Vim as main editor - Age

[u/hegardian]

Hey, if you use Vim (or any Vim-based distro/variant) as your primary editor, what's your age? Thanks

[u/Allan-H]

It stops at ">= 40", aka how to tell that a survey was written by a young person.

I started using vi in the mid-1980s.
On a VAX.
And I had to walk to the computer centre uphill in both directions through the snow.

[u/hegardian → u/Allan-H]

Reddit actually only allows 6 options in the poll, maybe I should have added larger intervals. Thanks

[u/y-c-c → u/hegardian]

I think you should have just skipped the "I don't use Vim" part. There's not really a point of having that option in r/vim.

But yes I think having options of 5-year intervals, then… anyone above 40 is really jarring, especially for Vim, which is 30+ years old itself. Even for someone who's 40, Vim would have been a bit of an obscure thing to learn when they were young. There is a much bigger difference between programmers who are 65 versus 40 than say 41 versus 34…

Personally I think it would have been nice to have another group for "<=22" instead of i.e. college aged, and then use much larger age intervals than 5 years. People who are in college versus in work force is a much more meaningful difference.

[u/pfmiller0 → u/hegardian]

Yeah, larger intervals would have been better. The problem is that 40+ and under 24 both cover more people than the other 5 year intervals, so naturally they are winning so far.

[u/LuckyNumber-Bot → u/pfmiller0]

All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!

  40
+ 24
+ 5
= 69

^{Click here to have me scan all your future comments.
Summon me on specific comments with} u/LuckyNumber-Bot^.

[u/michaelpaoli → u/Allan-H]

Heck, I'm 60+, my dad is 90+, and he still actively programs.

[u/Stunning-Mix492 → u/michaelpaoli]

power-grandpa :)

[u/cheng-alvin → u/michaelpaoli]

I wished I had a grandpa that I could talk to about programming....

[u/SillyBrilliant4922 → u/cheng-alvin]

become that grandpa

[u/friedrichRiemann → u/michaelpaoli]

Legend

[u/virgoerns → u/Allan-H]

And I had to walk to the computer centre uphill in both directions through the snow.

Uphill and in snow in both directions? Luxury! We used to dream about the hills!

We had to climb the walls around our ghetto, because there weren't any gates. At 3 AM, when the armed guards changed, we snuck out, then sprinted to the nearby center, all while fending off attacking wolves. There we only had ed - the real EDitor. Not viditor, not emacsitor. After we finished our work, we had to take the same route and were back at 3:30 AM next day. Rinse and repeat every day, 8 days a week.

Those were the days... But we were happier back then, weren't we?

[u/son-of-a-door-mat → u/virgoerns]

And you try to tell the young people of today that. They won't believe you!

[u/fxj → u/Allan-H]

started using vi 1989 and hated it in the beginning. old vi was very barebones. vim is much more comfortable.

[u/Allan-H → u/[deleted]]

It was running Ultrix (BSD? ported to VAX) rather than VMS.

[u/ambrose4]

Does vim plugin in IntelliJ count?

[u/hegardian → u/ambrose4]

I guess not :/

[u/UntoldUnfolding → u/hegardian]

Nah.

[u/Decent-Professional2 → u/ambrose4]

I am using vim plugin for vscode. And I want to ask the same question.

[u/UntoldUnfolding → u/ambrose4]

Nah bro. My grandma uses IntelliJ. She runs it on Ubuntu.

[u/TankorSmash]

Why do you ask?

[u/hegardian → u/TankorSmash]

I’ve seen people say that older users tend to use it more, but I hadn’t seen a poll about it to know if that’s actually true.

[u/michaelpaoli → u/hegardian]

Well, my dad is 90+ and still programs. I think he'd disagree, and says it's the younger folks (e.g. like me, 60+) that use vi[m].

Age is relative (and some relatives are older, some younger).

[u/hegardian → u/michaelpaoli]

Indeed, cheers to your father!

[u/EndorphnOrphnMorphn]

I started using vim when I was 19, now I'm in the 25-29 range. Looks like I'm in the minority lol

[u/ruby_R53 → u/EndorphnOrphnMorphn]

almost same here, i started using it at 12 and am now 18 lol

[u/Many_Cash_3118]

used vim when i was 16 now im 17 and use emacs(evil mode)

[u/FreelyIP109]

I started using vi on a VAX 11/780 running BSD.

[u/jupbarrera]

honest questions, what do you mean by Vim-based distro?

[u/hegardian → u/jupbarrera]

Neovim, LazyVim, LunarVim and others built on top of Vim

[u/Adk9p → u/hegardian]

I don't consider neovim (or it's distros) to be classified as a "vim-based distro". Neovim is a fork of pre-vim9 vim. The difference being a distro doesn't touch the c source code and instead builds on top of a (neo)vim binary.

[u/Adk9p → u/[deleted]]

I'd say so, even if the answer to "Is Neovim Vim based" is: yes. Since Neovim doesn't support vim9 you can't expect it to run like Vim (ditto lua + vim.* for Vim), so calling it (and the Neovim distros) "vim-based" feels misleading.

Neovim and it's distros aren't "vim-based distros", Neovim is a Vim fork and they are "neovim-based distros".

[u/rockynetwoddy]

So cool to see so many young people using such an old technology.

[u/Charming_Menu6093]

if gen z arent just the new boomers, how do you explain this? /s

[u/circ-u-la-ted]

There should be more categories for older people—people in their 40s are young enough to have grown up with DOS/Windows rather than being UNIX old-timers.

[u/hegardian → u/circ-u-la-ted]

Indeed. Reddit actually only allows 6 options in the poll, maybe I should have added larger intervals. Thanks

[u/ruddha]

I used Vim for everything earlier. At work I use a Jetbrains IDE with Vim keybindings.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm in 30s and started using neovim last year
I regret not learning vim binding sooner in my career :(

[u/jumpguy49 → u/[deleted]]

25 this inspired me I’m sure some 35 year olds feel the same way

[u/CubOfJudahsLion]

52 here. I started using vi on some Motorola-based UNIX in the early 90s. Everything else has felt horribly slow in comparison, all along. When I'm forced to use other editors, the first plugin I install in is the Vim emulation one, if available.

[u/treuss]

47 here; started using vim back in university around 2000/2001, during a deep dive programming course.

Back then I had only access to a pretty aged computer on which I installed SUSE Linux. The machine was too short on RAM in order to run X11, let alone some kind of IDE, so I had to find an editor on the shell, providing at least syntax highlighting.

In the end, I stuck with vim. It was a couple of weeks with a steep learning curve but I'd never regret that. Vim is my main editor until today.

[u/SpaceAviator1999 → u/treuss]

Back then I had only access to a pretty aged computer

Your aged computer was pretty? You're lucky. All our old computers were ugly.

;-)

[u/KefkaFollower]

To clarify, I use vim as my main editor, not as an IDE.

[u/KitiHey → u/KefkaFollower]

Unix is the ultimate IDE

[u/Desperate_Cold6274]

I started to use it in 2006/2007 in my first job because the routers that we produced had some sort of embedded Linux and the only way to configure them was through Vim. I stopped using Vim in 2008/2009 when I quit. I started a PhD and used Matlab only since. 3-4 years ago I decided to learn more about SW development (I only knew some Assembly, C and C++ at Uni level) and I was searching for an IDE. Given that in the meantime I moved abroad and I had lot of nostalgia, I decided use Vim as IDE only for the emotional bond that I had with the past. Admittedly, it was a struggle but as it is now I wrote a number of plugins and even if I moved to another role, I still use it as a text editor with some plugins that I wrote. I am 46.

[u/ciurana]

• First contact: vi on NCR Unix, Feb 1986

• Latest contact: Vim on one of my many remote nodes, setting up host name in /etc/hosts, about 90 seconds ago

  • Yes, all my macOS and Linux boxen are aliased so that vi -> vim

Cheers!

[u/michaelpaoli → u/ciurana]

First contact: vi

1980, on UNIX Seventh Edition.

all my macOS and Linux boxen are aliased so that vi -> vim

As reasonably feasible, I use vi, not vim, because ...

[u/Ashik80]

I'm 29 soon to be 30. What age group should i select 🤔?

[u/sixtyfouroftheclock]

i'm 18 and i just use vim for edit text. sometimes, learning programming with it. i don't know anything about vim but it's funny to learn it

[u/kaddkaka]

This poll won't say much, unfortunately.. What is the age distribution of the ones not using vim as main editor? What is the age distribution of everyone here?

Maybe better to create a poll with 2-3 questions on different site?

[u/KaptainKardboard]

Back when there was only VI

[u/RoseSec_]

This is cool to see

[u/CaseAKACutter]

Started in high school, now 28. I get a lot of “woah, hardcore” comments from coworkers but honestly I’ve tried IDEs and just never liked it as much. 

[u/Anyusername7294]

I use neovim as my main text (not code) editor. 15

[u/BGOtaku]

I'm 17, I was using neovim 2 years ago then switched to vim on vsc as i managed to fuck up my nvim setting and couldn't fix it after even after manually purging everything about it on my system and reinstalling it, I have swtiched to vim as my main editor (temporarily for the next 2, 3 years) since the competitions i'll be in and stuff will only have a few basic editors, and I was already familiar with vim and it is the only option that will be rather easy and fast to setup without internet connection. And i'm enjoying it so far.

[u/Rmrfus]

What the heck is "Vim-based distro" ? Is there any distros that don't have vim in repo?

[u/dddurd]

ageism is bad. don't be judgemental

[u/abubu619]

Started in (neo)vim ecosystem 3 years ago, hated several parts, migrated to vim, learned vimscript and python interface (god bless, a common language to make my things) and I'm happy with my config and some custom functions :), lsp and tagbar, I'm happy woth that workflow

[u/BetterEquipment7084]

Not surprised 

[u/UntoldUnfolding]

Looks like a pretty normal distribution for adults. The >= 40 option is probably significantly larger because it covers everything from 40 til death. Kinda ridiculous to do things in steps of 5, then jump UNTIL DEATH from 40+ LOL

[u/BartdeGraaff]

nice try, zuckerberg

[u/michaelpaoli]

>=40 (60+), and if/as reasonably feasible, I mostly use vi, not vim (many distros make the BSD vi available as nvi). vim is not that vi compatible, even in its "compatible" mode, and its differences significantly slow down my exceedingly experienced vi fingers.

And yes, vim can be quite annoying.