Anyone use vi?

[DrJones]

Is anyone here a big vi,vim, gvim user? I just started using it and it kicks ass. It seems a little archaic at first but man is it efficient and powerfull. There are so many cool things you can get it to do when you start customizing it. I highly recomend any programer/developer check it out.

[STIBungy]

I use vi when I'm working on a Unix system. I like Notepad too. Great for copying and pasting stuff. I like Excel too. It's fun to create a huge text file, change it to comma delimited, then parse it out in columns and extract what you want and then script something that makes life 10x+ better.

Work smarter, not harder

[Weston]

vi is ancient shit and a pain in my ass to use. AIX'es e3 is bad enough. I use joe or jed on Linux, or DOS "edit" on Windows... they're simple and straight forward. It's silly to torture yourself trying to get anything done with cryptic editors.

[DrJones]

Originally posted by Weston
vi is ancient shit and a pain in my ass to use.

That's exactly what I thought untill I started learning it. My first thought was whats the point of not using the mouse or arrow keys...

However i've found after getting into it more that it's probably one of the most powerfull, customizable editors out there. I can do stuff in VI that Visual Studio .NET 2003 won't let me do. It definatly takes a lot of time to learn, but man is it worth it. It's the perfect combination of simplicity and power.

Using it as just a 'notepad' type app is a total waste. It can do so much more.

[john]

I've been using vi for longer than a lot of people who frequent this board have been alive. :)

It's only a pain in the ass until you learn how amazingly poweful it is. Not bad for a 30+ yr old piece of software. :)

Vim is very nice, esp when you've got the colors enabled. The automatic syntax checking simply kicks ass. I've even got it loaded on my windows box @ work for those times when I've gotta edit something for windows...

[crxrocks]

Yup, use it everyday at work. In fact, I catch myself trying to hit the escape key or the cntl-f key when I am in Word.

Chris

[Mr. NoSkills]

fucking hate it haha, but like you talked about it's probably cause i've never taken the time to get really in depth with it. i don't do much coding so for just editing conf files pico works fine.
here at work on the qnx machines i use vedit though. kind of like a combo of vi and pico. haven't seen it on linux though, maybe i'm just not looking hard enough...

[exciv2000]

try locate vedit.
I use pico too, works good enough for me.

[THRICE]

Hey, last time I checked the website wasn't called "High Altitude Programmers" enough with the stoopid computer bullshit every other damn thread.

Just Kidding. :D

[DrJones]

Computers are the coolest (you wouldn't be browsing this board if it wasn't for them)

John: What is this automatic syntax checking you speak of? Is it a script or option you can turn on? It sounds like it will check your code as you write it and show where your syntax errors are without compiling (i've seen some other compilers do it). Do you have any other tips for the Vim newbie?

[alpha]

Originally posted by exciv2000
try locate vedit.
I use pico too, works good enough for me. pico bothers me. i just don't really like it.