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Users of Vim and similars, what exactly makes it useful compared to other text editors? How much time do you suppose you save when working with it? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 months ago by ICastFist@programming.dev to c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

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I'd like actual examples instead of "I work faster", something like "I can move straight to the middle of the file with 7mv" or "I can keep 4 different text snippets in memory and paste each with a number+pt, like 2pt", things that you actually use somewhat frequently instead of what you can do, but probably only did once.

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[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Ever had to make the same change on dozens of lines? Now you can do it in seconds.

This would be a big advantage... except multiple cursors were invented so I can easily do that without having to memorize a whole new editing language.

[–] Balinares@pawb.social 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Multiple cursors are fantastic for certain use cases, but will not help you when each line needs a different input -- if you're swapping arguments in function calls, if you're replacing one bracket type with another around contents of arbitrary length, etc.

Mind you, if your objective here is to not learn a new thing, then you can just go ahead and do that, you don't need an excuse.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 3 points 3 months ago

Yeah, I usually do that with regexp replacement in other editors, but sometimes it's too hard to express as a regular expression

[–] zagaberoo@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago

That's just one thing the editing language does, though. There's no single feature you can point to as the smoking gun; it's all the small advantages added together that make vi worthwhile.