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| -rw-r--r-- | _posts/2018-06-17-windows-vim-python.md | 27 |
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diff --git a/_posts/2018-06-17-windows-vim-python.md b/_posts/2018-06-17-windows-vim-python.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7eeb83f --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2018-06-17-windows-vim-python.md @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +--- +layout: default +title: "Windows, Vim, and Python: An Unholy Trinity of Pain" +--- + +# {{ page.title }} + +Last summer I figured I'd learn Vim. That did not go well. + +I started by stealing somebody's `.vimrc`, as is natural. +In this case the person from whomst I lifted my `.vimrc` was a Python dev, and I was working in Python at the time, so that was a reasonable choice. +But once I opened an actual Python file I got an error message that Vim couldn't find Python. + +I did some research and it turned out that even though I'd grabbed the latest version of Vim, it was looking for Python 3.5 and I had Python 3.6, which had been out for a while by then. +So I uninstalled Python 3.6 and installed Python 3.5 and started getting a different error message. + +A bit more research revealed that my Python was 64-bit but my Vim was 32-bit. +Apparently Vim didn't provide official 64-bit Windows builds at that time, so for 64-bit Vim on Windows they just linked to a handful of third party distributions. +I went ahead and uninstalled my 32-bit Vim so I could install 64-bit Vim, and then everything worked fine. +(Except for all the minor Vim papercuts that eventually led me to write [my own Nano clone](https://github.com/mathphreak/mfte) instead.) + +To get Vim and Python to play nice with each other, I had to reinstall both of them. + +And that's basically what developing on Windows is like in a nutshell. + +But it doesn't have to be this way. +If more people treated Windows as a first class platform, the tools to develop on Windows wouldn't be so frustrating to use, and then more people would treat Windows as a first class platform. |