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My wife was unimpressed by Vim
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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Git is simple in its operations, but utterly complex in the stuff you might need to do because the operations aren't mathematically clean. Things like git rerere should plainly not exist because states which require using it should be impossible to reach. And the likes of vim, or pre-2.8 blender, kinda ended up there as they grew organically, the more you tack on the more likely it is that different things don't work well with each other. Which is why I recommended helix: It's a clean-slate redesign. E.g. helix' command language is consistently while vim is all over the place, you end up learning things by rote instead of really exploiting the combinatorics. On the VCS side darcs is sane in principle but it's patch theory didn't really have efficiency in mind and there's a very nasty complexity explosion you can run into, pijul fixes all that: It has both a vastly superior interface without surprises (such as patches not being associative) and it's fast.
The most striking difference between the likes of VSCode and Helix are not things that you do once a month, but stuff that you do all the times: Navigating and basic editing. Within the first couple of pages of going through the tutorial you'll know if navigating with hjklwWbB etc. is a thing that would save you time, whether it's worth making the interface modal, having to type i (or various other options) before actually writing text. I certainly still haven't really gotten my head around Helix' multiple cursors because I don't need it that often but VSCode wouldn't be any faster at those kind of things, either.
Language Server Protocol. Actually started out on VSCode, it's how language integration works: The compiler writers (or whoever) provide functionality such as "give me docs for a certain identifier", "rename this identifier" etc. and the editor/IDE simply offers those options, display the docs in-line, etc. It quickly caught on everywhere, 20 years ago you certainly wouldn't have seen me advocate writing Java in vim because the likes of Eclipse were just way better at wrangling the language, but the times of those language-specific functions not being available in good ole code editors are over.
Tell you what. As I've just ended a contract and have some time to work on my side project while I job hunt, I'll give it a shot for the rest of this month and report back.
Blog post! Blog post!
Probably no one but you will find this there. Which is good because this is just an extremely raw first draft. I'm not asking for answers from you here. If part of my experience is "go find random people on Lemmy to help" that doesn't seem useful. But I want to share this experience which was about 90 minutes of my day, and also see how compatible the markdown here is with Joplin, which is my note-taking tool of choice. I don't know if I can stick with this man. I haven't even opened Vim yet.
I took on a challenge in a Lemmy comment to use Vim for a month. To give some context for this experience, let's start off with the relevant details of who I am.
So one of the first things it was suggested I would need is LSP. I don't recall what it stands for (I mean I could google it, but I might as well be honest about my ignorance, right?), but anyway I searched for "ubuntu install LSP". As one does. The top result is a thread on Reddit in r/neovim. The fuck is Neovim?
So more googling tells me Neovim is a fork of Vim 7 that some folks like and other folks aren't bothered about. There are plugins for both (why the fuck do you need a plugin for a text editor?) and some plugins work with both while others work on one or the other. Just like everything else in the Linux world, there are no fucking answers, just opinions and most of them are totally irrelvant to your environment or use case. I just want to edit some fucking code. So I'm sticking with Vim - that's the point, right?
So back to the original question, how do I install LSP and whatever plugin is needed? For anyone keeping score, I started with one question and now I have three with one... well less answered than just decided. I think I'll google "getting started with Vim and LSP"
Top result is very promising. "End goal: get working LSP in Vim for Python. Constraints: please no neovim suggestions." Other than Python instead of Java, this is perfect! This is my thread!
First, fuck me. It's just a bunch of random fucking repos. Who the fuck are these people? I guess this guy is endorsing ALE. Is w0rp a person? Organization? Grad student? Seasoned professional? A guy one hamburger away from a heart attack?
So anyway it looks like I also need a language server (that's the LS in LSP, 'twould seem - nice when questions answer themselves). Wait a second... That was my original question! They didn't answer how to do the thing I wanted to do, they answered how to do the other thing I didn't know I wanted to know how to do. I'm going to file this bookmark away because it's not relevant to me just now, but it looks like this will be my next question.
For now, back to google: "ubuntu install lsp java"
Okay a bunch of shit about emacs and people having or overcoming difficulties in installing it. That's not promising - seems just installing fucking LSP is about to be an ordeal. Oh! Here's a github by George W Fraser. I don't know who that is, but he uses his middle initial, so clearly someone of import and sophistication. Important side note: If he went by his full middle name, that would be a serial killer. A subtle but critical distinction.
Actually that may not be entirely true. I feel like I've seen his name before. Let's see what he has to say.
Fuck me again! He says to use vim-lsc. Wait a god damn minute... This is the same fucking question I just had non-answered by some random redditor! How do I install the god damned language server, motherfucker!?
To be continued...
Remember what I said about the vim out of the box experience and configuration nightmare? Yep that's why.
If you want to stick with (n)vim over helix head over here, which is going to take away like 90% of the pain. You'll still need to go "yep I want this and this and this" but it's much more like browsing through the VSCode store and hitting "install". Quick start guide, general IDE, Java IDE should do it. There's actually more end-user type documentation for spacevim as compared to vim (which is a giant heap of hysterical raisins noone writes beginner intros for) or helix (which is too young to have actually good docs). Both are more opinionated than plain vim+whatever plugins but at least as far as I'm concerned I don't care which of the fifty available fuzzy file finder plugins I'm using: I just want one that works. Spacevim makes a default choice for you, helix has one built-in. Same goes for LSP integration.
Also you don't necessarily need to dive in at the deep end. As said most of the difference vs. your usual IDE isn't in feature set but how you interact with the thing, editing markdown should suffice to get a good idea, with or without LSP support in the case of markdown it's really optional, I think it's mostly about helping you to not have broken links.
I have no problem with opinionated software. I need a starting point from which to disagree. Thanks for the links. I'll read up this afternoon or tomorrow.