How did you learn to use Vim?

[alexjd99]

I'm having a very hard time learning Vim, so I was curious if anyone knew any way for me to learn without feeling like I'm being hit by a bus 

[nathanrosspowell]

Prepare to be repeatedly ran over by that bus, for a few weeks -or- just quit now!

There is no easy way to learn. Persistence is key. You are remapping the way your brain works, it takes time.

[intelli78]

For me, it didn't stick until I just started practicing keystrokes over and over. You just have to drill them into your brain by actually typing them repeatedly. Reading about them won't help--going through the motions will.

[rowdy]

I was using vi on Unix systems many years ago.

Then when Linux was invented and I started using it, somehow I got on to elvis (another vi clone).

Then I dabbled with FreeBSD, which has more like the original vi.

Now I generally use CentOS 6/7 and Debian 8, which include vim.

Mostly I just use vim as if it was elvis or vi.

[toneman77]

I'm having a very hard time learning Vim, so I was curious if anyone knew any way for me to learn without feeling like I'm being hit by a bus 

Try the command vimtutor in the command line and/or http://vim-adventures.com/ both helped me a lot.

[henz]

The cheat sheet

http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif

[potatowire]

Vimtutor is a great call, and I have heard good things about interactive sites like vim-adventures.com, but the best tool I found while learning was videos. The ones I liked best (it was a while ago, so there may be better ones out there now) were by Derek Wyatt. I enjoyed his presentation style, and it helped me to see Vim in action, rather than just reading about it.

[osi]

Another vote for vimtutor here. Also, if you are throw into a situation where vi/vim is your editor, you can learn fairly quickly

[vkulla]

I learned the basics really quick with a little game:
http://vim-adventures.com/

[hashbaz]

I tried and failed a couple of times to "get into" vim before finding vimtutor. It did the trick of getting me over the initial hump. Nine years later, can't use anything else.

[pr0ximity]

Using it, the only way to learn. I doubt you'll really lose *that* much productivity starting with hjkl and two modes (insert and visual). At that point it's identical to Notepad.

 Add stuff on top slowly, like w, e, and b for navigating through words, and start looking into selections and copy/paste.

Once you're comfortable with that, look up how to do things when you have the need to.

[njbair]

Vimtutor, like everyone else.

Now the real question is, how did I re-learn Vim when I switched to Dvorak?

[alexjd99]

Vimtutor, like everyone else.

Now the real question is, how did I re-learn Vim when I switched to Dvorak?

By becoming a masochist?

[noisyturtle]

Too hard for me, I gave up in less than 2 hours.

[rowdy]

Vimtutor, like everyone else.

Now the real question is, how did I re-learn Vim when I switched to Dvorak?

Everyone else?

I didn't

[kittenpolice]

A friend of mine swears by Practical Vim by Drew Neil. I can't vouch for it, but it's on my list of books I'm going to read this year.

[naasfu]

Too hard for me, I gave up in less than 2 hours.

i think i got about as far before getting frustrated.  i think i'm too old to learn new (well, vi is rather old) tricks.

maybe i'll try this vimtutor sometime.

[frarees]

Struggled for weeks before I jumped into vi modes. Learning curve is quite big for what I'm used to see on text editing, as it represents a new (old?) paradigma I wasn't used to.

Found this guy's post interesting. He talks his experience, some plugins he uses on vim and how important and personal vimrc is.

The change didn't happened until I decided to actually use vim for small edits, then started using it to write small programs. After several days using it I found it quite natural, and I don't feel like going back. You start with a few commands basic commands (e.g. dw, gg, r, C...) and as you go you find out more interesting ones that fit with your usage (e.g. ciw, viB were some good ones in my case). It was worth the change for sure

Good luck!

[rowdy]

There's a sort of intro here: https://www.linuxvoice.com/learn-to-love-vim/

Not really a tutorial, according to Mike, but seems to give a reasonable overview of lots of vim's features.

[njbair]

Vimtutor, like everyone else.

Now the real question is, how did I re-learn Vim when I switched to Dvorak?

Everyone else?

I didn't

Rowdy I thought you wrote Vim.

[iLLucionist]

I read "Learning the Vi and Vim Editors" (O'reilly, Robins et al.) cover-to-cover. And I forced myself to use vim exclusively, even when it became frustrating.

Took me a week to get the basics in my muscle memory up to the point that I didn't really had to think about them. With basics, I mean hjkl for navigation, dd to delete line, motions, text objects, etc.

The more advanced stuff like customization and vimscript took me a month or so to become and feel comfortable with (what plugins, when NOT to use plugins, personal .vimrc, etc.).

But honestly, you keep learning new stuff with vim or getting new preferences. And now I'm curious about emacs / spacemacs.

[thelectronicnub]

i didn't

nano best editor

[rowdy]

Vimtutor, like everyone else.

Now the real question is, how did I re-learn Vim when I switched to Dvorak?

Everyone else?

I didn't

Rowdy I thought you wrote Vim.

I have written a few editors in my time, but nothing like vim.

[iLLucionist]

i didn't

nano best editor

nano? for real? what about mcedit?

[jwaz]

i didn't

nano best editor

nano? for real? what about mcedit?

[iLLucionist]

i didn't

nano best editor

nano? for real? what about mcedit?

Show Image

I actually laughed.  :thumb:

[CSCoder4ever]

how did I learn? Oh, a little bird taught me how  )

[mr67volks]

I tried my hand at webhosting and needed to figure out how to edit configs fast in a  command line interface

[iLLucionist]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

[iri]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

[iLLucionist]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

Spacemacs is nice. Makes me want to learn elisp.

[iri]

Vimtutor, like everyone else.

Now the real question is, how did I re-learn Vim when I switched to Dvorak?

Everyone else?

I didn't

I did

Also, I printed the cheat sheet and hanged it on the wall near my monitors.

Also, a series of brilliant articles in Russia.

[iLLucionist]

I must say that now I grok vim and now spacemacs exist, I think vim is a springboard to dive into emacs.

First you learn vim, then you move onto spacemacs and discover what a nice OS emacs is and then you switch to emacs with personal config and personal elisp so that you can have your favorite editor with vim bindings in every app in your OS.

Though spacemacs really IS slower than vim in my experience..

[iri]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

Spacemacs is nice. Makes me want to learn elisp.

Soon Neovim shall rise and you'll be able to use your favourite programming language with it.

[iLLucionist]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

Spacemacs is nice. Makes me want to learn elisp.

Soon Neovim shall rise and you'll be able to use your favourite programming language with it.

(Attachment Link)

Neovim is quite awesome. Now only if there would be native support for something better then vimscript.

[iri]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

Spacemacs is nice. Makes me want to learn elisp.

Soon Neovim shall rise and you'll be able to use your favourite programming language with it.

(Attachment Link)

Neovim is quite awesome. Now only if there would be native support for something better then vimscript.

Oh, but there is native support for Lua. And why would you need native support when you can use any language which has an implementation of msgpack-rpc?

[iLLucionist]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

Spacemacs is nice. Makes me want to learn elisp.

Soon Neovim shall rise and you'll be able to use your favourite programming language with it.

(Attachment Link)

Neovim is quite awesome. Now only if there would be native support for something better then vimscript.

Oh, but there is native support for Lua. And why would you need native support when you can use any language which has an implementation of msgpack-rpc?

msgpack-rpc? But that would require to have, for instance, a python instance running alongside and python communication with neovim via msgpack-rpc amirite?

[iri]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

Spacemacs is nice. Makes me want to learn elisp.

Soon Neovim shall rise and you'll be able to use your favourite programming language with it.

(Attachment Link)

Neovim is quite awesome. Now only if there would be native support for something better then vimscript.

Oh, but there is native support for Lua. And why would you need native support when you can use any language which has an implementation of msgpack-rpc?

msgpack-rpc? But that would require to have, for instance, a python instance running alongside and python communication with neovim via msgpack-rpc amirite?

Yes.

[iLLucionist]

vim is heaven. vim rules! (and emacs rules)

Are there any other editors around that have the power of either vim or emacs?

Are there any other editors around that have the power of spacemacs?

Spacemacs is nice. Makes me want to learn elisp.

Soon Neovim shall rise and you'll be able to use your favourite programming language with it.

(Attachment Link)

Neovim is quite awesome. Now only if there would be native support for something better then vimscript.

Oh, but there is native support for Lua. And why would you need native support when you can use any language which has an implementation of msgpack-rpc?

msgpack-rpc? But that would require to have, for instance, a python instance running alongside and python communication with neovim via msgpack-rpc amirite?

Yes.

That's pretty cool. I should look into that. Though I always had the feeling that native vimscript is faster then relying on such communication. But I could be entirely wrong of course.

[iri]

For trivial tasks like moving cursor inside the buffer you won't notice the difference on a modern machine. For computation intensive tasks you'd better go with languages other than VimL

[iLLucionist]

For trivial tasks like moving cursor inside the buffer you won't notice the difference on a modern machine. For computation intensive tasks you'd better go with languages other than VimL

I tried to go hardcore with viml and learn it. I program in many languages and I can quickly learn a language when necessary (and API's). But viml? viml is a b*tch. The legacy, the abbreviations. It makes Perl look nice in comparison. I HATE viml. But yeah... if you're in love with vim there is no way out. Except for there is now with neovim..

[rowdy]

This seems to be the most recent Vim thread.

Version 8 is coming ...

https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/version8.txt

Who's excited?

[iri]

This seems to be the most recent Vim thread.

Version 8 is coming ...

https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/version8.txt

Who's excited?

Nope =)

[iLLucionist]

This seems to be the most recent Vim thread.

Version 8 is coming ...

https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/version8.txt

Who's excited?

I'm f**king excited. Cannot wait for it to come out. (Seriously)

[rowdy]

Here's quite a good basic command cheat sheet:

https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/04/19/vim-commands-cheat-sheet/

[iLLucionist]

Here's quite a good basic command cheat sheet:

https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/04/19/vim-commands-cheat-sheet/

Cool, didn't knew that one.

But I think that people need to understand the concept of "motions" and "text objects" and "quantifiers" like "3dw" (3 times delete word) first, to put cheat sheets more in context. I know that I confused all of them initially.

[rowdy]

Here's quite a good basic command cheat sheet:

https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/04/19/vim-commands-cheat-sheet/

Cool, didn't knew that one.

But I think that people need to understand the concept of "motions" and "text objects" and "quantifiers" like "3dw" (3 times delete word) first, to put cheat sheets more in context. I know that I confused all of them initially.

I kind of worked that out intuitively and use that sort of functionality all the times.  Sometimes, depending on the size of the file, it is quicker for me to do that than work out the search/replace syntax.

[rowdy]

Found this recently: http://www.openvim.com/