On Sat, 31 Jan 2015, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> Accidental deletion becomes less frequent with increasing competence in
> the use of an editor ... here, often awareness of the current mode. Lack
> of concentration can lead to loss of mode awareness, and result in
> clumsy mis-edits. PEBKAC. Vim removes any painful consequences, whatever
> the cause though, through its marvellous multi-level undo facility. If
> you have used vim for more than a day or two, and _still_ muck up the
> undo, then:
I have another draft email in response to the earlier responses in gmail
waiting, (not ready), but...
You can argue all you want that I should ensure proper circumstances (such
as having a good computer or a good terminal), but any form of requirement
in order to not muck up, means that the amount of dependency or
requirement goes up, and hence with greater dependency becomes greater
risk of failure.
Let's just say I've had to use a bad web terminal to access some files. A
really really bad terminal. And the keyboard here is also broken (I have a
laptop now) and hardly something to blame Vim for, but the colours in
basically every file I opened were completely off (sections being
mis-coloured with the syntax colouring) for whatever reason, often even
hiding (blacking) pieces of text. I've had to try to remove the syntax
hilighting (which sometimes worked, but I often forgot, or didn't want to
spend time finding out to make it permanet) and I've had to page down a
few times, then page back up to see if the initial text would display, and
so on.
I'm just saying that having a tool that will fail you if certain
requirements are not exactly met, is just not a safe tool. And if you then
argue that "then meet those requirements" that doesn't suddenly make the
tool more fail-safe or more dependable. It is precisely this mindset that
pervades the minds of ordinary people in the sense that people often take
up dependencies (such as these days, cloud providers that are outside of
personal control completely) and then claim that those providers or
systems are safe. But current conditions will not always hold, and safety
and security and stability revolve around being able to keep functioning
in less-than ideal conditions.
And all of those work-arounds take time, and in less-than-ideal conditions
perhaps or perchance you would not HAVE that time. Any tool that requires
endless amounts of study just in order to do simple things, will simply
fail if those ideal circumstances are no longer there.
Sometimes you have to accomplish important things within minutes. A tool
that will fail and require dedication, love, endless amounts of time,
patience, concentration, awareness, lack of lack of sleep, and so on.....
...just becomes a worthless tool. If you have (or would have) a phone that
would only show the current time if network time servers are available,
that sort of thing.... it is dependencies that will seriously bite you in
conditions that are actually meaningful to achieve something.
I've had no serious internet access for months, I am currently on a
hospital wifi link that requires acceptance of some license terms every
time I connect. It is an area with lacking coverage for an important
mobile provider (my own, supposedly ;-)).
If you cannot depend on it (or yourself) when you are in a tight spot,
what use is it really?
> and _practice_! ("Do, or do not; there is no try.")
I'm sorry, but practice is a useless thing when it is required to have a
meaningful experience AFTER the practice.
That whole mindset is just stupid. Learning in order to do something later
on that you dislike doing.
The whole idea of professional schooling. Doing projects that are
worthless because they are repeated by a million (supposedly) students
every year, and there is nothing creative or meaningful about them. And
after the fact you can just throw it away because it never created
anything, it only reacted.
So normal learning takes place in the context of doing meaningful things.
You want to do a certain thing, then you go and look up how to do it, or
find out or discover how to do it. Then you do the thing, and on the next
occassion of needing to do something, you repeat the process. In this way
you work and you learn, and you learn as you work.
And in this way you remember everything you learn, because every learning
experience is meaningful and useful.
But studying for 5 years on a university, just to get a diploma, or
whatever... without doing really meaningful things with it. You forget
everything, because it has never been relevant.
The only things that are relevant are the needs that arise out of self,
which are the things you really want to do out of a joy of doing it.
And if you are at that point wanting to do something, and you have a way
of doing it, that way is "preferable" in the sense that there is no real
reason to find another way that requires more study.
It is just a matter of cost versus benefit.
And asking someone to invest heavily in order to reap benefits in the far
future (only to sacrifice your pleasure today) is just stupid. You could
be spending that time achieving useful things, and not end up in some
depressive or near or somewhat semi-depressive mood because you left the
flow of having fun, and you are now studying boring stuff that you don't
really need now.
> The basic problem was already evident in the prior post. ;-)
The basic problem is that even Vim's help system is not user friendly.
> (Note: I keep a set of personal "help" notes, which over the years has
> accumulated to nearly 400 pages, though only 29 of them relate to vim.
> Vim's folding capability presents all 400 pages as one - the first level
> headings. But keyword searching takes me directly to what I want in
> seconds. Most doco describes "how" to do a thing - but initially we
> don't know "what" to look for. For my own use, I document "how" under
> "what" I'm trying to do, so the method is rapidly found later, even if
> it's years before I need it again.)
That is basically the entire proof I need for knowing that this is indeed
for you as well, a difficult program to use. What on earth would require
29 pages of personal notes just to use an editor (no matter how powerful)
unless that editor required heavy investment just to be able to use it???
Suppose you lost that file. What then???
The only time I kept help notes was back when I was like 12 and I was
making printouts of ASCII tables and the like, because there was yet no
internet. Today I only print tech web pages mostly. I keep them around for
easy reference. I am wanting though to find or create for myself a better
notekeeping system, I had been using the lousy self-contained
javascript-wiki called TiddlyWiki.
My attempts were at DokuWiki. I have installed DokuWiki on my home little
server thing. Except that the programmers have decided sometime in the
recent past, apparently, to move all of the configuration at startup into
one big clump, that will execute on every instantiation, even when 80% is
not necessary. And since its primary web page accesses that site about 3
times (for stylesheets as well, and even some tracking image --- imagine
that, a site that uses a tracker image to track its own requests ---
idiocy!!). Since the little file/web server is way slow, those requests
each took up perhaps a second each. Because even though PHP has this
binary cache engine (APC opcode cache) that doesn't mean the environment
is kept between requests (since it is stateless HTTP). So you have
*STUPID* requests for pages or images (even the code necessary to
determine whether to send a "cached" or "not changed" response required
the entire environment to load each time) that each take up like a second,
which means every page load takes up about 3 seconds to be processed by
the server.
Anyway, I went about hacking that environment loader and within a few
hours I had the requests down to about 400ms for the stylesheet and so on.
Without losing anything. Whatever. Haven't been able to continue with it
yet. Still sitting there on server. I may have had it down to 80ms even
for the cache responses, not sure anymore.
It creates a cache or "parsed" version of new stylesheets (when
configuration is changed, they are regenerated) so you could simply load
the entire environment when this regen was called for, but it could be
delayed so as to be faster with the http cacher.
Okay.
>> So Vim is for me 80% frustration and 80% delight, if such a thing were
>> possible :p.
>
> Not only possible, but understandable - yet entirely self-created by
> a learning laziness, as you show yourself at the first opportunity:
Everything is self-created, but it is created out of a desire or perceived
need to use a certain thing or tool at a certain time or moment or place
or location. When you would be better off abandoning the tool, instead of
forcing it through.
And the frustration results from a mis-appreciation of what is required in
that moment. In your exhaustion or tiredness you may try to get something
working with a form of stubborn persistence when you would be better off
choosing to do something else. And out of this the frustration comes. Of
course it is self-created. But it is self-created out of a desire to GET
THIS THING WORKING, not out of a laziness to learn.
Because there is no need to learn the fucking thing when you have no need
to do that.
Or to even use that.
Like I said: learning something if you have a real good reason to do a
thing is excellent, learning something if you had better spent your time
elsewhere doing the same thing with less effort is pointless.
Why on earth select a tool that requires more investment when you have
alternatives available that cost less?
The logical, rational and sensible choice is to ditch the expensive tool
(for that moment, or situation, or time) and to use the thing that already
works. Or works with less cost.
> The arrow keys work fine in vim, and there is no need to use HJKL.
> If you have a terminal problem which miscodes those keys, so that they
> are not recognised by vim, then why do you not:
>
> a) Fix it in the terminal config, or
> b) Fix it in .vimrc, or
> c) Google for a fix, or
> d) Post a message for information, rather than just a moan.
What if:
- you have no time to look up details of the terminal config
- you don't even have a good terminal at your disposal
- you have no time to fix .vimrc while spending perhaps 2 hours getting
the thing working because of your failing mental state
- fixing a thing that requires more time to fix it (and then do it) than
it does to work with the limitations is not a good spending of time,
unless you have the intent to let it be an asset for the future. But if
the limiting condition may well be gone within a week, such a thing would
not apply, as you would be investing time in a solution that you can throw
a way a few steps down the road.
- posting a message may also be too difficult or require more time than
you have, seeing as that probably you want to do that thing now.
Which again falls in the category of investment that you can not use now,
or even something that would be easier solved with the other methods
anyway.
>
> Vim is powerful, but does demand a learning commitment, because of
> that. If the failing mode awareness is due to ageing wetware (and
> therefore more difficult to overcome), then one of many useful vim
> configurations might help.
People have no need to deal with hard-to-use tools when they have better
things to do with their time. The tool is there for the user (it is a
servant) not the other way around. There is no requirement whatsoever in
life to keep up or be able to use a specific tool just for the sake of
being able to use it.
So, simply put: nobody should be asked to do senseless things just so they
can keep using Vim, when using Vim is not a real requirement for anyone.
Like someone said, there are perhaps plenty of alternatives. But it all
boils down to cost-benefit.
And sometimes, indeed, there is a gain in spending time with complaining
when it is obvious that even though Vim may be perhaps lacking in certain
important areas, there still might not be any tool that comes close to it,
regardless.
And in that case investing effort in either improving the tool, or
complaining to people that might improve it, or to break a mindset that
the tool doesn't need improvement whatsoever, because the user is always
to blame and never the tool, well.... perhaps then complaining is also a
form of investment, instead of using a difficult help system it might be
useful to complain about the difficulty of using it ;-)..
(More about that in the other mail, I guess.... :( ).
> In addition to displaying the mode on the status line:
>
> set showmode
>
> I change the cursor colour in insert mode:
>
> " Cursor Appearance: (Insert_Mode == Green, Normal_Mode == Red)
> if &term =~ "xterm"
> let &t_SI = "\<Esc>]12;green\x7"
> let &t_EI = "\<Esc>]12;red\x7"
> endif
Such things are at the behest of the developer or maintainer or
configurator. It should not be asked of every idividual user to improve
the basic default user friendliness of an application.
Like I would argue in the other email:
An hour spent by a developer is worth a million hours spent by users.
Because even 10 minutes of work might save your users a billion minutes
when all combined and accumulated.
That is just my mindset as a programmer. I don't want to be buried by
support requests that I could have prevented, you see. Or frustrated
users, that would complain about stuff I should have done for them,
instead of asking them to do my work.
It is a macro versus micro thing. If you do the macro right, the micro
disappears. If you fail at the macro, the micro will get the most of you
and bury you in endless demands from users.
> If you can be more specific about the precise clumsiness you're using to
> defeat vim's undo, we can be more specific in the documentation we
> advise you to read, and the exercises which could improve your
> competence. (Then keep notes, so you do not forget.)
Sorry, not necessary. My competence is not at stake. There is just no true
need to 'fight a battle you cannot win." In the sense that if you seek out
the challenges that fit you, you will always be "enough" and there is then
also not a need to condescend on a user's "competence" level.
And my only 'fault' is to keep trying to achieve something with Vim when
it is too difficult.
Which is not something you can really blame a person for, it is quite
ordinary human behaviour to persist with something in a stubbornness
out of a tiredness or a depression. Which then causes a lot of frustration
when the tool consequently requires an attentive, waking mindset that can
concentrate always.
Like a television that will only turn on if you can instantly recollect or
memorize or take from your memory a 30 character password.
Not a very useful television.
Like I said, if Vim is only useful when I am at my best, then perhaps
(depending on circumstances) 80% of the time it is ready for the
disposable trash department.
Quite simply honestly and clearly put.
Again, it is not like there is anything that can replace it. I never liked
Emacs one bit, Pico and Nano are worthless really for anything other than
writing emails (that is just my take on it really, or my perception)
there was also a thing called Joe (Joe's Own Editor) which I guess was
nice for a time and I might return to it some time.
So what I was saying is: we are not here for the tool, the tool is here
for us. (It is a basic misconception about the role of the feminine and
the masculine, btw. You see it everywhere: servants (or people providing
services) pretending or acting like the client is there for them (needing
to fulfill requirements and whatnot, not being allowed to make their own
choices, the supplier wants to have his way out of some ego desire, it has
to be done in a certain way for the servant instead of the servant being
there for the master. In the sense that the service provider will start to
bolt if something is not to his/her liking. You ask a table, the creator
insists on creating 3 prototypes when you are fine with just one. You ask
a curtain, the seller insists that it doesn't look well in your home and
won't sell it to you or refuses to help you find something you like
yourself. You ask something to have your coat repaired, they insist you
are better off letting that person himself handle it. In the sense that
you ask the person to bring the coat to a repair shop, but that person
wants to take home the credit himself for repairing it. And so on.
Depending on the subculture or quality level (expensiveness, sometimes) of
what you are dealing with, people may be more or less willing to just
fulfill simple wishes.
The more exclusive, so to speak, service providers are often geared or
focussed on creating happy customer and really listening to his or her
wishes. The more cheap ones often have no patience, no desire, no time, no
room, no space, to listen to anything that deviates from what they think
should be done.
Of course it all boils down to how well you are feeling.
But in Open Source Software it is not an uncommon thing for the feeling to
exist that the users are there for the tool (think of all the Linux
fanboyism on certain forums or blogsites) and the tool becomes a kind of
sacred icon or emblem, a religion.
And Vim.... well it is a bit of a religion for some people some times, I
guess..
Again, the tool is there for the user.
And If I am Complaining Here with a sense of Moaning..... or frustration.
It is just because I have never really voiced these things before ever to
anyone who could listen (because I know virtually nobody who uses these
systems, etcetera). Even if I started using Vim back in perhaps 1998??
Or a few years before, but obviously I had not much to go for it without
internet access. Say I started really using it on a debian server in my
student home in the year 2000.
I haven't ever really used another editor on (remote) servers.
Nor have I ever heard anyone talk of another editor (or mention it) (or me
reading about it) (or reading about someone mentioning it) that gave the
impression of something else actually being worthwhile.
And hence I have had years and years of being frustrated and not anyone to
talk to it about, or about it. My apologies if that seems like unfair or
anything, but still it is a good opportunity to get it out and also convey
the sentiment that yes.
Vim is not user friendly. Not the slightest.
Or indeed, more positively described:
Vim is user unfriendly. :p.
And the help system itself is your enemy, not your friend. I will relate
in the other email, if still allowed here ;-) :-/.
Bye.
> Women love to play the victim because it attracts three of the things they love
> the most: attention, sympathy and special treatment. Conversely, men who act
> like victims receive suspicion, ridicule and no sex, ever. - Mike J
Hey I like this quote!!!
I am dealing with a woman victim. But she has been victimized mostly by
other men. In the sense that people usually talk people (women) into
feeling more and more of a victim, or being more and more victimized, when
this woman's initial experience or perception was not so at all.
People called "caretakers" or "in positions of authority" (in dutch there
is a single word for it : voogden. Parents are types of voogd. But in a
real sense, government, police, mental health care, child protective
services, victim protection/treatment services, and so on, and so on, and
so on, also fulfill those roles. They try to take away self-determination
and self-respect and self-confidence, because a weaker person is easier
controlled. )) - and a person that you can control, is a person that you
can "help". But this requires often the person to either feel like a
victim, or like a villain. And in the context of women versus men, it is
pretty clear which is which.
There is a story from the USA from some 10 years ago in which a prank
caller that acted like police got young female employees of McDonald's and
the like to undress with nothing more than vague allegations and threats.
This particular caller (he had done it like 40 times before getting
caught) walked away free. He got a female manager to undress the 18-year
old girl. The female manager walked away with about 400k or 500k in USD
worth of damages. The female manager then handed the girl to her fiancee
who was ordered by the caller to have the girl suck his cock. The guy was
like drawn into a situation in which he was completely confounded and lost
and he had first been ordered to spank the girl, which was quite a
pleasurable experience to watch, I must say. (It was all recorded on
safety cam). (And like broadcasted in near full view). But after that the
caller told the guy to ask the girl to suck him. The girl willfully
obeyed, or moreover, or more likely, already was feeling this victim
identity beginning to serve her, and she wilfully complied.
The girl walked away with about 1.2 million US dollars in damages from
McDonalds.
For one little blowjob.
Quite a good hooker, I must say. Most don't earn that much that fast. ;-).
Serious here!!!!
The guy walked away with 5 years in jail.
The poor sucker who got sucked into a situation not of this own devising,
and who was asked by the woman who basically controlled him in the
relationship he was in (as women usually do and they have the upper hand
in ordinary customary relationships in our cultures) and who got one lousy
blowjob as a "reward" that he didn't even really want (or not at all).....
got punished.
But the point and moral of the story is.
The female manager who played the largest role in this girl's humilation
as she actively sought to suck the guy for rewards (her mind was probably
already aware of probable results) was not punished at all but ALSO
received a very large sum in damages from her employer.
Bah! Bye! Good riddance of my lousy job!
What is your take on that? The girl acts on television like she loved her
job. But we all know working for a McDonalds is like being a modern day
slave and it can cost you your health and everything for minimum wage. A
friend of mine (or former friend) saw his physical health get drained as
he was working so much just to pay his rent in the city of London, that he
didn't even have money to pay the bus or buy a bike. The wages were so
bad, that he had to walk for perhaps an hour and a half, or even longer,
to get to his work. And back. And then perhaps 6 hours of sleep. And go
on.
The girl was able to quit the job she hated and get a large sum of money
for a simple act of cooperation that in this culture is regarded as the
greatest of all sins, almost, or in any case something extremely extremely
extremely extremely terrible. Which it is not. When it is not. It is a
blowjob. Nothing more.
People are put in deep victim mode around sex all the time, which causes
the experience to grow in guilt over time. The experience itself was not
even all that bad, but when people habitually keep talking to you as if
the worst thing ever happened to you, it quickly becomes in your mind the
worst of the worst.
But the most important aspect of it is that victim and villain are
separated and contrasted so much, and the possible punishment of the
villain only cements this in the mind of the 'victim', that the victim can
never let go of the experience or the guilt around it or surrounding it,
or as perhaps part of it (not really the case, guilt is something created
in the past or the future, or about the past or about the future) -- and
the end result is that the victim is ever plagued by recurring nightmares
because everyone has been telling her for years quite incessantly how
terrible an experience it has been, that she has forgotten the reality of
it and cannot even longer remember how she felt back then or before it had
happened.
And even feels guilty about enjoying thoughts or fantasies about it.
How it could also have played out in a more ...interesting or pleasurable
way.
(JUST MY TAKE ON THINGS).
It Dutch they say "turning a mosquito into an elephant". They also say "a
storm in a glass of water".
So just saying: victimhood is not the property of women. It is the
property of this culture. The McDonald's girl was acutely aware of
possible results because of deep experience in this culture's sphere. She
would have always KNOWN that everyone would feel sorry for her and treat
her in special ways and the rewards this could reap for her.
In the end of the show the commentator asked
"Do you think you will ever be able to put this in the past?"
And the girl replies
"I don't think I ever will" with dollar signs in her eyes, because
cooperating with the show is of course also part of maintaining or
creating the impression that she is a really sorry person in need of
compensation.
But if she can never get over it, it is because of the money she received
for something self-humiliating, or call it "whoring", and she has turned
her own humiliation into an asset. As well as the poor guy going to jail
for something he didn't really do (she did it).
Guilt complex we call this. The poor girl is going to feel guilty about
what happened to the guy she sucked.
Pangs of guilt we call it ;-).
And then people tell her "don't think about it, he got what he deserved".
And she doesn't really feel the same. Not anymore, if ever.
And often thinks whether basing her life on such a ..greedy.... for no
other word... damages claim was really such a great idea.
For no other reason that she has made herself into a public whore.
And even a movie being made about it that is nothing other than
entertainment.
It is called "Compliance" (2012). They call it a docu-drama or perhaps a
thriller, but it is just entertainment, nothing really meaningful or
anything. Haven't seen it yet though, I might download it in a few.
So now her story of victimhood is just a means for other people to make
money as well.
========================
Anyway, I may have acted like a victim (as well) (as a guy) and I have
certainly received suspicion, ridicule and no sex, ever. And I might be
doing that now -- acting like a victim.
But you just go on trying to transform the deeper issue in your mind (or
neck-muscles, perhaps) that caused the experience and you really have no
time for second thoughts, or to doubt yourself constantly.
You have to keep going the way you know will solve the answer. Why solve
the answer and not the question?
I guess because the questions are usually not all that hard but the
answers that other people have, including yourself, might be way complex
or more complicated. You might be lost in a morass, or in the woods, or
whatever you can call it in English. And other people are also lost: they
seek to constantly complicate things further, and act like there can never
be a solution ever (other than punishment of the guy) and the further they
go (or yourself, perhaps) -- the further those other people go, the more
they do to make an even bigger mess and tangle of that ball of thread.
Because the one thing they fear is reconciliaton of "victim" and "villain"
who just had an experience that they both contributed to and that was
nothing of a problem whatsoever in the mind of a clear person, but to the
minds of those "caretaker" people serious bad shit was happening that
needed to be dealt with.
And the girl itself (in this case, it is what you would indeed call a
girl) was like "this guy is not so bad, I am just dissing him and
threatening him to get him off my back ASAP". And the victimizing people
then go "oh my, the girl doesn't want that thing, CALL THE COPS".
Suddenly a girl's desires turn into Law. Into LAW. A girl's wish is the
command of the lawkeepers. She merely has to mention that she doesn't like
something, and the lawkeepers spring into action to deal with the threat.
Like that princess on the pea. Who can't sleep when the slightest thing is
wrong. And the white knights come into being to protect her against that
pea.
Oh no! The girl cannot sleep! Quickly, arrange a world forum meeting! We
have to deal with this situation!!!
Entitled princess syndrome.
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