Flow – A Programmer's Text Editor

31 pointsposted 9 hours ago
by css_apologist

9 Comments

cake-rusk

4 hours ago

I have rarely ever seen a problem and thought to myself I need multiple cursors. I admit it's useful for data wrangling but programming?

What are people using it for? I would love to see some real world usage.

judahcr

4 hours ago

I use multi-cursor editing daily. It’s very useful for aligning code, quick name changes, joining/expanding to multiple lines, etc.

Works best when paired with a "duplicate cursor at next match" keybind.

cake-rusk

2 hours ago

Find and replace does all of this, right?

viralsink

2 hours ago

Multi cursor edits feel nice during flow state, they let your brain stay in "edit" mode. However I only use them for edits of around 20-30 lines at a maximum.

Another use case for me is extracting interesting information from debug logs, where I don't want to think of a regex and the lines are similar enough.

MoonZ

2 hours ago

Extracting log entries from large files for troubleshooting, mass editing, mass formatting... This missing feature is the only reason I wasn't able to get far with the vim family: I didn't find a close enough way to do the same tasks as efficiently.

rk06

4 hours ago

multiple cursor is basic editor 101.

programmer' text editor need to have it as bare minimum. otherwise, i would have to go to sublime or vscode for text editing and then I will wonder why should I bother with this editor.

cake-rusk

2 hours ago

Yes I get that its a basic requirement for some people. I am asking why.

hamiecod

2 hours ago

Neovim with a few extensions installed by default. What other features does it have?

nylonstrung

2 hours ago

This has quickly become my favorite TUI text editor, even though it seemed like "yet another editor" when I first came across it

As someone who doesn't like modal options I used nano, micro, and ox in that order but Flow is a much nicer product than those 3

If you like helix it can also just us the modal editing and keybinds from it as well