• MashedTech@lemmy.world
    575·
    10 months ago

    Look, honestly, to me at least, this horse has been dead for a 1000 years and we’ve been beating it since then. Initially I was as well, “haha funny, what is vim, so hard” and then I happened to interact with it for the first time, did a web search and all the amusement died. If it’s like this we should make fun of Ctrl+C as well because “Omg, so hard to terminate a terminal program, there is no X to click on” just because this is non standard for a user that is familiar with only the GUI. We could abstract and transform this meme 1000 times because there will always be somebody who knows how to do something and then there is something else that doesn’t work the way he/she/they/etc. are used to and searching for an answer is too hard.

    Or am I just dumb, ranting about something that doesn’t even matter because in the end there will always be new people, for which vim is new and hard and vim maybe is the most popular thing most of the new users on here have a hard time understanding. Will this meme ever evolve into something else at one point? Was there a precursor to this meme before vim or vi existed? What are other similar memes that I reacted to the same way because I find myself in a similar spot as most people find themselves with vim and I am just a hypocrite?

    TL;DR: Just disregard my useless comment, enjoy the things you want to enjoy, and be happy, you only get one life, don’t waste it getting mad at useless shit.

    • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      44·
      10 months ago

      Started writing my own in-terminal editor recently.

      When I ran it the first time I realized that I hadn’t implemented quitting yet.

    • kurwa@lemmy.world
      91·
      10 months ago

      Now if we’re talking about vi, that’s a whole other thing. First time on a system and the git editor was set to vi, and I was like oh I know exactly how to get out of this because I know vim a bit, turns out I was wrong. It did legitimately throw me for a loop haha

    • Zink@programming.dev
      7·
      10 months ago

      I think it’s just a memorable shared experience that a big portion of Linux users had at one point. That kind of thing is prime meme fuel. And sure, there is always a fresh supply of people who ran into it recently.

      For me, I’ve been familiar with *nix for decades, but I’ve only been a daily Linux user for about a year. I remember using emacs back in my Unix days, so the sudden unexpected learning curve of vim commands is fairly recent to me. I’ve already seen like 50 variations of this meme since joining the “lol exiting vim” club, but they still amuse me.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      817·
      10 months ago

      Hey, I read man pages all that time, Vi/Vim are just unreasonably complicated. Sure, those commands had sense when there were no key modifiers available on keyboards, but in this day and age, to not at least add some shortcuts to be part of the program by default… thanks, but if I have to read a man page to exit a terminal text editor, that’s just not really my cup of tea.

      • Tau@sopuli.xyz
        181·
        10 months ago

        If you like modifier keys so much you are going to love emacs (default, not evil)

      • cyberpunk007@lemmy.world
        4·
        10 months ago

        I don’t know when or why I learned vi, but once I used it for that short period of time I got used to it and it’s just muscle memory for me now. 99% of the dime I’m using x to delete text, yy (or #yy) and dd (or #dd) or p/P to copy/delete/paste lines, or :s/oldtext/newtext/g, or :wq or :x to write and quit. That’s like basically all I ever use VI for and it’s quick and easy to do. Once you know it, like anything, it’s quite a nice editor. Of course it can do a lot more than I typically use it for.

        If you think it’s complicated, think about the first time you had to type sudo apt-get install firefox instead of googling Firefox and double clicking an executable.

        • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
          34·
          10 months ago

          You just kindly described why no one ever should use Vim :D

          Using xyzbdvefsisgshs to copy-paste a line is not the level of convenience someone expects from a modern tool

          • jkozaka@lemm.ee
            3·
            10 months ago

            sure, but there are so many commands that are absolute godsends. one of my favourites is the c command. I can just write ct" and change all the text up to the next speech mark. and if you dislike some of the binds, make your own! (n)vi(m) is super customisable.

            just because it’s not familiar doesn’t mean it’s bad.

            • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
              1·
              10 months ago

              Fair enough.

              I guess someone can make use of this all, just not regular users. Besides, the controls are very legacy and it would make sense to make an updated version just to keep it more in line with tools people are used to and generally enhance user experience.

          • hisbaan@lemm.ee
            3·
            10 months ago

            Convenience is often a tradeoff for power. Nobody is claiming that vi and its derivatives are convenient, they’re saying it’s powerful.

            Personally I’m much much faster using neovim than I could be using something like vscode. There’s a myriad of other benefits that modal text editing brings to the table, not having to use a mouse and constantly switch back and forth being a big one for me.

          • cyberpunk007@lemmy.world
            11·
            10 months ago

            By that logic get away from Linux, eventually you’ll have to touch a shell and google some things to find out what to type inside a terminal. It’s not hard to learn i for insert and type stuff and esc to get out, colon x to save and quit. If you can’t remember those 3 steps you can’t even update your system on a command line lol.

            sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade sudo pacman -Syyu

            Etc. 3+ things to remember in each example.

            • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
              2·
              10 months ago

              The terminal commands have same idea and structure and apply to the entirety of your system. While it is still sometimes annoying to learn CLI commands of third-party apps (yes, I know of man, but it can be useless without examples at times), commands are generally the same for Linux systems and they cover everything.

              Learning vim is like learning Linux terminal again, but for just one task of word processing in one specific application. Why?

              With that being said, I’d rather solve most of my problems with GUI applications rather than go into a terminal. I can do stuff through terminal - I know basics of Linux/Unix commands - but just why? For most routine tasks, it is simply faster and easier to go with GUI, unless you are over SSH or just have a terminal-only instance, or unless you’re a sysadmin that does it 20 times each day and have muscle memory running in front of thinking what you wanna do.

              I know how to update packages through terminal - the thing you demonstrate. But I can also press two buttons in app store and it will all be done for me, so why bother? (Also, you call it three steps, but it’s kinda two steps on Debian or other apt-based distros followed by one step in Arch and other pacman-enabled ones? I’m confused)

              I’m certainly not gonna use terminal for word processing unless I absolutely have to. And for that, I’ll pick nano.

              Linux has to get more user-friendly - and it does. Most people are not die-hard terminal fanatics and want to get their stuff done with minimal headache - and that’s where it goes and should go. Being vim elitist doubles down on that terminal philosophy that is alien to an average user. And we should not discourage any type of user to try Linux for as long as they are willing to figure truly necessary stuff out.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      Yep, pretty much the same experience… I was like “fuck, what did I fuck up now 🤦 😭… the owner is gonna kill me 😬” 😂.