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shimmantoday at 1:41 AM1 replyview on HN

Terminal editors are not WSIWYG applications. I don't think multi-cursor is the correct for a vim motion workflow but I'll admit my vim-fu is not as strong but I get by with the substitute command + grep good enough where I rarely feel the need for a GUI editor to use multi-cursor.

Since VS Code is already an inefficient way to move around a code base, I don't think we should take any lessons seriously outside of how useful the LSP protocol become for adoption.


Replies

ablobtoday at 6:08 AM

I think multi-cursors can be seen as an extension of macros, just that instead of defining the macro and navigating to the relevant places you instead navigate first and then execute the commands interactively (in essence skipping the part where you have to record). As a side effect you also don't need to be that concerned about what to do after having made a mistake. I've had some pretty nasty string-wrangling with the substitute command that could've been avoided by just using a macro and the other way around. I'd argue these things complement each other and there is no need to restrict yourself arbitrarily. Having it and not using it is better than needing and not having. I can recall countless times where multi-cursor would've been just the sweet-spot I needed.

P.S.: multi-cursor is not about moving around the code base and therefore not taking lessons about navigation has no impact in this matter.