replaced with esc
BUY A THINKPAD!!! Okay just kidding, but really you can consider it, or get that thinkpad style keyboard which has the trackpoint.
Fun fact there is some science behind a clean room and helping stay focus with adhd. The gist of it is that it takes a lot of will power for your brain to ignore something. Similar to how you feel exhausted from ignoring your feelings. So minimizing what you need to ignore CAN help concentration
But what if the distractions are coming from inside my brain
That is a solid take.
My life
makes sense. I always got the most homework done at the library where there were no distractions
As someone with ADHD and who is also naturally very messy, there is a massive correlation between my mood and the tidyness of my house. So I'm depressed all the time lol.
Guys, VIM is parkour for text editing. It's a bunch of weird yet smooth motions that get you from A to B in the most efficient way possible.
To pastein insert you can " instead of p it's especially useful when dealing with the other registers casue it's direct so + is clipboard rather than "+p
In general, I just don't have the type of brain to remember massive combinations of keys, that sometimes even have no letters in common with the action they represent. I press the wrong keys, get no feedback on what actually happened and wonder what I've just activated or broken.
I know a fixed number of keybinds in VSCode and rely on the fuzzy command palette for the rest
Yes, visual feedback is important. Try Helix or Kakoune instead of vim.
The way I started learning was with the VS Vim plugin for VS Code. At the start I spent 99% of my time in insert mode, moving around with arrow keys and sometimes even the mouse. But then, every once in a while I would learn a new Vim motion or action (e.g. ci" (change in quote) was a huge one) I would start incorporating it into my everyday code editing until it became second nature. At first, I was slow (possibly slower than I was before starting to learn it), but now I am way faster than I was before (though nowhere near as fast as Prime). It has nothing to do with having the "right brain". 99% of the Vim motions I do now are muscle memory
I'm pants on head unintelligent and I figured it by forcing myself to use it for a long time.
4:11 I couldn't touch type until I started using vim.
Used to type at 10 to 20 wpm (didn't feel good about it either), but within a year of starting to use using vim I was consistently hitting 40 to 50 wpm.
This taught me a really valuable lesson, that it's a lot easier to learn something when there's a strong immediate application for it. I don't know how true this is for others, but it's certainly true for me.
10 years ago coding in Vim with no X11 because I was running VMware + NSX stack on my laptop and needed all the RAM I could get, 1920x800 SVGA, decent custom console font, raw doggin it on the terminal
I started out as a sys admin and using Vi/Vim was a necessity. I found myself working a lot on old *Nix servers via SSH and no matter how old the OS version was, there would always be Vi or Vim installed. Nowadays I have transitioned into cloud engineering but old habits die hard.
1:38 He highlighted the whole sentence
1:48 Decides to obliterate it by missing out the first and last letter. Proceeds to continue doing it for the rest of the vid
He has said himself that he does it on purpose (because he finds it "visually appealing" from what I remember). If anything, him highlighting the whole line was an accident
My first big software purchase was literally the BRIEF (emacs port) editor for DOS! I Could work so efficiently in it... NOW I understand your VIM love...
2:37 Nah, thank you, i'll keep my jetbrain product
From an engineers point of view... vi is on every *nix distro ever... so its on every box I have encountered in the wild.
Yeah, the biggest downside of Helix is that it is not a shared standard. I like how it does advanced stuff and which-key like guide to advanced combination. I found it very neat. Nothing you can’t implement in Lua in NeoVim but at this time I am learning too many things to focus on modding with Lua. I am back to VSC + Vim motions 😢
I may not be good at Vim (yet), but at least I can edit text and write-quit the editor w/out force-closing the terminal. Pretty cool, even though I'm still stuck on the Nano and VSCode mindsets.
I highly recomend the VS Vim extension for VS Code if you aren't using it already. It made my learning experience so much better
I couldn't agree more. I'm new to Neovim and after installing kickstarter, I am able to see the hints, like if I press D I would see that $ is end of line, so takes me a second longer to enter. I can type pretty fast but have to sometimes shamefully look at the keys, I certainly can't touch type. I am getting faster and need less reminders over time.
I still enjoy it and feel more productive than VS Code despite being a fair bit slower than others. It is not at all essential to be super fast IMO.
It's also a myth that it takes ages to set up, when you can download entire init.lua files prepared with everything and copy paste a couple of other bits you want. There are NO excuses for not using Neovim everyone.
I'm a bit doubtful that you can realistically do Java with vim instead of IntelliJ. It has became a code manipulation tool that generates tons of boilerplate, removes all kinds java-specific friction. Moving quickly one word forward or backward is the least of my problems when working on a massive Java project :-[
Java has a good LSP though. It's a little annoying, not having your hand held all the way (i.e., auto imports without thinking about them), but you can absolutely use vim for Java.
Edit: I stand corrected; your comment is about the BS boilerplate needed for Java. That's more of a Java problem though. Try pushing for Kotlin, since that was the problem space it's designed to address.
@@jayands unfortunately, can't choose what the legacy code is :-) I agree, but some languages are just boilerplate heavy, like Ada 2012 with it's "hard to write, easy to read". They are not kidding, it really is hard to write.
My first experience with vim. I had to turn off my entire workstation to be able to get back to the desktop. XD
I use vim, because vi was the only real choice of editor on SunOS when I was in university. 30+ years later it's served me well. I'm by no means an expert, but vim with a good set of plugins rivals and IDE for the work I do. And for all the complaints about vim being obtuse, yep sure is. Have you seen the javascript ecosystem?
9:37 I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Vim, is in fact, Vim/Vim-motions, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Vim plus Vim-motions. Vim-motions is not an editor unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Vim system made useful by the Vim keybindings, custom remaps and custom user commands comprising a full editor as defined by ThePrimagen.
As someone with ADHD, it's not just about the going faster and having fun, but not needing to touch the mouse and get distracted with constant pings and notifications. Every time I open outlook to look at my calendar, I get distracted by a new email, and when I go to look at my email, I get distracted by when my next meeting is. And slack is just as bad. The terminal is my safe focus space now.
I use Excel at work most of the time without touching the mouse and the productivity difference of using shortcuts and sequence or keys (to reach other commands in the ribbon bar) to get this done is ABYSMAL. I guess Vim Motios is the next step for me as my new responsibilities imply maintaining lots of code and configurations on existing files. This is an amazing video. Thank you!
Prime speaking Portuguese was the icing on the cake. And it wasn't bad, honestly.
10:04 No! The amount of resources while operating [neo]vi[m] is like 5% compared to any GUI based IDE.
I'm a part of the Discord OR Slack on Sunday crowd BTW. Not both.
34:50 the way I put it is that Vim gives you a language to clearly express your intentions to the editor, it lets you think about what you want to do instead of how to do it, because you know if you press those keys it will do that thing.
Been using Vim (Motions, in IntelliJ) for a year or so now, and I don't feel a second faster. I often switch to mouse to move the cursor or select something, because it's either faster or just as fast. I think Vim Motions is more enjoyable to use, I have a lot of fun using it, but I don't find it faster at all.
How would you use d% within a language that uses keywords like END-IF and END-REPEAT instead of braces? Is there a way to get Vim to consider those words as containers?
:h matchpairs
The first time i really knew what vim was about was when i paired with a dev who was junior to me and was insanely fast. Since then, I've had the same effect on others and it's just awesome.
I love vim its fantastic
5:10 - Vim people can be pretentious, and the person that wrote that StackOverflow blog post can also be pretentious. The two are not mutually exclusive. How about people mind their own effing business and not care what IDE or text editor other people are using? How about that for a novel concept.
I know the basics of Vim motion but I haven't set up a workflow I'm proud of. I simply downloaded Nvim Kickstart and be having fun with it.
Long time listener, first time caller
The extension for Vim motions in Visual Studio (not Code) changes the game. I’ve been wanting to get away from using my mouse and didn’t realize that you’ve been mentioning my perfect solution in almost every video; Vim… Thank you
How do you search for code in your dependencies in (Neo)vim? Let's say I have a package in my Python env and want to search for a specific class there, how do I do that? As far as I understand, you can only grep in the project directory
If you are already using the class in your code and you have an lsp, then you can put your cursor over its name and type gd (goto declaration). If one or both of those are not true, you could use ripgrep to search the source files
re: vim vs helix, I think ubiquity is a niche concern unless you spend most of your time SSHing into server environments that you explicitly don't have control over.
I'm fine with SSHing to remote hosts and using basic VI and VIM. But recently started Nvim after half a year in Helix and could not remember how to use LSP in it. Helix has much better organised hotkeys and help dialogues everywhere.
@@ildarakhmetgaleev yep, the few times I had to do it I used vi just fine. There's enough overlap that as long as I remember that it's verb-object and don't try to do anything fancy it's perfectly fine for changing a couple config/env vars.
Obj-verb 10x more intuitive and useful
Thanks!
the insert in insert mode, you can use the ctrl-r" for paste reg. and " for the current clipboard
After 30+ years of chasing the latest IDE trends, I've realized that the most efficient tool is often the simplest. I was distracted by shiny interfaces and complex features for too long.
Coming back to Neovim, there's a learning curve, but the rewards are unparalleled. I have never felt as productive (even with those moments when I was searching for the proper motion) as I am now.
I switched from learning an editor to properly deep-diving into a language, like in the 90s, exploring and discovering Linux without much assistance apart from the man pages and the primitive web.
Its like saying I use a rotary phone because its more kinetic, its fun
As someone who's spent a lot of time playing guitar, do you think moving from home row to mouse and back is as much of a hurdle as people make it out to be?
I hear people say they use vim bindings because they only want to touch the keyboard, and i kinda have to assume that the repositioning isnt a priblem because of countless hours of practice changing hand position on guitar and piano...
Curious if any others share my experience or think otherwise
As a pianist, I have often thought that my decisions 1) to learn touch typing, 2) to learn the Dvorak layout, 3) to buy an ergonomic programmable keyboard, and 4) to use Helix, have all been influenced by knowing piano technique. If you are a musician you know about economy of movement, about its health benefits and efficiency gains; I expect the normal crowd doesn't know about it so much. Game controllers are ergonomically terrible, by the way.
The way Prime is using it is literally insane and magical.
I feel myself like a young ninja student watching master's tricks.
How to use vim without touch typing.
I present gamer vim.
Aswd and ijkl are where your hands are. Mine are too big and I hate having them touch during touch typing.
So I change my keybinds accordingly. I'm semi touch typing. Using 3 fingers per hand.
I'll learn touch typing with 5 fingers one day.
For now, every new keybinds I learn means modifying and configuring, fixing clashes and stuff. But, it really helps because I know the key as I learn them.
It also means I need to git push and pull my config on every machine. Fix merge conflicts... but its worth it. I mean, I learn in all cases.
Didn't really know how to use git 2 months ago. Learned a lot.
That's a cool article, focusing on how does VIM works and the reasons to use it; great for a beginner
I kinda like helix, but I don't like the whole select then act way of doing things. I prefer the press an action, then say where to do it. I've also used the emacs default bindings, and they're ok (I could see them being easier to use on layouts like dvorak), but I always come back to evil mode when I'm using emacs.
If you select first, you have visual feedback, you know what portion of the text is going to be affected by the verb. If there is no selection, your command is error prone.
@@nandoflorestan maybe, but that's not an issue I've ever dealt with. Maybe it's because I don't tend to use the motions where it would be an issue, or maybe it's just because of lots of practice.
Either way, I'm not saying you're wrong; there's certainly the potential for errors if you're using character, word, line etc. motions for commands; it's largely a question of being able to delete or change an entire text object without needing to move to one end and then select until the other to do so. If I need to delete everything inside a set of parentheses, it's easier to do so with di( than moving to the start of the parens, selecting everything within, and finally pressing d.
Very first point is laughable because there's plenty of text-related tasks like extracting the 4th field in a 100k+ line file that has a weird format which would take 40+ minutes to do manually that can be done with a macro in less than 30 seconds.
So yes, it can actually make you many minutes faster if you learn a bit about how vim macros work.
yes, i am tired of having that argument with people because they just _do not understand the macro_ therefore its ... well its a dead argument
You could also learn awk 🙂
Coding is like being in a bustling street market. Text editors are like being in a 3 wheeler mini truck with heavy cargo in the back. Vim is like being on a motorbike that can just swing through those sharp turns.
The only reason why I have not (yet) learned to use Vim motions is that I'm already pretty blazing fast when writing code. Might eventually switch sometime in the future, but at the end of the day the speed at which I get things done is fast enough that learning Vim is not mandatory, as long as I've learned how to use the editors of my choice.
What I don't get about the speed argument is that the actual typing is such a small part of programming. If you are just typing nonstop, you can write 10k+ lines of code in one day. So if in practice you write just a couple hundred lines in an actual day of programming, how does the speed with which you actually type it matter?
A lot of people _cannot_ touch-type, due to all kinds of disabilities, and many programmers have tried it and decided it's not for them (it's uncomfortable, unless you sit upright, at a desk, using two halves of an expensive, ugly keyboard), so they use modal editors to be productive without having to type as fast.
Prime says such people will never be good programmers.
@@Electric_Bill I mean he doesn't he does have the nuance but he muddles it with so much "joking" insults and such that you can never really see that, like he expects you to know everything about him to know that is the case.
Like I am sometimes confused whether he actually realises the way he speaks is quite alienating and unhelpful, I have watched his content because I quite like it but for the longest time I just didn't agree with a lot of his takes until I watched enough where I was like "oh ok that is what he means". (And even then I still don't agree a lot)
Like how do you expect anything to actually constructively listen to you when you just put down anyone at every turn.
I really hate when people just go "hard truths deal with it" because at least for me that has NEVER worked, for myself or for anyone I know, it always takes meeting someone in the middle to actually do anything.
I really don't remember when I discovered or learned Vim (I'm barely in my thirties btw)
If I were to guess, though, it was shortly after I installed Wubuntu on a whim during a rainy day in 2008. There was some period after that when I started looking into terminal programs (including web browsers) just because I thought it felt and looked cool to do things in the terminal
But selection-first is simpler, easier and more effective than verb-first, that's why I prefer Kakoune and Helix to Vim. It's not about using fewer keys in each command, it's about getting all commands right the first time, as opposed to having to redo them.
Command discoverability is important too. In both Kakoune and Helix, evidently there are good ways of discovering commands inside the editor. In vim, I don't think that exists, if it does, I am ignorant of it.
Most VSCode features are delivered by Helix with very little configuration (just 2 files, both short). Try that with neovim...
10:23 I used nvim and switched to helix since I really like the features helix provides ootb. The selection-first model amd key popup especially helped me learnig the keybinds. After having to use vim keybindings for IDEs I tried switching back to nvim but wasnt able find a way to make a setup as good as helix, so I started using both instead and it isnt nearly as confusing as I expected.
Why not use VS code with VIM motions? Is that way more different from using VIM + Vim motions?
Nothing wrong with that, think prime himself started with vim bindings in another ide. It's at least a good way to try it out and if you find you like motions but don't care to go deeper just stop there.
That's what I do, but there are cases where it's just too slow. Perhaps the plugins are too heavy or something, but nevertheless. Vim is also useful for quick config edits, etc., simply because it starts faster
I'd argue VSCode is easier to get to a decent speed due to Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + p. you can just search what you're trying to do, and it says the shortcut keybinding on there, too. Eventually you'll just learn the keybind.
(Though Kickstart has which-keys installed by default, so 🤷♂)
Lazyvim has sk and sh which let u fuzzy search keys and help pages respectively
Kakoune and Helix also have a command pallette. Vim is the only one that doesn't, as far as I am aware.
@nandoflorestan you can set up a fuzzy finder for commands with telescope, it comes by default in LazyVim actually, works really well
I like Helix because I can learn it from within the editor. There are g for go commands, m for match and so on. Much lower learning curve. Then I like to keep things vanilla.
"You'll be a much happier individual if you spend your day doing anything else than being angry on the internet".
If only I could subscribe 30 more times. lol
I learned some basic vim motions a few years ago as a history major and started writing my papers in vim and then formatting in a different piece of software.
Switched majors to CS, met a guy that uses emacs this semester. Switched to emacs.
Couldnt get used to standard emacs editor behavior. Configured emacs to default to vim motions.
What kind of rollercoaster have I been on?
I don't think that's rare tbh, well relatively speaking. I've seen lots of comments on reddit and youtube where people want things like org mode but prefer editing in vim, emacs with vim bindings is a happy medium.
@@sfulibarri honestly you're not wrong.
Most people at my University (that aren't professors) are usually more weirded out by the major switch.
goddamn prime out here dropping all the lovely takes non stop. Yes it's not just faster. it's not just skimming seconds off. it's about keeping you engaged, keeping the flow going. you don't have to get it to reach a point of it being actually fun to get there, you just have to do enough damage on the frustration part and reduce enough friction. it's a compounding effect whose impact is closer to being exponential (or at least quadratic...) than linear when it comes to what you end up achieving, or at least, feeling at the end of the day.
This aint about vim either. Vim is our jam but it may not be yours. But do do yourself a favor and start giving a shit about the tools you use because they infleunce how you think and go about your life.
The first time I said "I use vim btw", absolutely devastating - that gave me CHILLS
ok i at first didnt know what touch-typing is. after looking it up, genq, how does anyone code period without touch typing? that would take forever
I'm trying to learn how to use nvim now but stuck with inability to find how to do some convenient actions which I was using in VSCode. Maybe there is some guide for switchers like me? For example in VSCode I comment/uncomment selected lines of code with ctrl+/ but there is no shorcuts for it in nvim. Also cannot find how to do proper interactive multicursor in nvim and actions like "create one more cursor at the next word that matches selection (ctrl+d in VSCode)".
I want Vim to place the cursor in the middle of the screen after searching. How do I center the cursor position after searching in Vim
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Vim? Walk in the park? Maybe a walk in the park where walking is like playing QWOP
Young programmer here: the history of my system setup has been the following on loop:
1. Huh. That thing looks weird and hard.
2. Why would I ever need that, I'm fine now.
3. Fine, I'll try it.
4. Pain
5. OMG THIS IS AMAZING
I think short pauses are important when performing a thinking task. It gives you time to process information. Nothing drives me crazier than instructional videos where they purposely edit out the tiny pauses between expressing thoughts. I need those pauses. When I'm editing using a mouse I use those pauses to process what I'm doing.
Funny how I use vim is because... I learnt it first. The linux textbook that I read presented vim as THE "text editing command" (took me some years before realizing that the "commands" are actually independent programs that the shell searched up for me), and only after the lengthly tutorial it mentions nano as a side node, by that time I've already get used to the basics of vim and was intimidated by nano's completely different UI.
@ThePrimeagen After 5 years of neovim i moved to vscode i think you did config the vscode vim binding properly, my bindings exactly same as it was in neovim, i just don't have to deal with lsp (lsp is the reason i moved to vscode, managing it in vs code is much simpler)
Another better analogy: IDE vs vim is like factory worker vs creative artists. As a factory worker, you don't need specialized/personal tools, you just need the tools provided by the company. You are just a resource. However as a creative artists, you take control of your work creation, you need the right tools that can allow your maximum creative output.
Not that into the duality but I agree. Even someone like me, doing erp automations, can have they joy of using tools that makes me do my job more comfortably (that said, I use vim motions with vscode in my work machine, but it’s a compromise)
I'm not sure which one you're saying is the factory worker in that analogy. The analogy could be made to work both ways depending on what the person making the analogy thinks about both the value of maximizing productivity vs artistic ideals and their opinion on vim/IDEs.
Like a tool allowing custom extensions with custom views and rendering?
Both have limitations, one more than the other and not the way you try to make it seem.
Your metaphor can also easily be reversed.
@@mjiii I'm not sure what is confusing about the analogy. e.g. If workers are on a conveyer belt working to get a food item out, the tools and stuff is designed and placed not by the worker, but by their employers. And the project is already taken shape, the workers have no choice for freedom of expression, they can only follow the assignments.
@@jeanlasalle2351 I don't see how this is confusing. Factory means all the tools, process are designed by the employers. As a worker, you have to learn everything to use the tools correctly. Your freedom of expression is limited by the employers. They wouldn't want you to have whatever you want.
Vim is perfect editor for configuring remote servers when you’re connecting to them by ssh. Vim may not always be there and you may no permissions to install it yourself, but vi editor should be. Vi you s a basic version of vim with basic functions like multiline copy/pasting and deleting, moving to line by number or search file by pattern
similarly to how prime switched to dvorak and kinesis because of wrist pain, i get pretty bad shoulder pain, and switching from mouse to keyboard exaserbates that, so i prefer tiling wms, terminal applications, and, of course, vim.
i've actually found that having my wrists close together (how they get put on a small-ish qwerty keyboard) is more comfortable for my shoulders (and my wrists dont notice a difference between it and ergonomic setups), versus having them spread out.
I found that the angle mod of Colemak on an ISO keyboard did wonders on a regular keyboard, regarding wrist positioning and stress mitigation.
yeah I thnk the thing with vim is that is hooks in to what we are as a species, its a portal so that text can be edited by habit, it hooks into the brain
Using helix vs vim motions, is like the comparison between using markdown vs neorg formatting. One is ubiquitous, one is maybe slightly cooler, but not found elsewhere.
Vim verb-motion syntax is more like the structure of the English language. Delete around paragraph -> dap. Helix uses the selection-verb order.
I prefer selection then verb, it is a much better UI design. The user should see the affected objects on screen first, then commit the action. This prevents mistakes and prevents undoing. I use Helix btw
I had to learn vim because the only alternative then was to download sh files, edit on windows, then upload again. 😅
If not for your VIM passion, I'd never have revisited VIM after throwing up all over it the first time around. I'm about 2 months in now. The first couple weeks were painful. After about a month I hit an inflection point where productivity was on par w/ mainstream editors. Now. I can't see myself going back to mainstream. No question I'm more efficient in VIM w/ just the basics under me feet, and no more dreading needing to edit text files when ssh'ing to the server. Plus just more fun, and fewer windows to manage when combined w/ tmux. The biggest downside so far is I'm thrown off my pace some when using productive apps like Excel.
I was taught vi in college, but I didn't really learn in till years later when I borked my Slackware install so badly that termcaps wasn't working, and I had to learn ed/ex just to repair the installation. After that I decided to use vi because if was always available on any system no matter how restricted the system.
Title: VIM isn't about speed
Video and Article: Look how much time VIM and VIM motions can save you
Everytime I try to use vim for work I end up reducing my productivity. If my editor has fuzzy search then I can be faster than most of my co-workers. Speed has nothing to do with vim. If you touch type and navigate files by fuzzy search, by an MRU list or by go to definition/declaration shortcuts then you can get really fast. I have seniors on my team that still slow type. It gets on my nerves every time I have to see them type😁.
The thumbnails aesthetics are getting better and better!
I started using Vim motions to stop my growing TSI (pain in the backhand because of using arrow keys on a shitty MacBook keeb).
I then moved to Neovim because it's better than VS Code for what I do and what I want tooling-wise.
My system has vim. I’ve looked at it before, but I didn’t know about this black magic that is vim motions.
As a fledgling, I’ve been using Kate to practice bash because it’s intuitive enough that I was able to just jump in.
I may revisit vim in the future.
0:01 How about your system having like 90% more resources available compared to using anything based on electron?