• voracitude@lemmy.world
        271·
        8 months ago

        I regularly fix my bashrc file with Notepad. I run it in Wine because I cbf to RealVNC from my Windows CE media server.

        (n.b: None of this is real, I wrote it to upset people, I’m sorry)

        • riodoro1@lemmy.world
          28·
          8 months ago

          Well let me upset you.

          Ive been helping my coworker on a call and he was sharing his screen. I told him to edit a file (add a line) on a linux box we develop and he copied the file to his windows host with winscp, edited it in notepad and copied it back. I fantasize about killing him ever since.

          • Dave.@aussie.zone
            2·
            8 months ago

            They need to learn how to use their tools better. Winscp does all that transparently for you if you press F4 on a file on a remote system. Or maybe they did and you just didn’t see it…

            It’s quite a handy function when you’re diving through endless layers of directories on a remote box looking for one config file amongst many.

    • skittlebrau@lemmy.world
      18·
      8 months ago

      Nano is more like fast food. It’s easy and convenient, but it makes you feel a little guilty and dirty afterwards.

      • ggppjj@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        8 months ago

        Nano is the tool that people use when they don’t have a need for TUI editors in general and therefore don’t want to have to memorize how people with teletypes decided things should have been done 75 years ago and who also don’t want to get dragged into endless pointless bickering arguments about which set of greybeards was objectively right about their sets of preferences.

        I’m glad people enjoy the editors they use and also I just wanna change a single fuckin line in a config file every once in a while without needing to consult a reference guide.

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
          42·
          8 months ago

          I don’t have much to say about nano, except the hotkey bindings are weird and unnatural.

          They make sense, but they feel wrong.

        • flashgnash@lemm.ee
          1·
          7 months ago

          Vim felt like having superpowers when I started with it, after being spoiled by helix it feels like a relic though

    • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      114·
      8 months ago

      And yet Emacs users don’t fight vim users. Emacs users decided vim’s interface was pretty cool and added it to Emacs. Somehow people still call it a war though.

      • kata1yst@sh.itjust.works
        131·
        8 months ago

        Bruh 😂 the Emacs user community absolutely constantly shit on Vim users. When they added Vi(m) bindings they literally named it ‘evil mode’, and they constantly make fun of people who use it, and spacemacs, and the latest flavor of (neo)vi(m), and all the extensions necessary to make vim halfway useful as an ide, etc etc etc.

        • G0ne@lemmy.world
          6·
          8 months ago

          Evil or the extensible vi layer is super popular and improves the one area that emacs was lacking i prefer the emacs keybinds but have never seen peeps chat shit about it

        • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          3·
          8 months ago

          Which Emacs community? I’ve been following it for ages in a few places (Reddit is the most common) and I literally do not encounter any of that. Calling it evil was humor - as if people who went to all the bother making it would be trying to push people away…

          Using the evil package is very popular and often recommended, which means literally using it like vim, but with all the Emacs ability on top. I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.

          • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
            4·
            8 months ago

            Same here.

            The biggest diss I have on emacs users, as a vim user, is that emacs is the only text editor where people routinely need to keep a book about it on their desk!

            I used to work with a bunch of emacs guys and they all had an emacs book or two on their desk or as a monitor stand. They usually also had one on awk and/or Perl to go with it.

            I’m sure they’d probably make fun of me for being unable to edit a file with anything but my specific vim config, which is not compatible with any other human’s vim config.

            (I would never seriously judge someone on their editor, but I will bust an emacs users chops and accept a good natured jab back)

          • kata1yst@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            8 months ago

            Oh to be clear, it’s all humor. At least mostly, I’m sure there are RMS level fanatics somewhere that truly believe some of the BS.

            This is something as old as time. I’ve seen it prolifically on Reddit (though not in the Emacs community, they generally discourage memes), various Linux forums, old Usenet, various programming forums… I’m not trying to be evasive, but it’s hard to provide examples that aren’t specifically cherry picked, which wouldn’t benefit the conversation much.

            There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war

          • Opisek@lemmy.world
            1·
            8 months ago

            How close to vim’s functionality is evil mode? I’ve been toying with the idea of learning Emacs but I rely on Vim’s langmap and that is rarely implemented in Vim emulations / bindings.

            • sping@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
              2·
              8 months ago

              Although I came from vi (pre-vim and pre-evil) and still have the muscle memory, I don’t and haven’t used it myself.

              I hear it described as a “nearly complete” and “very comprehensive”. There is definitely a solid community of people using and enjoying it, but on the other hand there are always some reports of getting tired of having to work through, and sometimes extend, an additional interface layer, so in the long run being happier to just adopt the default bindings.

              I know there are a few areas where trying to follow common vim workflows doesn’t work as well. Historically the performance of line number display been weak in Emacs, though I believe it’s recently much improved. A lot of people seem to make heavy and constant use of it in vim but conversely for me (and I think it’s more common in Emacs) it’s only an occasional, transient need when some external log or error quotes a line number, so I have them only displayed when I hit the go-to-line binding.

              Overall, I think the most frustrating issues people have trying to adopt Emacs from vim are due to trying to impose their specific familiar vim workflows. The most obvious example is people concerned with startup time, but for more typical Emacs workflows it’s a non-issue. Users typically stay in Emacs rather than jumping in and out of it from a terminal (and if you really want that workflow, you run one instance as a daemon and pop up a new client to it instantly). My Emacs instance’s uptime usually matches my computer’s uptime.

              The draw of Emacs is not about it only being an editor so much as a comprehensive and programmable text environment. It is a lisp-based text-processing engine that can run numerous applications, the primary being an editor (the default, or evil, or others…) but also countless other applications like file managers, VC clients, subprocess management and many others. It 95% replaces the terminal for me, and many other tools. So it’s the environment through which you view and manipulate all things text that is very accessible to modify and extend to fit your needs. Hence the joke about it being an OS is pretty apt, though to believe it needs a good editor implies vim isn’t a good editor ;).

  • cally [he/they]@pawb.socialEnglish
    43·
    8 months ago

    Vim is pretty easy for me because I’m used to it. Nano is very difficult to use for me because I’ve rarely used it.

    • Racle@sopuli.xyz
      4·
      8 months ago

      I was Nano user and I liked it. After I learned to use Vim, I liked it more. Now when I use nano it’s frustrating to use and I can do things much faster and easier in vim 😅

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
      3·
      8 months ago

      Opposite here. I got started with Gentoo back in the day of building things from the ground up. Their tutorials all used nano and I just got used to using that. I think when I had casually tried to mess with linux previously, old Mandrake and Redhat in the '90s, I always used the GUI editors, but I also didn’t have a ton of time to mess with it and my hardware wasn’t well-supported.

  • pedz@lemmy.ca
    33·
    8 months ago

    Sometimes you don’t even have the luxury of nano. Any moderately advanced Linux user should probably learn the basics of vi. Just knowing how to insert text and save it can fix a system that’s stuck in recovery. Even if it’s just to add a comment in front of a line in a config file.

    • Mactan@lemmy.ml
      6·
      8 months ago

      Sometimes you don’t even have the luxury of vi. Any moderately advanced Linux user should probably learn the basics of sed. Just knowing how to insert text and save it can fix a system that’s stuck in recovery. Even if it’s just to add a comment in front of a line in a config file.

      • pedz@lemmy.ca
        17·
        8 months ago

        Not in rescue mode. If you can’t mount your root partition because something was fudged in /etc/fstab, for example, you may be stuck in recovery and depending on your distribution, it may not have nano in that minimalist mode.

        For me it also happens when I install a VM of Debian using the small image, on my dedicated server in a data center. The company hosting the server requires a special network configuration and AFAIK, there’s only vi. So i need to use the console to access the VM and from there, edit /etc/network/something with vi to setup the network. Once done I can reboot and install the rest of the software over the network, including nano.

        I’ve been using Linux for more than two decades. Before nano I was using pico, but it also required to have pine/alpine installed. So knowing the basics of vi has often been helpful over the years for me.

        Maybe it’s because I like tinkering with VMs and SBCs, and most people will not encounter situations where they don’t have nano, but it can happen. And you’ll be glad to know at least “i” and “:wq!”.

      • Transtronaut@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        10·
        8 months ago

        In a professional context, you might end up on servers that don’t have nano installed, but do have vi. Or if you’re helping out a friend on their laptop, they might not have the same software as you. Or if you often end up tinkering with random devices and/or setting up new systems it might be tedious to install the same applications every time.

        It’s basically an argument for learning the very basics of the most common editors so you have flexibility no matter where you end up. Even when you have the ability to download and install your preferred software, it’s still an extra step that might not be desirable for a variety of reasons. But if it’s just your own personal device, I see no problem with just installing whatever you prefer and running with it.

        EDIT: Personally, I find that I don’t end up using those other editors often enough to remember the abstruse commands of tools like vim, so I’m not worried about it. When it does happen, 99% of the time I can just whip out a smartphone and look up the directions for the n-dozenth time.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    224·
    8 months ago

    I’ll say that I find easier to exit vim that to exit nano.

    I don’t know what ^ means. I just start pressing special keys until it doesn’t the thing

  • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    141·
    8 months ago

    Nano isn’t even that simple. Ctrl+X to quit? I guess if you use phonetic sounds to figure out how to exit a program. At least Vim uses the idea of “use what the words start with.”

    I personally use micro in the terminal, and Kate if I want a GUI to write. Vim and Emacs are fine for those who want it, I have no stakes in the editor wars beyond “I just want my program to do what I want, and I want it to be simple to learn.”

      • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        101·
        8 months ago

        Meanwhile I can just use the same shortcuts every other program made in the last 40 years uses. Ctrl+Q to quit, Ctrl+S to save, Ctrl+Z for undo. If I wanted to consult a cheatsheet to relearn keyboard shortcuts, I’ll use vim and emacs.

        • cravl@slrpnk.net
          5·
          8 months ago

          To be fair, you can easily rebind all the keys to be more normal by adding a .nanorc. Though, Ctrl-Z conflicts with suspend in many terminals, so I keep that one as Ctrl-U. A .nanorc also allows turning on mouse support, changing the color scheme, etc.

  • riodoro1@lemmy.world
    121·
    8 months ago

    Average vim user: vim is easy.

    Also average vim user: literally hours of reading tutorial pages on how to use vim.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
      3·
      8 months ago

      It is easy, though? I cannot even use it correctly. I just know some of the commands and that if you hold down shift it goes backwards.

      • ysjet@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        8 months ago

        Honestly, these days it’s pretty simple. The thing you need to remember is that you do not need to know EVERYTHING all at once. Learn a little bit, use it, keep what you use, discard what you don’t, get it in muscle memory, and learn a bit more. Very quickly you’ll be zooming through vim.

        You can learn the basics, and go from there- the basics of vim (which imo everyone should know- vi is often the fallback editor), and then you can just casually learn stuff as you go.

        Here’s the basics for modern default/standard vim: Arrow keys move you around like you expect in all ‘modes’ (there’s some arguments about if you should be using arrow keys in the vim community- for now, consider them a crutch that lets you learn other things). There’s two ‘modes’- command mode, and edit mode.

        Edit mode acts like a standard, traditional text editor, though a lot of your keybinds (e.g. ctrl-c/ctrl-v) don’t work.

        Press escape to go back into command mode (in command mode, esc does nothing- esc is always safe to use. If you get lost/trapped/are confused, just keep hitting escape and you’ll drop into command mode). You start vim in command mode. Press i to go into edit mode at your current cursor position.

        To exit vim entirely, go to command mode (esc), and type :wq<enter>.

        ‘:’ is ‘issue command string’,

        ‘w’ is ‘write’, aka save,

        ‘q’ is quit.

        In other words, ‘:wq’ is ‘save and quit’

        ‘:q’ is quit without saving, ‘:w’ is save and don’t quit. Logical.

        Depending on your terminal, you can probably select text with your mouse and have it be copied and then pasted with shift-ins in edit mode, which is a terminal thing and not a vim thing, because vim ties into it natively.

        That gets you started with basically all the same features as nano, except they work in a minimal environment and you can build them up to start taking advantage of command mode, which is where the power and speed of vim start coming into play.

        For example ‘i’ puts you in edit mode on the spot- capital i puts you in command mode at the beginning of the line. a is edit mode after your spot- capital A is edit mode at the end of the current line.

        Do you need these to use vim? Nope. Once you learn them, start using them, and have them as muscle memory, is it vastly faster to use? Yes. And there’s hundreds of keybinds like that, all of which are fairly logical once you know the logic behind them- ‘insert’ and ‘after’ for i/a, for example.

        Fair warning, vim is old enough that the logic may seem arcane sometimes- e.g. instead of ‘copy and paste’ vim has ‘yank and put,’ because copy/paste didn’t exist yet, so the keybinds for copy/paste are y and p.

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
          3·
          8 months ago

          The second most important thing about vim to learn is:

          If nothing is behaving then you probably have caps lock on.

      • s_s@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Vim makes it easy to edit text in complicated ways, once you’ve learned it.

        Vim is not easy to learn nor intuitive.

        It is simple and compounding.

        You might not ever edit enough text to ever need to learn a new skillset to edit text. If that’s the case, use nano.

        But if you do find yourself editing a lot of text, consider trying vimtutor.

        It takes 20 minutes and you’ll be proficient enough to match nano’s efficiency ceiling.

      • Voytrekk@lemmy.world
        21·
        8 months ago

        I’m a vim user and I would say it’s not. It’s very powerful, but only once you become familiar with the commands.

        Nano is a better default for the average user because it works in a way most users would expect for a text editor to work.

    • Luccus@feddit.org
      21·
      8 months ago

      it even has a tutor

      Yes, people are just lazy. I remember when I invented a new login screen and was told it was “difficult”, “confusing” and “took some getting used to”.

      It even came with a free 100-page manual and a 4-hour master class. Some people, I tell you!

      ^This is meant more as a joke than an actual critique, even if it kind of reflects my thoughts. But ultimatly, I thought it was a funny bit.^

    • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
      201·
      8 months ago

      A text editor that doesn’t need a tutor because the interface is intuitive enough that someone who has been using text editors (as a concept) for years can more or less instantly pick it up and start working without needing a tutorial to simply edit a config file.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        a text editor that has a tutor because it’s been around for so long and it’s had so many years to establish itself with an outside control interface that’s quite literally about as optimal as it can be. Vim basically allows you to never move your hands away from the homerow keys, even when navigating and doing bulk edits. The sheer amount of gained speed and productivity you get from this combined with the amount of times you’ll have to deal with text editing throughout your life is probably going to outweight any potential learned annoyances.

        • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
          1·
          7 months ago

          with an outside control interface that’s quite literally about as optimal as it can be.

          Which is probably true, as long as you make one assumption- that the operator dedicates a significant amount of time to learning it. With that assumption being true- I’ll assume you’re correct and it becomes much more efficient than a Nano/Notepad style editor.

          I’m happy to concede without any personal knowledge that if you’re hardcore editing code, it may well be worth the time to learn Vim, on the principle that it may well be the very most efficient terminal-based text editor.

          But what if you’re NOT hardcore editing code? What if you just need to edit a config file here and there? You don’t need the ‘absolute most efficient’ system because it’s NOT efficient for you to take the time to learn it. You just want to comment out a line and type a replacement below it. And you’ve been using Notepad-style text editors for years.

          Thus my point-- there is ABSOLUTELY a place for Vim. But wanting to just edit a file without having to learn a whole new editor doesn’t make one lazy. It means you’re being efficient, focusing your time on getting what you need done, done.

    • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      111·
      8 months ago

      A text editor that doesn’t assume that the keys on my keyboard are in the same order as yours.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        8·
        8 months ago

        I remember looking up how to use Colemak with vim, and the advice was:

        • Change the mappings so the position is the same, but it has the downside that every tutorial won’t match.
        • Keep the mappings and do awkward stretches for common functions like up and down.

        So I just gave up and moved on.

    • soul@lemmy.worldEnglish
      73·
      8 months ago

      One that’s intuitive and doesn’t require a cheat sheet or what I like to call fingular contortionism discovery.

  • jaybone@lemmy.world
    10·
    8 months ago

    You noobs. I just use combinations of cat piped to sed to edit my files, which are mainly lisp code.

      • Gacrux@lemm.ee
        8·
        8 months ago

        https://helix-editor.com/

        essentially a terminal modal editor (like vim), but instead of specifying the action to perform then what to perform the action on (like “yank 3 lines”), in helix you select first, then perform actions on the selection (like “these 3 lines, i want them yanked”). it’s slightly better (according to others) because you get to see what you’re going to change in the file so you don’t accidentally delete 5 lines instead of deleting 4.

        on top of that many features are builtin, like tree-sitter and lsp support, so you don’t have to spend 5 hours looking for cool plugins and configuring everything to get started (my config file is only 50 lines of toml).

        the downside is that there isn’t support for plugins (yet), but there’s already things like a file picker, more than 100 themes etc.

        • cmhe@lemmy.world
          2·
          8 months ago

          So similar to kakoune? I tried that for a while, but it was missing some features so I went back to vim/neovim.

          I need to know vi anyway, because that is available everywhere (as part of busybox), so using vim/nvim for bigger systems just fits.

    • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
      4·
      8 months ago

      I gave it serious consideration when the death of Atom was announced and I was unsure where to move on to.

      Looks like in the meantime a lot has been done (as far as I remember, TreeSitter and LSP weren’t built in back then…? Not sure though), but the lack of a plugin system is still killing it for me.

      TBH it looks like it has 75% of the features you want from a codeditor, which is much more than the use-case for Nano, but no way to go the remaining 25% of the way.

    • patatahooligan@lemmy.world
      3·
      8 months ago

      Helix’s editing model is so much better than vim’s. I would probably use it if it was be closer to a drop-in replacement for vim. I really hope this neovide issue gains some traction because I don’t think I can daily drive anything that isn’t as smooth as neovide again.

      • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
        3·
        8 months ago

        I simply have too much vim config and muscle memory to ever leave vim

        I’m trapped in a prison of my own making!

  • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
    8·
    8 months ago

    Vim (or emacs, or any other advanced text editor) is much easier to use than nano when you need to do something more complex than type couple of lines.

    • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
      102·
      8 months ago

      Better? Maybe!

      More efficient? Surley!

      But easier?! Hell no! Easy means you can use it without a lot of training or studying. It is self explanatory. And there is no way on earth that vim is easier than nano. I don’t need to know anything to use nano I need to check docs for hours before I can even start using vim

            • Fox@pawb.social
              8·
              8 months ago

              Right, it’s remembering them and using them efficiently that’s hard. It’s amusing watching coworkers try to flex in vim and then struggle at the most basic tasks.

          • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
            11·
            8 months ago

            No, some piano plays are still harder than others, mo matter how long you practice. Editing text with vim is easier than with nano after some practice.

            • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
              1·
              8 months ago

              If something is “easy to use” this includes the time you need learn said thing.

              Drinking rahmen from the bowl is easier then using chopsticks (even if you are more elegant with chopsticks)

              Driving automatic is easier then driving manual (even if you may be more efficient with manual if you practised shifting a lot)

              Walking is easier then flicflacs (even if you may be faster with flicflacs if you practised a lot)

              Using Ubuntu is easier than using arch (even if arch gives you more control and opportunities if you understand it)

              • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
                1·
                8 months ago

                “Easy to use” means that you do less and get more. Learning doesn’t count if you learn something once and then use the skills you obtained many times.

      • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
        25·
        8 months ago

        This makes it seem like jerking off to MILF porn is hard because there is a learning curve

    • leisesprecher@feddit.org
      15·
      8 months ago

      And how often does that happen in the real world?

      VIM may have been a very useful tool 20 or 30 years ago, but today it’s nothing else but a tool for one’s sense of superiority. It’s the vinyl of editors.

      If you have to type that much code in a terminal, your infrastructure is outdated. Simple as that.

      • Chewt@beehaw.org
        2·
        8 months ago

        You seem to believe that people only use the terminal if they HAVE to. I doubt anybody these days HAS to type any amount of code in the terminal, but choose to anyway. Like probably anyone else I have access to modern tools and infrastructure, but I choose to do work in the terminal because I’m more productive there. I use (neo)vim because I like it more than any other text editor I’ve used, and have no problem writing code and debugging in the terminal.

        • leisesprecher@feddit.org
          15·
          8 months ago

          You’re using the terminal, because you’re used to it. It is not the better tool, it’s simply what you happen to know already.

          People who argue with productivity because of some key bindings live in the world of the 80s. You don’t just sit there and type code 12h a day, that’s not how modern software development works.

          And all those blockheads down voting me are caught up in their weird superiority complex. They are the powerful superhackers, and don’t understand that we are just highly qualified plumbers.

          • Chewt@beehaw.org
            2·
            8 months ago

            I’m actually fairly young and wasn’t around in the 80s. I graduated college with a CS degree in the past 5 years, where I was exposed to many different tools and software. What did I come out of that experience with? I like the terminal more than any IDE I had to use in any class.

            Now in the real world, we don’t always get to use our favorite tools for every task, obviously. I do need to use other, more enterprise, software from time to time for work. But whenever possible I go to the terminal because I’m faster there, and I can quickly automate things.

            I’m not saying the terminal is the best tool for every job, I’m just saying it is the best for ME. Notice I’m also not putting down other tools here. It seems to me like you might be the one with a superiority complex.

            • leisesprecher@feddit.org
              04·
              8 months ago

              No, I’d argue you simply didn’t want to invest in the other tools.

              Think about it, you probably spent hours on customizing and automating vim, and then say you’re faster in that. Well, that’s called a habit.

              IDE are objectively more powerful and since you can actually see options and navigate quickly, you don’t need to memorize every obscure feature.

              All the terminal editor enthusiasts are actively holding us back, because they insist everything outside vim is garbage for enterprise and kiddies.

              If your tool of choice is actively hostile to new users for no reason other than “that’s how it’s always been, and thus it’s better”, well then you’re digging a moat to automate your gatekeeping.

              • Chewt@beehaw.org
                41·
                8 months ago

                vim + terminal is actually objectively more powerful than any IDE, and most IDEs include a way to pull up a terminal as a crutch for things they can’t do. In any case It seems you can’t be reasoned with. Your argument is just a strawman about what you say other people are saying.

      • havocpants@lemm.ee
        2·
        8 months ago

        VIM may have been a very useful tool 20 or 30 years ago, but today it’s nothing else but a tool for one’s sense of superiority. It’s the vinyl of editors.

        So, because you don’t understand something, it’s outdated?

        If you have to type that much code in a terminal, your infrastructure is outdated. Simple as that.

        Ok, I can see you have no idea what you’re talking about.

        • leisesprecher@feddit.org
          24·
          8 months ago

          I understand it very well. And that’s exactly why I’m writing this.

          Ok, I can see you have no idea what you’re talking about.

          Then say, grandmaster delusion, what purpose does vim serve, where it is actually the best tool? Writing code? Hardly, it’s way too limited and requires a ton of upfront investment and headspace. Writing config files? Hardly, because if you write these by hand, you’re living in the 90s, that’s what Ansible, Terraform etc are for.

          You just don’t want to admit, that vim is nothing more than a habit. Muscle memory.