Battling VI addiction...
They say cigarettes are addictive. They also say that about drugs, coffee and various other things. But for some reason nobody mentions VI. Yes VI, VI: a text editor originally created for UNIX, but now available for pretty much any operating system out there.
When I was first shown VI, I laughed. I thought it was a crappy editor, a remnant from the 70s, an era when the mouse was still unknown to the masses. I had trouble exiting the damn editor, nevermind successfully editing a file. Nevertheless, I forced myself to learn it. Partly because I wanted to look cool among my classmates, and partly because I wanted to see for myself what all the VI hype was about.
For the next month my working productivity was nearly zero. VI turned out to be surprisingly difficult to learn. The biggest problem was the number of key combinations I had to learn. Additionally, it was very difficult to accept the fact that navigation was now done using 'h', 'j', 'k', 'l' instead of the familiar left, down, up, right keys.
It's 4 years later. I still haven't fully grasped VI, yet my current knowledge is sufficient enough to edit any file a lot faster than if I was using another, more modern, editor. Not only that, but I've gotten so used to the VI keystrokes and navigation keys that I'm almost handicapped when it comes down to using another editor.
A natural question then is Why use another editor at all ? Use VI all the time. Well, as much as I'd love to, unfortunately VI is not suitable for all purposes. Sometimes I have to use Microsoft Word, and these days most of the Java development is done in either Eclipse or IDEA. There are VI plugins for the latter 2 editors, but it's not the same.
The point is. I somewhat regret I've learned VI. It's an amazing editor, possibly the best out there. Unfortunately, once you get used to it, it becomes inconvenient to use anything else.
When I was first shown VI, I laughed. I thought it was a crappy editor, a remnant from the 70s, an era when the mouse was still unknown to the masses. I had trouble exiting the damn editor, nevermind successfully editing a file. Nevertheless, I forced myself to learn it. Partly because I wanted to look cool among my classmates, and partly because I wanted to see for myself what all the VI hype was about.
For the next month my working productivity was nearly zero. VI turned out to be surprisingly difficult to learn. The biggest problem was the number of key combinations I had to learn. Additionally, it was very difficult to accept the fact that navigation was now done using 'h', 'j', 'k', 'l' instead of the familiar left, down, up, right keys.
It's 4 years later. I still haven't fully grasped VI, yet my current knowledge is sufficient enough to edit any file a lot faster than if I was using another, more modern, editor. Not only that, but I've gotten so used to the VI keystrokes and navigation keys that I'm almost handicapped when it comes down to using another editor.
A natural question then is Why use another editor at all ? Use VI all the time. Well, as much as I'd love to, unfortunately VI is not suitable for all purposes. Sometimes I have to use Microsoft Word, and these days most of the Java development is done in either Eclipse or IDEA. There are VI plugins for the latter 2 editors, but it's not the same.
The point is. I somewhat regret I've learned VI. It's an amazing editor, possibly the best out there. Unfortunately, once you get used to it, it becomes inconvenient to use anything else.
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