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I have great respect for Julia Evans and love her contributions that get shown here.

But...

> "I’ve always thought that vi mode seems really cool, but for some reason even though I’m a vim user I didn’t really like using it when I tried it."

Really, that seems weird to me.

I use zsh (btw) and the problem she describes is a non-issue. And I am not a pro. (Sorry, Julia).




I have to agree with the other commenter (drewg123). Been a Vim user for decades but don't use Vi-mode in the terminal.

> the problem she describes is a non-issue. And I am not a pro.

Not sure what you're saying here. Julia didn't describe a problem but a preference ("I didn’t really like using it"). I'm not sure how you can you call someone's preference a non-issue. It's a preference and we're allowed to have those last I checked! :p


"even though entering some text and editing it is a very “basic” task, it took me maybe 15 years of using the terminal every single day to get used to using Ctrl+A to go to the beginning of the line (or Ctrl+E for the end)."

This sounded to me like she was describing a problem. My bad.

And I too am allowed express opinions, no?


In your first comment, you said it "seems weird" that Julia doesn't like Vi-mode.

In this comment, you quote Julia talking about Emacs-mode. Which doesn't really follow on from your first comment.


Thanks. I appreciate your civility.

The lack of clarity is my fault.

I felt Julia was describing a problem that she was having for 15 years to do with editing on the CLI. Then she said "even though I’m a vim user I didn’t really like using it when I tried it."

To me, even still, it seems weird that there is a tool (vi-mode) that solves the problem she seemed to be describing earlier on. I am not denying that she "didn’t really like using it when I tried it".

Not sure that even with this reply I have cleared up my earlier confusion-causing comment. I shall endeavour to refrain from further nonsense in the future.


Ah, this reply does indeed make it clearer what you were saying :)

Whether I agree with what you were saying is a different matter (:p) but at least it makes more sense now!


I don't find that strange at all (prefering emacs to vi mode). I feel the same way.

I use tcsh, and have it configured for emacs-style command line editing. I use emacs for complex stuff (coding) and vi for simple stuff (editing a config file), so I'm comfy with both.

I think my issue is that it seems slightly unnatural to remember the mode I'm in on a random terminal command line, and much easier to just use the emacs keys to edit when needed.




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