Yes. I think using count modifiers on "j" and "k" in vim is insane. Spamming up and down is definitely less mental load than trying to calculate how many rows down you want to move (I remember one tutorial on vim was even supplying some config to remind to unlearn this "bad mental habit" of spamming j and k). But probably this is one of these instances where different peoples minds work very differently. I almost never use macros, but use regex inside of my editor often.
Emacs has keybinds that allow you to move forward and backward at the following scales:
Emacs supports rendering the org-mode format for text files where you can create a tree (like in Notion or Obsidian), which allows you these additional movements:
I find all these actions quite intuitive, and never used count modifiers in vim where you must type 10 j to move 10 lines down. It is an investment of time to learn such a workflow, of course.
Yep I use all of those you mentioned in evil mode. Except I rarely use paragraph and sentence level, which in practice I just use "/" to search the right place at that point. You can go overboard overoptimising here and I've certainly done that in the past.
As a long-time Emacs user, I obviously disagree. Here are my points.
Of course, these are not really measurable, but I'm convinced that working in a way which gives me more joy is beneficial even if the work takes a bit more time.
Ah, nice. I can't argue with this (de gustibus non est disputandem). Although I almost feel like you're making my point for me. For those for whom the ineffable joy of Emacs wizardry isn't a factor, learning such wizardry is an investment that's unlikely to pay off. But that's an empirical question. The joy might even be effable after all, making the whole question empirical: Will you maximize your utility by embracing or eschewing powerful text editors?
I don't actually have a very strong prediction. I just wanted to make the points that repetitive mindless editing is less costly than it seems and the wizardry is more costly than it seems (modulo the intrinsic joy, as you say). In fact, I just thought of an analogy: the mindless repetitive editing is like doodling during a lecture; creating a macro or other wizardry to avoid the mindless editing is like texting during a lecture. The former leaves your brain engaged with the topic at hand and the latter engages it elsewhere.
You can say that in this analogy it would need to be particularly life-affirming texting. Again, I can't argue with that. I'm just highlighting the cost. If the cost is worth paying, that's fine.
I mean sure, all that could be true. But what reason do you have to think it? Why do you not then use the standard editor?
Ha! I'm embarrassed to have missed this reference without neuroprosthetic assistance.
https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html
Maybe I should give ed a try??
One additional point in favor of using editing macros to do lots of work at once is that it reduces the odds you might make a mistake. Hand-editing dozens of the the lines of code, especially if it's very tedious, could mean a typo or two slips in, which could be annoying to go back and fix and can hide in plain sight; an automated macro will either get them all right, or get them all wrong in a similar way, hopefully sticking out.
Good point! I'm noticing that in VS Code, the autocomplete is getting scary smart. You'll start doing some tedious edit and the AI is immediately like "so... continue for the rest of this block like this?" and you can just hit tab. For a while I would hit escape in annoyance when it did that. Why would I trust the AI not to introduce subtle errors? But (a) that doesn't seem to happen, and (b) it does a good job of highlighting the parts that will actually change so you can vet it pretty easily. It's pretty freaking magical (modulo the part where it's possibly a harbinger of dooooooom).
Oh, yeah, AI can definitely introduce subtle errors, but maybe at a lower rate? I think the main value is seeing a big change at once, i.e.:
highlights the error immediately, whatever method is used to perform the quick or instant change.
I have a writing tip! This is especially about writing code but it mostly generalizes to prose. You know how Vim is a wildly powerful editor with an elegant system of composable primitives and Turing-complete macros? Here's an argument that you don't actually want that...
Sometimes when coding you'll find yourself doing some mindless repetitive task like re-indenting a block of code line by line. For that particular example maybe it's already in your muscle memory to do something more efficient. But suppose it's something slightly more complicated. In a powerful enough editor there will be a macro you can create on the fly or clever composition of text-manipulation primitives and if you're good enough at this you'll look like a wizard — code rearranging itself in whooshes like you're Neo in The Matrix.
But I claim that, if it's not already muscle memory, there's a big hidden cost to saving yourself the visible cost of manually doing those edits line by line. Namely, you're redirecting the programming (or writing) part of your brain from the code (or words) you're working on to the meta problem of maximizing your editing efficiency. That is a distraction from the task at hand!
When you just do the mindless manual edits, your brain stays engaged with the actual thing you're editing. The wasted time isn't really wasted. You're mulling and chewing on the text as you make those mindless edits.
"But it's an investment!" I hear you counterarguing. If you turn that wizardry into muscle memory you have the best of both worlds. Maybe! I'm not saying always edit things in the most tedious way possible. Just at least mind the tradeoffs. Breaking your flow to fuss with your tools and solve meta-problems is costlier than it seems; and mindless, repetitive editing isn't as wasteful as it seems. Because your brain is engaged with the object-level problems of what you're composing while you're doing it.
PS: Hello from Inkhaven! As I've been talking about on both of my other blogs — Beeminder and AGI Friday — I'm here for two weeks as a Contributing Writer, helping the participants with their writing (and especially helping them set up automated word count trackers and commitment devices based thereupon). I'm not technically myself on the hook to publish something every day but I'm a little jealous of the participants. So I'm taking a stab at it. I've collected dozens of tips and my plan is to pick one each day and see if it turns into 500 words. This one didn't, but with this postscript it's close!
(Also it's now a few minutes after midnight so I have failed the spirit of Inkhaven on my first full day here. Except that saying so is juuuust barely eking me over the 500 word threshold. So I guess if we don't quibble about the midnight deadline, this one maybe counts after all? It really feels like a stretch to get there by counting this tedious self-reference though. Alas.)