[sramov]

God bless nvi.

I will never understand why people go out of their way to write and maintain such monster configuration files.

Learning core/traditional vi gets one a long way, instead of delusioning themselves with false cleverness and productivity.

[exDM69]

I don't think that the author wrote his 1200 lines of .vimrc in one sit. More likely it's years of accumulated 1-2 line additions and removals.

My vimrc has slowly accumulated, I add 1 or 2 new keybinds every now and then and I might remove them later if I notice they don't suit my workflow. Most of my changed keybindings are related to making Vim usable with my native keyboard layout (finnish/swedish).

Also per-language additions accumulate over time. The author seems to have put all settings for all file types in the same file.

Learning standard Vi gets you a long way, but sometimes adding or changing a keybind will make things work more fluently.

[sramov]

My point was, time better spent is coding, not dicking around (and relying) on .vimrc.

We often forgot about the essence of things such as typing the actual code or words, and focus on tools. Better investment is learning how to properly type than having countless little helpers which are nothing more than debt.

Increasing complexity in all areas of life really is troublesome.

[viraptor]

I think you're thinking about it backwards. It's usually not thinking "what could I tweak today" that results in adding something to .vimrc. It's "I keep doing this a lot / this feel uncomfortable, maybe there's an easier way" that results in changes. And if you take time to actually implement it, that's a good indication it was worth the tweak.

Let's say you work with splits a lot. Sure you could press ctrl+w all the time, but it's a bit annoying. Rebinding doesn't take much time, but makes it (in the presented example) actually simpler. So did it waste time? A minute or so. Does it make life easier? A little bit. Did the "coding time" suffer? Who cares about a minute or so ;)

[sashahart]

There is no dichotomous distinction between coding and using vim to automate tasks. The latter is part of the former - no different from using q or @ or .

[oemera]

I think it is all about productivity and if he feels or thinks he is more productive with these additions then it is really good for him. I don't think anyone should use plain vim because it's 'way it should be done'.

[sramov]

Sometimes we don't realize things. I was using Vim before. I loved it, tweaking it all the time, thinking it helped me to achieve various things faster etc.

When I switched to nvi I realized how wrong I was. My .nexrc contains less than ten lines. There is no syntax highlighting. I was also forced to learn real vi properly. When you do such things amazing things happen.

[dextorious]

"""Learning core/traditional vi gets one a long way, instead of delusioning themselves with false cleverness and productivity."""

Sure, you know a lot more than me what makes me productive in my text editor use.

And that is traditional vi. Sure no need to go beyond that. Oh, and 640K should be enough for everybody.