justify my love of gvim

Question

I have been using gvim at work for a year or so, just at the point where I'm loving it, getting the hang of it and trying to j,k all over Microsoft Outlook. Then my computer died. Now, originally I had installed gvim myself, which at the time was a "no-no" and is now is really a bad idea (what with all the people introducing viruses to the network and whatnot).

We have a software review board to which I was sent when I wanted gvim "legally" installed. I was told that the standard text editor is UltraEdit and they don't want to support more than one. If I want to use gvim I need to talk management into making it the standard.

I'm kind of at a loss. Obviously, I can tout the cost savings, but I was having a hard time explaining what my fuss was about. If it were another programmer, I'd just force them to use it and they'd figure it out for themselves. But management folk aren't much interested in not being able to figure out you need to "i" before you can type, er, insert.

I told my manager it was like having a rowboat instead of swimming everywhere. And sometimes you're motorboating in that thing, but I'm looking for concise, compelling arguments which aren't based on bad analogies. There are a number of similar-ish questions, but I fear they trend too technical. Any ideas?

And after all your awesome advice wins the day for me, how do I ease former UltraEdit users into becoming gvimmers?

Update: Thanks for the answers! I accepted one but took from many (don't know if that matters as question is now closed). Even though it was apparently too open-ended it is helping me plead my case with the powers-that-be.

Answer 1

Seems simple enough. Tell them that you are far more proficient with Vim and that you know next to nothing about UltraEdit. Whether this is true is irrelevant - provisioning requests for software aren't delivered under oath :-)

This has two effects:

• you won't need the IT staff to support you since you such a guru.
• you won't need weeks of ramp-up time trying to figure out how UltraEdit works.

Managers understand cost/benefit analyses. The cost of letting you use Vim is zero. The cost of making you use UltraEdit is considerably more.

Likewise Vim's benefits are high since you're immediately productive.

The company where I work actually has two classes of software that they let us use. The first is the stuff they support. The second is stuff that you need to get yourself (off the company distribution site, not from outside, they're still paranoid about malware and rightly so) and, if you have trouble with it, don't call them.

But don't make the mistake of trying to evangelise Vim. You want to be given a choice, not try to convince everyone else to have their choice taken away.

Answer 2

Under these circumstances, I would consider going rogue.

I'm afraid you've presented a no win situation that I've faced many times in my programming career - a draconian policy inflicted on productive employees by middle management. A vain effort to homogenize the environment and work force beyond any level that can be considered reasonable.

Ponder the consequences of going rogue, by installing vim on your box anyways, and see if they are worth the benefit to you. If you decide that it is worth it, just do it. It's not like you are doing something illegal, after all. If the consequences are dire, I'm afraid you will have to cave in and start using UltraEdit. It's not the end of the world (it could have been notepad), but as an avid vim user myself, I feel your pain.

Update: I see people are voting me down, but this is the real world and the real world isn't perfect(ly theoretical in nature). Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, but in the end it's still your decision and only you have enough information to weigh the consequences. All we can do is present you with options, some more extreme than others...

Answer 3

This question is a better fit for programmers.stackexchange.com. But anyway. I think this whole "everybody at work must use one editor only" is absurd. Whatever happened to "different strokes for different folks", especially for creative types like programmers?

If your work doesn't see programmers as creative types, then you have a bigger problem. Time to visit careers.stackoverflow.com. ;-)

As a personal aside, I type with Dvorak. I don't necessarily want to convert all my workmates to Dvorak, but, I would find a different job if work made me use qwerty. There is simply no way I would agree to retrain myself on qwerty given that I type at 100 to 120 wpm on Dvorak, and no amount of qwerty training will get me to that speed.

Answer 4

The argument I would use is that individual developers are more productive in different environments and this one doesn't even cost them anything. And, on that note, while I'm a gvim lover myself, I think forcing others onto it is guaranteed to only make them hate it.

Answer 5

gvim is indeed a thing of great power. Grown men have been known to weep at the mere thought of its beauty. The productivity increases provided by this tool are immense if you know them by heart, and switching back to a conventional editor can make you feel as if you are typing with only your thumbs.

Given this, I would suggest you take some sort of productivity measurement, if you can. For similar straightforward development tasks, measure the lines of code you output in n hours with gvim, and then with UltraEdit. Include tasks such as refactoring into these measurements. Then, take these numbers to management and say, "Would you have me perform at 1/x the speed that I could be performing? Remember, this is dollars and cents we are talking about!"

Also assure these naive creatures that gvim is not a virus and will not take down the network in flames. It is, in fact, a text editor.

Implore them to amend the standards to allow for the application of a little logic. A little logic can go a long, long way.

Good luck to you, roger. As a fellow gvim enthusiast, I salute you.

Answer 6

gvim is a portable app. So don't install it but have it anyway.

Answer 7

To be honest, I don't know what UltraEdit provides that Notepad++ doesn't - which suggests a waste of money.

But, their response seems like a canned "we don't want to do our job so go away". If I were in your position I would present the use cases that I used with vi and DEMAND that they show me how to do the same thing in UltraEdit because they "support" that product. And trust me, I would make sure I make multiple tickets in the ticketing system just to piss them off. And at any point if they say "I don't know", contact their supervisor and ask them why you can't have gvim installed when the techs don't even know about the "supported" software.

If they refuse to help you or take their time, contact their supervisor and tell them they are impairing your ability to do your job.

Eventually someone will listen to you and cave :).

Answer 8

Programmers are a very expensive resource, and you are losing productivity by using UltraEdit. Just do a little math:

Suppose you spend 60 minutes a day for a month dealing with UltraEdit instead of programming. Then, maybe after month of adjustment, it only takes you an extra 30 minutes a day to use UltraEdit. Add those minutes together, and you get nearly 20 days per year! This means it costs your company nearly a month of your time every year to use UltraEdit.

Now find a few colleagues who have similar opinions. If four or five of you get together, the amount of lost time gets really big really fast.

Just flip the numbers around, and tell your manager that you know a great way to A) save the company a bunch of money or B) greatly improve programmer productivity.

Whether that argument will work depends on your company (and your position in the company).

The people who craft IT policies should understand that a programmer's computer needs are quite different from those of the average business user.