A lot of times it's easier to just learn the tools of the trade instead of fighting a never-ending battle. I don't need or like awk, but I learned it because it's in use and it was very helpful to do so.
vim - is not my tool of trade, I am developer so I prefer IDEs like Intellij for coding and for config files I will use kate for local and for remote nano will do the job.
It makes no sense to learn vim because I am hit with it once a year, I better learn tools like "tail" and "grep" this ones are useful for what I do.
But sure if you are a sysadmin or ssh daily and edit big complex config files the sure learn vim if you really want that.
I mean, based on the complaints outlined in your comment above it kind of sounds like vim _is_ a tool of your trade (albeit one that you don't use very often). The basics are probably worth learning just so you don't have to care when you run into vim (opening files, inserting text, save and exit). Learn it once and you're good to go.
Or you can keep resetting the default editor to nano. You do you, friend.
Sorry if I was not clear, most of the time when you edit a config file you decide what editor you use, so you would run
nano /etc/congig.cfg
my only issue was with crontab, since it was using nano but someone changed it to vim so I was surprised by it, I really had to google how to exit it. Since I edit cronjobs once a year and for config files I can use nano it would be a waste to learn vim, I would just forget all the shortcuts - not sure how other people memory works by me I forget stuff I do not use , like regexp I use them 2 times a year and each time I need to read again what symbol does what.
I am not sure who to blame for making vim the default (in EDITOR), I could swear it was nano and someone in our team had to switch it vim to fuck with the rest,
In most the distributions, the default editor is vi, I believe the only (mainstream) distribution which has nano as default is ubuntu. In fact, being a sysadmin, the reason most of us learnt vim is because it's always the default and it's installed everywhere.
This leads to being stuck with tools which are unpleasant to use and sometimes not suited for what you want to do with them - for example, editing text files as a beginner.
Would it be better if Nginx would have never been written and we'd all use Apache instead?
What about Docker never having been written and us having to ship VM images with no tool chain around them?
What about JetBrains never creating new IDEs and everyone being stuck with Eclipse or NetBeans?
What about no systemd and having to use sysvinit or OpenRC? Okay, perhaps that last one is debatable, due to some valid concerns.
If Vim is so powerful, then this power should be embraced and transformed into a software package that's easier to use, be it with nano style hints or simpler shortcuts - Vim isn't good because of its accidental complexity after all!
Of course, that might take a few generations, because no one who knows Vim wants to relearn it, whereas the newer people will oftentimes simply resist using it.
But my point is that the weaknesses of each software package should be addressed and eventually fixed, either in itself or another to replace it.
Any sufficiently capable editors will be complex. Emacs for example is just as hard to learn if not harder than vim. Nano is easier for one simple reason which is that it is not as capable.
Could vim be easier? Probably. But it’s still useful and is an archetype. Remember I’m not saying new code should be written in Awk. It’s just useful to know how to use the tools that everyone knows, regardless of whether they should be replaced or improved.
The handsaw isn’t perfect or that beginner friendly, but if you refuse to learn to use one because there are other cutting instruments, you’ll probably have a bad time compared to if you didn’t.
> It’s just useful to know how to use the tools that everyone knows, regardless of whether they should be replaced or improved.
This is a perfectly reasonable argument to make and probably reflects the reality of working in the industry pretty well.
That said, I'm still stoked to see what people come up with in the next 20 years.
Maybe gradual improvements like Neovim tried to do. Or perhaps Vim-like text interaction in VSC or JetBrains IDEs, with all of their plugins and ecosystem. Or maybe something even more grand!
As noted earlier in the thread, that embraced and transformed easier to use version of vim is called Sublime Text. (I actually thought it was a fork, but no, apparently it's just "inspired by".)
Vim's power comes from it being 1) text-based, 2) very fast to load and manipulate files, and 3) very fast to use if you are familiar with the syntax. Like many power tools, it's the last part here that's hard, but it's also very hard to fix without affecting one of the other two qualities. For example, Emacs nails points 1 & 3, but is so much slower to load that few people use it as their default $EDITOR, and has a sizable learning curve as well.
Vi (rather than vim) should probably be treated more like how most developers know how to use a unix shell, rather than a specific product. Far more than the program that implements it, vi(m) is more relevant as a UI. Granted, it is not idea and goes contrary to the expectations of users who haven't had much experience with it yet, but it is at least for the time being a de-facto standard worth knowing the basics of (and I mean extrem basics, how to enter leave insert mode, how to save how to quit. If you aren't using a real vi, then anything about the normal mode is nice to know).
