Since going through the hassle of learning vim I can't use anything else anymore.
And for the use case of
"I built txt because I spend most of my time in the terminal, and switching to a different tool just to make a quick edit always felt like friction I did not want. The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful."
it's literally only a handful of vim commands and shortcuts you need.
Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it. But I'm also interested in trying Kakoune (https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html) -- which I understand also has a VSCode plugin called Dance (https://github.com/71/dance) -- as I've seen somewhat convincing arguments that it is a more powerful model for modal editing.
Instead of "verb object" (eg. delete word or "dw"), it is "object verb" (eg. word delete, or "wd").
In particular, it seems to obsolete "visual mode" from vim (which I use often), because you're essentially always in visual mode. You always get to see a selection before you perform an action. Or at least that's what I understand, I haven't tried it yet.
I've been using kakoune for the past 2-3 years and it has been great. My main reason for switching from vim was the adherence to the Unix philosophy, but the editing model has been great. Seeing your selections change after each command + the clippy help text when entering a different "mode"^1 has made learning different editing patterns very easy. The only thing I really miss from vim is the number increment/decrement shortcut. There is a plugin for it, but I haven't tried it out yet (incrementing each selection by a different amount hasn't come up often enough for me).
Comments
Since going through the hassle of learning vim I can't use anything else anymore.
And for the use case of "I built txt because I spend most of my time in the terminal, and switching to a different tool just to make a quick edit always felt like friction I did not want. The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful."
it's literally only a handful of vim commands and shortcuts you need.
Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it. But I'm also interested in trying Kakoune (https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html) -- which I understand also has a VSCode plugin called Dance (https://github.com/71/dance) -- as I've seen somewhat convincing arguments that it is a more powerful model for modal editing.
Instead of "verb object" (eg. delete word or "dw"), it is "object verb" (eg. word delete, or "wd").
In particular, it seems to obsolete "visual mode" from vim (which I use often), because you're essentially always in visual mode. You always get to see a selection before you perform an action. Or at least that's what I understand, I haven't tried it yet.
I've been using kakoune for the past 2-3 years and it has been great. My main reason for switching from vim was the adherence to the Unix philosophy, but the editing model has been great. Seeing your selections change after each command + the clippy help text when entering a different "mode"^1 has made learning different editing patterns very easy. The only thing I really miss from vim is the number increment/decrement shortcut. There is a plugin for it, but I haven't tried it out yet (incrementing each selection by a different amount hasn't come up often enough for me).
^1: kakoune doesn't have multi character shortcuts. You create a "mode" which works basically like a namespace for keystrokes (https://igor-ramazanov.github.io/doc/pages/modes.html).
That sounds like an amazing investment, really makes me want to learn it too!
It's a shame that it ever felt like a hassle.
We should be introducing people to vim long before they are learning it under pressure. As you say, it's really not a lot to remember.