johncoltrane (u/johncoltrane)

johncoltrane commented on Twelve Days of Shell 12days.cmdchallenge.com... · Posted by u/zoidb

arionmiles · 12 days ago

I love vim tutor!

I learnt the basics of vim navigation through it. I'm yet to finish it since I dropped it after the first chapter to start using it as a daily driver and picking things as I need. I will probably come back and go through it again at some point and by then it will be another mind-blown situation

johncoltrane · 11 days ago

Hmm. It looks like I forgot a pointer to the actual tutorial. I wasn't talking about vimtutor, which only covers very basic topics, but about the much more extensive user manual: :help user-manual.

johncoltrane commented on Twelve Days of Shell 12days.cmdchallenge.com... · Posted by u/zoidb

arionmiles · 12 days ago

I've recently reached a point where I feel I've reached an upper limit with how much efficiency I can extract from my usual toolset/editors. So I've gone on a journey where I'm finally exploring tools that make living in the command line a productive and pleasant experience for me.

I've long put off learning or even exploring tmux or learning more than a few handful of vim keybinds. So I started digging into configuring them and learning them well enough to be able to regularly use them for work and personal computers.

It's been very pleasant, to say the least. There's still a few ways I need to go where I do everything from the command line and the keyboard, but I think it's worth training your muscles to be comfortable with doing things purely using the keyboard.

I've switched to vim mode for a few tools that offer it. I started seriously using vimium on chrome and firefox (a friend had introduced me to it about 7 years ago but I never cared enough to learn it well).

Another reason I finally made the jump was that I've been having RSI pain on my right hand due to using mouse too much and in un-ergonomic positions. While I've taken measures to improve ergonomic use of the mouse and keyboard, I'm just totally impressed with the capabilities of keyboard navigation and how much value you can extract out of your keyboard.

My friends have been egging on me about the bell curve meme, but I think it's important for me to figure out the limits and then maybe I will finally go back to defaults and simpler tools. The only way to be on the right side of the bell curve is through the middle.

johncoltrane · 12 days ago

Forget cheatsheets, tweets, videos, books, etc. Vim comes with a very well made built-in tutorial that will gently pull you toward maximum efficiency.

johncoltrane commented on The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic US authoritarian-stack.info/... · Posted by u/negativelambda

WastedCucumber · 2 months ago

In principle I agree that change is possible and good under democracy, but your comment seems wildly out of touch in the present context.he change that I see happening in the USA now does not seem like a change of democratic form, but a move away from democracy, because a lot of core rights/freedoms/structures are under threat: freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, right to protest, and maybe we'll see free and fair elections get weakened too before this process is done.

And none of that seems like a feature to me.

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

You can have the core things you mention in other political systems and you can have democracy without them. Those are characteristics of the particular form(s) of democracy currently in place in most of "the west", not of democracy itself.

> maybe

I know, it's more exciting to play the worst scenarios in one's head, but… _maybe not_?

johncoltrane commented on The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic US authoritarian-stack.info/... · Posted by u/negativelambda

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

Democracy can have many forms, some more authoritarian than others. And it being able to morph into a different form as the conditions change is very much a feature, not a bug.

johncoltrane commented on Robust Technology: Protrek Watches pilledtexts.com/robust-te... · Posted by u/Fred34

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

Very satisfied owner of a (smaller) PRW-30Y, here (with a matching after market "oyster" bracelet).

Always on time, always charged, always precise, highly readable, packed with useful features… that thing went through a lot without any issue whatsoever. It only leaves my wrist when I feel like cleaning it.

Highly recommended.

johncoltrane commented on Classic Hotline tracker network revived macos9lives.com/?post=cla... · Posted by u/DASD

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

Hotline, Carracho, KDX… oh, the memories.

johncoltrane commented on Ask HN: Preferred Next.js Alternatives? · Posted by u/blinkbat

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

(detailed use case) => detailed reasoning

johncoltrane commented on Sony PlayStation 2 fixing frenzy retrohax.net/sony-playsta... · Posted by u/ibobev

freditup · 2 months ago

Does anyone know the best way to get a reliably working PS2 nowadays? I happen to have a bunch of old PS2 games and would love to have a reliable PS2 to be able to use them with. But buying online seems fairly fraught - how do you have any guarantee you get a reliable device? And they seem to be fairly expensive now.

(I couldn't read the article because the site was currently down for me, so apologies if this comment is off-topic, but hopefully relevant!)

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

The ones you can find online are sold by people who know the market all too well so the prices are high. Plus it's online so there's no guarantee about anything.

Pawn shops, thrift stores, or their "modern" equivalents (EasyCash, CashConverters, etc. YMMV) would be a good start. I got mine out of a pile for 10€ at a countryside GiFi (French store) ten years ago.

johncoltrane commented on Search and Replace in Vim vimregex.com/... · Posted by u/kirurik

kirurik · 2 months ago

I did the neovim tutorial which I accessed via :Tutor, I see now that vimtutor has some divergences, I will do that tutorial also, to improve my muscle memory and knowledge.

Thanks for your other tips as well. I'll try and approach it that way, just doing it little by little, I don't always need VSCode and for simple edits its already way better than nano, although tbf I didn't take the time to learn all of nanos functionality.

It probably is best to take it slow and not cut corners. Play some vimgolf and take it slow, try to get the base stuff like regex search and replace down. Learning regex well can be applied to other things as well, so it is worth it to practice it in the context of vim.

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

I would stay away from vimgolf if I were you because it focuses too heavily on a useless metric, number of keystrokes. The so-called "Vim language" is about expressiveness, intuitiveness, composability, etc., so performing a task in 20 keystrokes is meaningless if it took two minutes to figure out each of them. 40 or 50 keystrokes that flowed without thinking are always better.

Also I must say that my regex-fu improved dramatically after I picked Vim.

johncoltrane commented on Search and Replace in Vim vimregex.com/... · Posted by u/kirurik

kirurik · 2 months ago

I'm currently learning vim and usign neovim, coming from VScode, wondering how y'all learned it if you made a similar switch, how long it took to learn and your opinions on purely text based editors vs smth like VScode that has a ton of features and plugins.

johncoltrane · 2 months ago

Vim comes with everything you need.

The journey starts by running the following command:

    $ vimutor

in your shell to learn the absolute basics in about 20 minutes, which is largely enough to be able to perform quick edits on config files. If it didn't stick the first time, then try again. If it didn't stick the second time, then don't bother: Vim is not for you and that's 100% OK.

At the end of vimtutor there is a strong hint that there is a lot more to learn. If you are still interested at this point, then run the following command in a Vim session to access the user manual:

    :help user-manual

An _active_ reading of chapters 1-12 and 20-32 is pretty much required if you really want Vim to disappear. Skipping this step will make everything worse down the line. It may take something like a month or two if you only do that, and probably a couple more if you do that on the side.

Now, a few recommendations…

Yes, you _need_ to read a lot and experiment a lot if you ever hope to become proficient with Vim. Just like with any "pro" app. It takes time and practice to become a pro at anything. That's life. Luckily, no one is expecting you to be a "pro" vimmer, now or ever, so you can do the learning at your leisure and even drop out if you have to. It's just a weird text editor after all and you still have VSCode.

Each chapter of the user manual builds up on the previous ones so you actually get a very gentle and progression curve. The wording is also very approachable so you don't have to be a CS major to understand it.

Don't go in with the project of replacing your current editor. This would be an absolute waste of time as it would give you false expectations AND a strong incentive to cut corners. Just… look at it. Poke at it. See if you like it and, eventually, dive in. Maybe you will end up replacing VSCode with it. Maybe not. Who cares?

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As a programer, I have been using Vim as main text editor since 2010. I love it and I'm pretty good at it, active in the community and all, but I also use other editors and IDEs when doing so makes more sense and I'm not here to evangelize the masses. Vim is old and weird and powerful but a) that power comes at a (rather low, IMO) price and b) it won't solve all your problems so don't invest too much, emotionally, into that learning.