Re: vim suitable for professional software development?

Hey,

BIG thanks for the two links. I've really considered VIM as a
constructing set for building a personalized IDE, rather than just an
specialized text editor.

you don't use any kind of code completion and only external syntax
checkers/debugging tools then?
(Spring (-> Typo)/Tomcat/Maven was meant as synonymous for every
application framework)

regards

Am 23.08.2015 20:46 schrieb Tim Chase:
> On 2015-08-23 16:33, taschentuch@posteo.de wrote:
>> i'm wondering whether VIM is really suitable for professional
>> software development.
>
> I've been using it for over a decade for professional software
> development. So I'd guess the answer is "yes".
>
>> 1) Let's assume your vim configuration is broken at work and you
>> can't fix the issue within 20 minutes. I assume sth like 20 minutes
>> is the upper limit for vim configuration things, before your
>> colleagues or boss gets angry. Most, if not all of your needed
>> plugins aren't working correctly.
>>
>> * How would you react in such a situation? Would you temporarily
>> switch to e.g. Eclipse?
>> * How would you react when you have very important stuff to do?
>> * How often does such a situation happen?
>
> I tend to run with a pretty minimal configuration, not much beyond
> the resetting "vim -u NONE" so if for some reason my vimrc wasn't
> working, it wouldn't be too hard to track down what's going on. And
> wouldn't switch to anything else. I've occasionally used Notepad for
> quick edits on Windows machines where I didn't have vi/vim installed,
> and occasionally turn to /bin/ed when my $TERM settings get messed up
> on *nix but vi/vim almost never gives me grief.
>
> As for how frequently such a hypothetical situation occurs, almost
> never. The only times are when I've just gone in and tweaked my
> vimrc, in which case I just back out (or comment out) the settings
> that I changed/added.
>
> Once you start introducing plugins, things get a little hairier, but
> if you learn to use vi/vim without plugins, then even if you have to
> disable a troublesome plugin, you still have stock vim readily
> available.
>
>> => I'm not very experienced with vim, so i have honestly very big
>> fears about such situations, standing helplessly in front of a
>> unusable editor and a lot of work to do.
>
> Because of the recovery-mode (the aforementioned "vim -u NONE" which
> starts up without loading global/local config files) your only limit
> is actually learning vim.
>
>> 2) I'm not familiar with frameworks like Spring, Tomcat or Maven.
>>
>> * But how much do they depend on some vim plugin? I mean, is it
>> possible to work without a vim plugin? I assume, they make the
>> repeated tasks of your work very easy and fast.
>> * Let's assume, your company transfers to another, related
>> framework, which doesn't provide a vim plugin. How would you react?
>> would you change your IDE, work with the command line or try to
>> write a plugin?
>> * At needs to happen that you'll decide to change your editor?
>
> As above, I don't generally use plugins, so it doesn't impact me.
> I'm a Python developer so can't speak to Sprint/Tomcat/Maven, but I
> don't call myself an expert in a language/framework unless I can
> develop without the hand-holding of an IDE. But the bulk of the work
> simply involves editing code, so the plugin features don't impact me
> greatly.
>
>> => I have also very little experience with vim or shell scripting,
>> therefore i fear that someday i can't write a convenience
>> plugin/script and have to work in a (compared to e.g. eclipse)
>> inefficient way - or change the editor, because the support fore
>> that language/framework is not enough.
>
> Fortunately, vi/vim doesn't lock you in or start to spurn you if you
> make use of other editors. If Eclipse gives you some magic
> functionality that solves a problem where vi/vim can't, feel free to
> use Eclipse for that. The only time I've had to go that route with
> some Embedded Visual C++ where the MS Visual Studio (MSVS) interface
> created the required project layouts, build options, etc. Even then,
> once I got the projects and settings configured, I did most of my
> actual code-editing with vim, and just used VS to do the builds.
>
>> 3) GUI development. I've learned recently that vim's intention is
>> just not to be a GUI builder for some language. But,
>
> Vim is a text editor. Some GUI builders allow you to edit the
> underlying structure and bindings which make them more flexible and
> more useful when combined with version-control. Other GUI builders
> store their layout in an opaque binary format that is good neither
> for editing in other editors, nor versioning (comparing opaque binary
> blobs is pretty useless).
>
>> * How good/fluently do they interact with vim?
>
> Both gvim and MSVS recognize when a file has been edited externally
> and offer to let you reload the file fresh from disk. When I have to
> use both together, this functionality saves the day. I can't speak
> to others like Eclipse but assume they're not brain-dead and also do
> similarly.
>
>> => As a beginner, i don't understand the complexity of the
>> connection between the GUI Builder and vim, respectively what does
>> VS in the background for me. So I wouldn't know how i should be
>> able to create snippets that could handle the XML/metadata things.
>> While programming in VS, i've never touched the XML and rarely the
>> auto generated C# code in the background. I fear that that could
>> hinder developing with vim.
>
> Again, feel free to use both. Most editors notice if changes happen
> externally, so you can edit in either one and have the other one
> notify that the file changed to let you reload it.
>
> The big thing to know is that vim is a *text editor*. It's not a GUI
> builder. It's not version-control. It's not a build-process. It's
> not a testing framework.
>
> In the *nix world, usually these are each provided by separate tools
> (git/subversion/mercurial, make/cmake/imake/ant, etc). I the
> Windows/Java world, often there's a canonical IDE (Visual
> Studio/Eclipse) that provides most of that--though you can swap in
> your own pieces like using vi/vim as your text-editor.
>
> There are some popular pieces written on the topic:
>
> http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/unix-as-ide-introduction/
>
> https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/ide-culture-vs-unix-philosophy/
> (NB: a fair bit of profanity in that 2nd article, in case that
> matters)
>
> Here's hoping it's a fun adventure for you, and this list is here to
> help you out the best we can.
>
> -tim

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