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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 4 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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[–] ssm@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

and similars

mg (minimal emacs clone, lighter than nvi) and ed user here, minimal editors integrate well into unix environments. I view IDEs as providing what is missing for people who haven't learned their OS tooling (or their tooling sucks/doesn't exist). I have no need for a heavier editor because I can already do everything I need to and more with shell suspension & job control, find, and regular expression tools (grep, sed, awk, ed), and building similar capabilities into a huge IDE prevents me from having common tooling when working within other parts of my system, and uses up my limited muscle-memory for learning tools that are largely inferior and poorly documented compared to the standardized portable tooling that works almost everywhere.