On a more serious note, vim is one of the most initially unintuitive commonly used pieces of software I’ve encountered.
Sure, if you put in a little time and learn it, it’s not rocket science. But that seems like a weird standard for an essential tool used for one of the most common computing tasks of today.
In response to your initial question, obviously it’s a meme. But like most good memes, it’s born out of a common* human experience.
What do you think is the most common reaction when someone is thrown into vim for the first time? My guess is “what’s this?” or something similar, followed very soon by “how do I exit this?”. And the answer is, by modern computer users’ standards, quite arcane.
IF you are somewhat familiar with the Linux terminal, you’ll try CTRL+C and IF you’re paying close attention you will notice that vim is giving you a hint.
But if it’s your first time interacting with vim, chances are at least one of those conditions is not met. So now you’re stuck.
And after an optional small moment of panic/disorientation, you google “how to exit vim” (provided you were at least lucky enough to notice/remember what program you’re in)
=> a meme is born.
Exiting vim is almost like a right of passage for fresh Linux enjoyers. It’s not a hard task but it can seem daunting at first encounter, which is humorous given that quitting a program is normally such an easy thing to do.
One more note, there is a group of people who will encounter vim quite unexpectedly and unintentionally: Windows users performing their first commit using git bash.
They won’t even know they’re in vim, they’re dropped directly into edit mode and there’s no instructions for confirming the commit message, much less how to exit/cancel the operation.
Have you ever tried out Micro? I use Neovim myself, but I’ve played around with Micro. It basiclly takes some good things from Nano, vim and keybindings from modern GUI texteditors, and mixes those together. It’s very good for an easy-to-use text editor
Why quitting vim is such a big deal lmao?
Rebooting your pc everytime gets annoying after a while
Say what? The command is :q! or use ZQ. I don’t even use vim extensively, but comes in handy.
Oh neat, a real whoosh in the wild, on Lemmy!
On a more serious note, vim is one of the most initially unintuitive commonly used pieces of software I’ve encountered.
Sure, if you put in a little time and learn it, it’s not rocket science. But that seems like a weird standard for an essential tool used for one of the most common computing tasks of today.
In response to your initial question, obviously it’s a meme. But like most good memes, it’s born out of a common* human experience. What do you think is the most common reaction when someone is thrown into vim for the first time? My guess is “what’s this?” or something similar, followed very soon by “how do I exit this?”. And the answer is, by modern computer users’ standards, quite arcane.
IF you are somewhat familiar with the Linux terminal, you’ll try CTRL+C and IF you’re paying close attention you will notice that vim is giving you a hint. But if it’s your first time interacting with vim, chances are at least one of those conditions is not met. So now you’re stuck. And after an optional small moment of panic/disorientation, you google “how to exit vim” (provided you were at least lucky enough to notice/remember what program you’re in) => a meme is born.
Exiting vim is almost like a right of passage for fresh Linux enjoyers. It’s not a hard task but it can seem daunting at first encounter, which is humorous given that quitting a program is normally such an easy thing to do.
One more note, there is a group of people who will encounter vim quite unexpectedly and unintentionally: Windows users performing their first commit using git bash. They won’t even know they’re in vim, they’re dropped directly into edit mode and there’s no instructions for confirming the commit message, much less how to exit/cancel the operation.
export EDITOR=nano # fixed.
Sure but the people who know that probably know how to exit vi(m). Thus nano (or any other less arcane editor) should be the default.
And this is why I use nano.
Have you ever tried out Micro? I use Neovim myself, but I’ve played around with Micro. It basiclly takes some good things from Nano, vim and keybindings from modern GUI texteditors, and mixes those together. It’s very good for an easy-to-use text editor
What rebooting? i once started vim in TTY, I haven’t turned my PC off since.
It literally gives you instructions on how to exit if it thinks that’s what you’re trying to do…
But even then it’s not really obvious the “:” is part of the command which makes things even more confusing.
Ah yeah I guess I’m coming at it from the view of someone who already knows how to exit.