The Dev Blog: How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse

How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse

guy.naor@famundo.com (Guy Naor) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 08:03:00 -0500

For the longest time, since starting to work with Ruby and Rails, I used Eclipse with RadRails and RDT for coding. It's a pretty good IDE as far as IDEs go, and has nice Ruby/Rails tools to make development a lot easier. It also has a VERY nice subversion interface. One of the best I've seen as far as working the way I like to work.

On the down-side, it's a performance hog and the editor itself is so-so in features.

As I also do system admin chores on remote computers, I always use vi as well. And for many quick and dirty tasks, I use it even localy. Developing on a Linux machine, I always have some terminal windows open. Slowly I was pulled to do more things with vim, until I realized I prefer being in it than in Eclipse. Now I spend 90% of my time in vi, and most of my projects never even see Eclipse.

Why did I switch? First and foremost vi as an editor is really good. And lets keep the vi/emacs wars for another time. I'm sure emacs is a really good editor as well. I just have to choose my tools. Can't use all of them. Second thing is speed. I NEVER have to wait for vi. It's always super fast and super responsive.

But to make vi really useful with ruby and rails, some additions are needed. After all, I want synax highlighting, macros, easy way to open files, etc... So here is a list of vim scripts/plugins I use and recommed:

rails.vim, eruby.vim, ruby-macros.vim, rubycomplete.vim

There are many more additions and plugins on the vim site. Please note that some require the newer vim 7 to work.

Another option is getting the rails-vim gem: sudo gem install vim-ruby. Please note you have to then run the vim-ruby-install.rb script to complete installation.

So now that we have vim loaded with the additions, where do we start? Granted, the learning curve is steep! And don't get me started on using the esc key so much, that I keep doing it in Eclipse ;-). But as the editor is our main tool of work, learning it pays for itself later with productivity. vim has a lot of help written for it, and you can access it from within vim, but I prefer browsing it on the internet. So start with this short tutorial, and then bookmark the main help file. And for the rails related parts, take a look here. Some of the things it does are just awesome. I open files faster with :Rfind than on a tree in the IDE browser! And check out the partial extraction. That one is unbelievable.

vim also has the GUI version in gvim. And there you can open multiple tabs and have an IDE like file browser. Use that if you are more comfortable with the mouse and a real GUI. It's also easier to stasrt with as it has menus for the more common commands.

One thing I did that really got me into more advanced editing, is deciding that whenever I want to do something, and I don't know how to best do it, I stop resorting to hacking a solution with the things I know, and look for the real solution. In a few short weeks I learned more than in the last 5 years...

So give vi a try. Give yourself some learning time, and you'll never look back!

BTW, I also use svn from the command line. I'ts so much faster than from Eclipse that I don't mind the few keystrokes it takes to get things done. It's so much faster!

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Harvey Sugar

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 07:48:55 -0400

I've been programming in several languages for quite a while and have used several editors and IDEs. I don't do Ruby (yet) but for Java and C++, I use Eclipse for compile/debug and fixing little compile errors. BUT I still do almost all my code entry and major editing with vim. Sure it's cryptic but you won't find anything as responsive and powerful as vim and you can pretty much depend on finding a version that runs on any OS that you may be using.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by meek

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:38:52 -0500

As an ex-VIM user, I recommend Scribes on Linux. It provides most of the essential features of VIM, without the hideous user interface and ridiculous learning curve. Within an hour, you'd be more productive in Scribes than you'll ever be in VIM.

Flash Demo: http://scribes.sf.net/demo.htm

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Antonio

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:36:10 -0500

Hi,

I'm also a vim fan :-)

Now, what about NetBeans?

There's a vi plugin for NetBeans . I've been using it for a month or so and, although not as potent as VIM, I must admit that it has increased my productivity by a factor of ten.

Furthermore, NetBeans Ruby support is on the make!!

Finally, the NetBeans Community is asking Eclipse users for feed back on new editor features.

You can see examples of feedback and ask for your favourite features to be added to the next version of NetBeans.

Cheers,

Antonio

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Guy Naor

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:05:27 -0500

Ryan, e-texteditor.com looks nice, but I'm on Linux, so it won't work for me...

Glad to see there'll be some TextMate solutions for us not MacOS users.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by ryan.richards@mindonstatic.com

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 10:19:25 -0500

Yes VIM rocks. I use vim for everything. HOWEVER, I just started playing a new editor called e-textmate. Its AWESOME. It's supposed to be a textmate close and even uses some of the textmate bundles. Its not free but only costs about $30. Its missing vi keybindings but you can add them or wait (they say its coming ). Check it out at http://e-texteditor.com. For those chained to windows you will be happy to know it HEAVILY integrates with Cygwin and actually requires it.

Ryan

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Guy Naor

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:29:42 -0500

Casey, try to run this search and see what comes up. Seems there's a TON of Python add-ons for vim. I have no idea which is good, as I don't regularly use python.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Guy Naor

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 05:37:31 -0500

Steve, I'm on Fedora Core, and it installed fine. Then I installed the gtk2 package, but on launch it fails with some uninitialized constant. It's missing something, but I didn'thave the time to look into it. Hopefully I will have time over the weekend.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by casey

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:08:26 -0500

Interesting... I use PyDev (Eclipse plugin) for Python development, but end up having to use vim anyway on the development server.

Maybe there's something like this for Python?

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Steve

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:53:27 -0500

Guy, I'm on debian and it worked out of the box. I just did gem install vimmate. I did have to install gtk2 to get the console functionality working. I haven't tried it on windows. Let me know what you think once you get it working or if I can help out.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Guy Naor

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:26:48 -0500

Steve, I downloaded and installed vimmate, but still can't get it to work. From the screencast it looks great, so I'll work on making it work and try it.

viaddict, is this plugin able to do all the vim text handling, or it's mostly a key-mapper?

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by viaddict

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:05:32 -0500

dude, there's a vi plugin for eclipse. some of it is quirky, but it's great to have the best of both worlds.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by supersaurus

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:28:09 -0500

or you could use viper with emacs. you get to keep the convenience and terseness of vi (but much improved over the original) and still have the power of emacs. to those who cry "the worst of both worlds!" I say: pish tush! nothing of the kind, it is the best of both!

viper-mode comes with emacs, read about it in info.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Albin

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:59:33 -0500

I map the jk combination to Esc. It's a combination rarely used in normal typing, and it's right on the home row. It's the fastest map that I've found.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Guy Naor

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:47:46 -0500

Bojan, rectangular selections are easy with vim - Ctrl-v initiate rectangular selection, while Shift-v is for line selection mode (always selects full lines).

I use almost always vim, though I do use gvim from time to time. The way I work is I have multiple tabs open in the terminal for different projects, and I use vim inside those.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Bojan

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:06:40 -0500

I am using JEdit too. I really like some features like multiple and rectangular selections. I hate not being able to set prefered encoding per project.

Wonder how vim works on windows? Guy do you use gvim or vim?

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Steve

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:39:59 -0500

You may want to check out vimmate, I've only started using it but it seems to do a lot of things I've been looking for for rails development.

http://vimmate.rubyforge.org/

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by regeya

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:18:35 -0500

Not doing rails work but working with ruby, I find I prefer jEdit...but to each their own. :-D One thing I really miss is integrated Subversion support; for that, I just switch to a terminal right now, but that's a bit inconvenient.

I have mine set up to be a bit like TextMate--there's a lot of TextMate envy outside the OS X world--but it's not the Most Perfect Interface ever. I like it better than trying to remember vim commands. I have a terrible memory for such things. I remember basic key movement commands, entering and exiting edit mode, :w, :r, :w! and that's about it. Anything else I need a reference for, and if I need a reference it's not worth it. :-D

For the record, I'm running jEdit on a G4/450 "Sawtooth" and an ancient desktop based on a C3 Ezra running Xubuntu. So no, I don't consider either of those to be the truck that powers the space-age laser cutter.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Chris Eidhof

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:07:17 -0500

Very cool! Did you ever take a look at svnvimdiff? That's svn diff combined with vim, I love it. I used to work in a very bloated IDE, and use Windows and TortoiseSVN, but now I've finally switched to Mac + vim + Terminal.app full-time. And I love it.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Guy Naor

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:42:19 -0500

Sarcasto, I think your analogy is wrong. I rather use the chainsaw - it's a bit dangerous, but very fast. I rather not use this space age Laser cutter. It is VERY nice and has lots of functionality. But the truck that comes with it to power it, is a bit too much for me ;-)

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Sarcasto

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:33:04 -0500

Here son use this handsaw to chop down that oak tree and put away that chainsaw it's cumbersome and clunky. It will take you longer to chop down that tree but you doing it the way our grandfather did. Great just want I want to do is go back and us and editor that I have to remember all the key combinations to do anything kinda like using old WordPerfect.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Guy Naor

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:28:25 -0500

Tiago, TextMate isn't even an option for me. Dev done on Linux...

BTW, I'm uplaoding an update to acts_as_rated. Just an improvement in the find_by_rating. Following that, another updated with a host of new functions will also be uploaded.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Tiago Serafim

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:14:48 -0500

Hello again!

Nice point... I moved recently from eclipse too.. but to textmate and IÂ´m loving it.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Greg

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 17:57:38 -0500

You can buy (for a few Euros) a vi plugin for Eclipse. It's not perfect, but it's not too bad.

http://www.satokar.com/viplugin/index.php

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Nathan

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 17:09:20 -0500

I just switched from Vim (which you mistakenly over and over again call vi) to emacs. Both editors are very nice. Emacs seems to be a bit more powerful in terms of scripting. However either is a valid choice as far as I am concerned.

"How I learned to Love vim and Ditched Eclipse" by Doug

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 15:54:56 -0500

Check out the SVN plugin too!