this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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Programmer Humor

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[–] Feyter@programming.dev 162 points 2 months ago (2 children)

No one can exit vim. It's simply not possible.

There are even legends that the devil himself was onced tricked into opening vim and is stuck there since.

[–] affenlehrer@feddit.org 75 points 2 months ago (3 children)

That explains the many vim enthusiasts that don't want any other editor. They simply can't exit the vim instance they once accidentally opened...

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 31 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The Eagles called it Hotel California.

[–] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

"We are all just prisoners here of our own device"
So true, so true.

[–] BlackVenom@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

Stockholm Editor

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[–] Bakkoda@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"... and that's why I need you to take the power plant offline."

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[–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 94 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Every computer has a built-in "exit vim" button, conveniently located on the chassis, usually next to the power cord. Flick it to 0, then back to 1, and you'll find vim has been successfully exited. :)

[–] four@lemmy.zip 41 points 2 months ago (8 children)

What if my PC boots straight into Vim? It's not like I need anything else, can do everything in Vim

[–] enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 22 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Jokes aside, vim as PID 1 is just a bad idea.

Emacs on the other hand: https://github.com/emacs-os/el-init

[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 9 points 2 months ago (6 children)

That's a great idea from GitHub user el-sloppo and Claude.

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[–] Malix@sopuli.xyz 82 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] heuristic_lemur@lemmy.ml 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Isn't it? I can't decide whether I believe this is an easter egg

[–] wheezy@lemmy.ml 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If it was trained properly on Internet data it would just respond with "you can't"

[–] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you need to exit vim, just open a new terminal and reboot the machine.

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[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 67 points 2 months ago

Ok this proves that AI has reaches human level intelligence.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 59 points 2 months ago

This is the closest I have seen Copilot doing something like a human Programmer would

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This is how we trap it. This is how we win.

[–] AmanitaCaesarea@slrpnk.net 29 points 2 months ago

This is how we vim😏

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are you sure? It looks like this is going "Hey, I can't get the front door open to the house, so I called the cops and told them I was being held hostage so they would break down the door with a battering ram."

How long is it before CoPilot can't exit vim and just deletes vim as the solution?

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[–] weimaraner_of_doom@piefed.social 50 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Instructions: "Next, open the .config file in vim..."

Me:

[–] BluescreenOfDeath@lemmy.world 33 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What a weird way to spell nano

[–] weimaraner_of_doom@piefed.social 16 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Nano is the proper tool for this job.

[–] thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago

neovim

but

use whatever you like

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 35 points 2 months ago
[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 28 points 2 months ago

Just like me fr

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 28 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I often see Copilot get stuck in a nonresponsive shell after it used cat > file. It's hilarious to watch the first time, but I'm a bit tired of it by now. Why doesn't it just edit files like it normally does?

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Why doesn't it just edit files like it normally does?

Haha. Yes.

But it does everything the most probable way, according to all the stack overflow it has swallowed.

Sometimes that way makes sense. Sometimes not.

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[–] kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@programming.dev 21 points 2 months ago (5 children)
[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 49 points 2 months ago (4 children)

If it’s a read only file it won’t work, but it might be in insert mode and can’t escape.

It should have tried :q!

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[–] bizza@lemmy.zip 20 points 2 months ago

Blowing through all those tokens failing to exit a vim

[–] inari@piefed.zip 18 points 2 months ago
[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't exit vim.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 14 points 2 months ago

First funny thing ive seen Microslop Copilot do...

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 months ago

It has achieved the same level of awareness as the average emacs user.

[–] jeffep@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

How to protect your computer from automated AI attacks 101: start vim

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (18 children)

i cant understand all the vim hyping. its probably very neat and can do whatever, but what good is that if it takes awful amount of bother to learn everything by heart since interface has been designed to be as unfriendly as possible. it doesnt have to be fit for office worker, but at least some ease of use is needed.

[–] lemon@sh.itjust.works 34 points 2 months ago (6 children)

The interface is modal editing, which, yes, takes some getting used to. The payoff is that you get a kind of programming language for text editing. Rather than memorizing ctrl+shift+alt-style keybinds, you decompose stuff into chainable actions.

Have you ever played a video game, be it with kbd+mouse or gamepad, and realize you’re doing a bunch of stuff without actually consciously thinking about what buttons you’re pressing? That’s what working in editors like Vim or (my fav) Helix feels like.

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[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 2 months ago (7 children)

since interface has been designed to be as unfriendly as possible

No, it hasn't.

It (well, vi, which vim is a clone of) has been designed to be a possible interface on a keyboard that doesn't have arrow keys or other modifier keys than shift. There aren't that many ways to program a visual text editor when those are your constraints.

That it's more productive once you know it is a side-effect.

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[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago (6 children)

It’s a specialist tool. You can say the same thing about any specialist tool. Why should CNC machine tools exist if they’re so hard to use and take a lot of training and are dangerous in the hands of untrained people?

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[–] Noctambulist@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Vim is actually highly ergonomic; you can do everything with a minimum of keystrokes without moving a hand away to a mouse or touchpad or oven the arrow keys. If that's worth the time investment to learn it, is a highly subjective question. But I’d say it's a lot easier than many people think.

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[–] lime@feddit.nu 16 points 2 months ago

fluency. languages are hard to learn but when you know them you communicate better. same as touch-typing, or mobas.

[–] grepehu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago (5 children)

It's not "designed to be as unfriendly as possible", it's designed to be exactly what you configure it to be, that's why I love it. Every keymap, every screen position, every worflow, the way it searches through lines and files names, everything was configured by me, so whenever I do something in my editor it always make absolute sense for me, because it was literally made for me.

If you get me to someone else's neovim config I would probably be absolutely lost because it's a very unique experience for each person, some people like to bloat it out with plugins others like to keep it bare minimum and so on.

One biggest lie abput vim is the productivity, it doesn't make you that much faster in comparison to any other editor if you take the time to learn the keymaps from them, the real strong point of neovim is having an editor that is absolutely tailor made for you in a way you cannot achieve in OOB editors.

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[–] notabot@piefed.social 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Come on in, <esc>J us, soon you will learn to love the one true editor. Launch vi and be <esc>:w. Soon you will want to <esc>:%s/other editors/vi/g. <esc>dd your hesitation and do it.

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[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ngl, there have been some times when i Ctrl-Z, then found and killed the PID

[–] myotheraccount@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

No need to find it, just kill %1, to kill the first background job in a shell (check jobs otherwise to find the right %n)

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[–] ArseAssassin@sopuli.xyz 9 points 2 months ago

They really are just like us... 🥲

[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 months ago

If you use nvim you don't exit you open a float terminal. Why would you exit?

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