Flow – A Programmer's Text Editor
39 points
19 hours ago
| 3 comments
| flow-control.dev
| HN
cake-rusk
15 hours ago
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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.

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blue_pants
3 hours ago
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This is one the uses

https://streamable.com/r44sjd

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judahcr
14 hours ago
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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.

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cake-rusk
13 hours ago
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Find and replace does all of this, right?
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Neywiny
2 hours ago
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I guess if you select the block and can tell it to only replace within that block, yes. As far as I know VSCode/Theia don't allow that. It's either click replace 20 times, copy/paste to a new file and replace all that way, or a quick multi cursor. I prefer the multi cursor. Especially when the language servers glitch out and don't let me rename the symbol gracefully, but there are many other use cases like the alignment as they mentioned.
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viralsink
12 hours ago
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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.

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rk06
15 hours ago
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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.

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cake-rusk
13 hours ago
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Yes I get that its a basic requirement for some people. I am asking why.
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Bjartr
7 hours ago
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I'm curious too. I find it an occasionally useful feature, but how often I use it goes down as my ability to construct better find-replace/apply-action regex goes up.
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MoonZ
12 hours ago
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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.
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nylonstrung
13 hours ago
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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

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