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@cstross

Only because it shows :q on the page (and negative points for not showing :q! )

I have never forgiven vi for not starting in insert mode. And I never will.

When I open a text editor I want to type stuff and it to appear on the screen.

@nat @cstross

Sure, but after I've looked around the file when I start pressing the letter keys I want letters to appear.

If I want the letters to invoke deep magic I want to press other keys to tell the editor I want to do this.

I open files a lot. Everyday, very very rarely do I blindly start typing.

But when I find the place I want to start typing I don't want to have to remember that the editor expects me to tell it "I'm ready to start typing now."

@scimon @nat The default behaviour for "I ran this text editor on $somefile, what do I do now?" should be DON'T ALTER DATA. Back when Bill Joy invented vi in 1976 *almost nobody had used a visual editor before*. Nobody would have known what to expect.

The clear risk was that some idiot with root privs would encounter vi for the first time by typing "vi /etc/rc" or "vi /etc/fstab" and thereby ensure whackiness eventuated.

vi starting strictly in command mode avoided this hazard trivially.

@cstross @nat

Yeah, and I guess that made sense in the 70's when no one had used an editor like that. I get it.

But it's not the 70's anymore. The first time I opened vi in the late 90's it was not my first visual editor. It wasn't even in the first five different editors I'd used at that point.

And it threw me, and frankly I don't think I've ever forgiven it.

@cstross

I guess this is the great thing about the world it takes all sorts. :)

I'm sorry if my original post was too confrontational. It was early and I'd not had enough coffee.

@scimon @cstross regardless of how it got there, vim fits the way my brain works today (and I came to it from TextMate, which was non-modal and extremely chord-happy). It's initially very weird, but after giving it some time (and a lot of handholding from my pair partner) I realized that calling it "normal mode" is a huge clue that Something Important Is Here :) For the vast majority of my workflow, I'm just moving around; typing entire words one character at a time is the exception.

@geeksam

I am very happy you have found your happy place.

@scimon "how do you know if someone is a vim user?" "Don't worry about it, they'll tell you!"

@geeksam

Not going to lie.

Despite 30 years as a software developer this whole conversation always brings up my imposter syndrome.

I really wish I'd just kept my mouth shut.

@scimon I'm sorry to hear it. LMK if you'd ever like a gentle guided tour of vim (and it is perfectly acceptable to never want that; despite our Conversion Experience, some of us do recognize that it isn't for everyone!)

@geeksam Thank you.