[debt]

I think he's encouraging people to focus on more pressing problems. I think he's angry because there is a silly and opinionated subculture surrounding a text editor. He exploded likely because this article - while innocent as it may be - broke the camel's back. For a site so focused on the hacker mantra of getting things done, one might think he's right in his anger, as a text editor usually is just about the lowest barrier of entry to a software development problem. HEY GOOD DISCUSSION THOUGH.

[robomartin]

BINGO! Thanks for understanding.

I went to a startup pitch event the other day. VC's on the panel were asking the entrepreneurs the usual cadre of tough financial questions. Questions like: "How are you going to spend the time and money once you get funded?".

What do you think would happen if someone said something like this?

"I am going to take a month or two to learn and get really good at vim because I keep reading on HN that it takes too long to reach for the cursor keys. Then I'll start building the product you will be investing money on."

I don't know about that panel. If I was on the panel the lightest kick would land the would-be entrepreneur on the moon without a rocket.

Not important. Not significant. A complete and utter waste of time, focus and mental resources.

[ken_railey]

Awesome strawman you have there, and the same non-argument could apply to any technology: "I am going to take a month to learn Ruby...". In any case, you can relax - no one is trying to take Notepad away from you.

[robomartin]

Ridiculous. Taking a month to learn Ruby is so vastly different than taking a month to learn vim that it defies comparison. One actually has the potential to give you an order of magnitude productivity gain while the other will do so little for you that you might as well call it nothing.

Let's exaggerate in order to enhance the effect.

Both you and I launch new startups to produce exactly the same web software product.

We both get programmers who have zero experience with vim and Ruby. Let's say they only know PHP and only know how to use Notepad++. No frameworks.

I have my programmers go to Ruby class and learn Ruby on Rails for a month.

You have them learn vim for a month. They get to stay with PHP.

Not fair? One is a framework designed to speed time to market while the other is just a text editor? Exactly!

Who do you think will see the greatest productivity gains in a month?

In six months?

Who will ship product first?

Who will ship product with more features?

Who will ship product with less bugs?

Who will go out of business?

Who will get fired by the board?

Right.

Or, let's take a different route:

Our investors just gave us a million dollars each for these startups.

I go to mine and propose that I want to have the entire team take a month to learn RoR due to the productivity and code quality gains we are going to be able to derive by taking this approach.

You go to yours and tell them that you want your team to spend a month learning vim because it takes too long to go from home row to the arrow keys and you can shave seconds while editing.

Sign-up for YC and tell PG that you are going to have your entire team go learn vim for a month instead of something that delivers real productivity gains that are orders of magnitude greater.

Who gets fired?

Again. Right.

When you measure what really matters just about any argument for vim is as hollow as can be.

[ken_railey]

> Let's exaggerate in order to enhance the effect.

Let's not, they are entirely irrelevant.

Noone is claiming that any specific tool will make your startup succeed, or fix your bugs, or add features to your software for you - I thought we were discussing text editors.

[robomartin]

I don't know what you are discussing. I am discussing the absolute fact that focusing on any real or imaginary gains that could be had by insisting on using any editor at all is ridiculous in the context of where the real problems are in developing software products.

[ken_railey]

Ok, I concede - lets just use punch cards.