logoalt Hacker News

Quarrelsomeyesterday at 6:30 PM3 repliesview on HN

are you being sarcastic? Its nothing like the power button. Everyone has to press the power button but not everyone has to use Vi.

:wq is one of the most insane key combinations to quit an app and this is just hipster shit where people who use vim think they're the only "real engineers". It's just a disgusting level of arrogance and masturbation. The code is what matters, not the IDE. To focus on it as a sign of technical excellence makes a mockery of what engineers are supposed to care about (comp sci things) and replaces them with all the elegance of a high school bully belittling some other kid for not wearing Nikes.


Replies

pavlusyesterday at 10:21 PM

It's not about using vim, it's about when you had to sudoedit a config on a server you visited the first time, and it had vim as default EDITOR, so you have to know how to exit it and open nano, or whatever you use. It's about exposure, exposure to many small things is a sign of experience, it is experience, to be precise. If they don't know small basic things, it's a sign, they don't have relevant experience. Can also check, if they have empty lines at the end of their files, know how to remove docker images from their machine, or get a TCP/UDP joke.

show 1 reply
johnisgoodtoday at 12:28 AM

Okay, how about having the problem-solving skills to figure out how to exit vim when you inevitably encounter it? Sounds like a reasonable middle ground to me. Do you disagree with this?

(FWIW I agree with pavlus.)