blog: using vim again

src/content/blog/2024-02-25-using-vim-again-or-how-the-tool-shapes-the-work.md

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+---
+title: 'Using Vim again, or: how the tool shapes the work.'
+date: 2024-02-25T11:54:47.344Z
+slug: 2024-02-25-using-vim-again-or-how-the-tool-shapes-the-work
+author: Thomas Wilson
+
+---
+I don't know, man, every ninth moon cycle something comes over me and asks 
+"remember how you learned software engineering using vim and rails and that was 
+sort of it?"
+
+That time has come, all aboard Steam Train Vim.
+
+Specifically, I found [Lazy Vim](https://www.lazyvim.org/), a neovim setup, 
+which I am configuring with [lua](https://www.lua.org/), a scripting language 
+I've never used before. 
+
+I am already learning stuff !
+
+It's _wild_ how much I learned about making software without Intellisense (or 
+language servers), integrated test runners, refactoring tools, copilot 
+autocomplete.  
+
+I wrote a  lot of my doctorate in plaintext files in vim. 
+
+I did a lot of my foundational thinking and building work as an engineer here, 
+in vim.
+
+But I feel weird that the layer between "me" and the thing that runs my 
+software is quite chunky.  
+
+And the software I interracted with became more and more like the big and 
+chunky codebases that these tools excel at.  I became a professional software 
+engineer, I guess.
+
+Alongside, maybe because of, this - the act of writing software has become 
+something chunky.  It has become a proper-noun Activity.
+
+I _love_ the JetBrains suite of tools.  I do not want to stop using them.  They 
+are so good.
+
+But the spirit of rebellion, of _actually_ hacking away on a computer became 
+something I don't really do any more.
+
+I am familiar enough with the commandline that it's not magic. I hand-wavy know 
+what's happening.  But I think there's a feedback loop here: I only see things 
+done with bash, sed, awk (and friends) when either i) it is a trivial example, 
+or ii) a "hacky but it works" solution that no one's touched since 2012.
+
+The promise of Vim from every Vim-huckster was that you could _edit code at the 
+speed of thought_.  It's an appealing idea, but most of the time I am not 
+limited by typing speed, I'm limited by thinking speed (and quality).  
+
+Problems are just hard sometimes.  And [for over a century 
+now](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/02/09/efficient/), we've known there's 
+no point in optimising for:
+
+> systemic ways of doing things which need not be done at all.
+
+Anyway, maybe I'll do something with it (cool), or maybe in seven days I 
+realise present/past Wilson is/was being too idealistic and not pragmatic 
+enough. 
+
+Whatever, I'm writing this in Vim and I'm having a great time.