> It is important to remember that this tutor is set up to teach by use. That means that you need to execute the commands to learn them properly. If you only read the text, you will forget the commands!
And it's free, not 15 USD or whatever this site is charging.
Okay... but the difference between a piece of text just telling me to use the commands so I remember them versus an interactive trainer that provides a structured setting for me to use them is pretty significant, no?
is provided by vimtutor. I wish people would take a couple hundred milliseconds to research things like this before posting about them — most [GNU’s Not] Unix commands take less time to run than a webpage takes to load, and installing their packages takes no more typing than a web search.
> I wish people would take a couple hundred milliseconds to research things like this before posting about them
Have tried vimtutor twice. It is seriously confusing if you don't use US keyboard layout and there are probably a couple of other sources of confusion as well.
I did well at school, I do well at work but not so well at vimtutor.
So I think I'm kind of qualified to say that there's room for other resources besides vimtutor.
I don't see anything on this site saying that it accommodates any non us qwerty keyboard layouts. Does it?
Also vimtutor requires you to actually use the commands on the document. I don't think there is a single key press it doesn't explicitly tell you to press.
Maybe do a quick run through so you can give an example of a place that is confusing?
In a really minimalist way. I've been in the process of trying to hone my vim skills, and I've been through vimtutor more than once. About the only things I can say for it is that it's free and it works in a text terminal. This online course is promising, and I'm probably going to sign up. It's salient. Salient is good. Salience promotes faster, deeper learning.
vimtutor is interactive. It's a text file that tells you what to do inside itself, so you modify vimtutor directly.. you would've known this if you had spent 10 minutes trying it out.
Back in the day, playing /usr/games/hunt against other people would hone your VI movement keys muscle memory rather quickly.
On the multiuser Unix systems at Purdue, it was typical to have at least half a dozen people on the server, with explosions going off like fireworks. We ran the mod where you could collect 200 ammunition for the nuke, which would destroy a third of the screen.
We also had Larry Wall's (yes, that one) video game Warp, which was a lot more action-oriented than the original Star Trek video game. It also used the same hjkl movement keys.
Having seen machines that have hundreds of Vim sessions opened because “system integrators” didn’t know how to exit Vim, it should be the very first thing taught
Luckily vim finally got a bit better with that: on a Ctrl-C newer versions now show instructions for quitting.
I remember my first vi sessions (typically via something like `crontab -e` where it wasn't clear to me it picked my "default" editor ... thus didn't know where to read up on it ...) some long time ago, where i knew `kill` before the right command ...
I started with vimtutor, then installed IdeaVim in all my Jetbrains IDEs, it took me about a week to reach the same level of efficiency I had before.
I don't understand how some people can say the learning curve is too steep. Sure it's a bit annoying at first, but it quickly becomes natural, and you don't have to use all features at first. It has allowed me to improve my touch typing a lot. Learning a programming language is a lot more work but hardly anyone ever complain about it.
It's been maybe two months and I wouldn't think of using anything else than vim for serious code editing.
> I don't understand how some people can say the learning curve is too steep
I am doing fine with vim for basic editing tasks and use it a lot (mostly when I'm already in the command line). But there's just only so many shortcuts I'm capable of memorizing. This is not a problem for me exclusive to vim, of course. In IntelliJ I also sometimes find an amazing new function that I then don't keep using since I've already exhausted my limited "inclination" of learning new shortcuts. Also, I don't think my productivity gains at this point are going to come from faster input anyway. Sorry, vim, it's not you, it's me.
I’m a full time vim user now, and I would say the ‘productivity’ gains are a bit of a pipe dream. That’s not the reason I would recommend anyone learn vim. The best reason for me is that vim is just fun.
When you finally become competent, it is an absolute joy to work with. It makes me think about editing in a totally different way. However the road to get to that point is not fun.
I started out with basic tasks in the terminal, & vimtutor reps. Then graduated to using a VS code plugin. I would turn it on for 10-15 minutes at a time a few times a day. Usually turning it off once I realize I wasn’t getting anything done :) But solid reps everyday over a few months and I got to where I learned more complex commands/ movements. Eventually I never needed to turn it off!
Then I began the configuration & plugin rabit-hole :)
Yeah that's a good point. After a while you do start to realize the limitations of the VS Code plugin. That video is a good example. But once I got to where I could edit at equivalent speed I was used to, I dropped VS Code completely. I looked at the plugin as 'training wheels'.
I'm not as hardcore as some. I still prefer to use GVim/ Macvim. I'm not an 'everything must stay in the terminal' purist. I know some who are, but I still like being able to use the mouse to bail me out sometimes, and always have access to the system clipboard without having to recompile vim :)
I don't go crazy with config & plugins, but I got my setup to where I have all the features I missed from VS Code, and that's enough for me.
There is always more to learn though. I feel like I've been complacent lately, so you have to remind yourself sometimes to make an effort to seek out more advanced techniques.
That video is a great example of some of the incredibly powerful things Vim can do! I'm a big fan of macros for repetitive tasks.
That's one of the strengths of Vim, though. There's a lot of structure to it, so you don't need to learn nearly as many shortcuts as you otherwise would.
Yes! Sadly a lot of people skip over this despite vimtutor pointing to it at the end. Copy/paste below as the text doesn't need paraphrasing, but also because a lot of comments here seem to be advocating vimtutor as something more than the "brief overview" it is.
This concludes the Vim Tutor. It was intended to give a brief overview of
the Vim editor, just enough to allow you to use the editor fairly easily.
It is far from complete as Vim has many many more commands. Read the user
manual next: ":help user-manual".
I think some (maybe vim experts) jumped a bit too quickly to vimtutor. In some regard, I agree. But I tried the initial exercise on my 8 year old and was impressed, so I purchased to have access to the rest. I'd say I'm a sub-par intermediate vim user - knowing enough to know that I don't know or use the true power of vim day to day, but have memorized a few "tricks" that seem to impress basic vim users. Hoping I can leverage this to break a few bad habits I've gotten into. Nice UI and I think the pricing is fair. Hopefully the content expands, but even if the service isn't around more than a few years I feel like the $15 will have been worth it. Nice work!
Edit: question for Kenneth - do you plan on expanding the content?
There’s been decent demand for some more advanced lessons. I’m considering adding more. Anyone who has bought already would get the additional lessons for free
I love vim-adventures. It was the only way I was able to stay motivated to learn vim well enough for it to "stick". I just hate that you can only buy 6 month access to it. I'd happily pay 2-3x the price for lifetime access, but the fact that I can only buy 6 more months makes me pretty sure that they won't be getting any more money from me. I think I would still hop on for a few minutes every few months to practice up on some stuff that I forgot.
Well I think the nice point of doing excercise in a web browser is that you can quickly switch to another tab and search for daring questions such as " by the way why on earth does this monstrosity want me to use hjkl? That don't make any sense!!!!"
For a mostly data/SQL guy wanting to learn more about coding it still don't make much sense but at least I know why and I can move on. When I was trying vimtutor in a CLI interface I was less curious and more WTF F... this is pure madness kind of mood.
Dunno if I'll subscribe but nice first experience through this demo.
HJKL also allows you to keep your fingers on the homerow at all times which is really great. I had issues with RSI that when away when I started using Vim properly. Travelling to the arrow keys now feels like a painful task to me! Of course, as a sibling comment mentioned, hjkl is the worst way to move around--"power users" generally only use them to move a char/line or two.
On the other side, it is probably the most unnecessary inflicted pain for beginners. Even after years of using vim on a daily basis, I can't get used to hjkl and still use the arrow keys. I tried a few times with different approaches, but it never lasted more than a few days. So pushing someone new to use hjkl for navigation is so unnecessary and just kills a lot of motivation for very little value.
Starting with deleting, yanking and pasting would be a lot more fun. Even navigation with gg and G plus numbers would be a lot more useful too. Like when you get an error message that is caused by line 42, you know why you want to use vim next time.
The way I got used to hjkl home row was by completely disabling the arrow keys in my vimrc file (in normal and insert modes). I was struggling before that though.
I don't disagree that it might not be the best thing to introduce to new users right off the bat. It's really nice if you force yourself to get used to it, but it's also cool to never use them. Not using them does give you four free homerow keys to map! But they're really nice if you can get used to them.
Maybe the problem is that you are not supposed to rely solely on hjkl for navigation? Not sure how others use it, but for me most of the navigation are performed with <C-d> / <C-u> / search (long range) or f, w, b etc (shorter range, usually with modifiers). hjkl are almost always used in combination with these to adjust the initial / final location of the cursor.
I sometimes use arrow keys (especially when in edit mode and I don't want to reach up to escape ...) hjkl really shines when combined with other operations like `d5l` or even smarter things.
Fortunately, j & k are next to each other, and I never noticed any disconnect in vim w/Dvorak. I never use h & l -- mostly space, w/W, or b/B. But I also learned Dvorak before vim, so I never got used to hjkl.
I played a ton of Nethack in college and adopted Dvorak at the same time. hjkl work remarkably well with Dvorak, and I found it so much more natural than the same letters with Qwerty.
j and k being next to each other makes their relative motion sensible still. And the new positions of h and l keep them in the correct relative position to indicate left and right, but easier to use. The right index finger is already on h and the pinky needs to move up one key for l. And up/down is now the left hand, with right/left being on the right hand.
I've found emacs to be similarly more sensible and comfortable, using default key bindings, with Dvorak than Qwerty.
> the nice point of doing excercise in a web browser is that you can quickly switch to another tab and search for daring questions such as (...)
On the contrary... I'd say that if you are outside a browser, it is somewhat easier to have a browser window side by side and ALT-TAB between both. Having two tabs visible at the same time is a bit cumbersome.
The most shocking thing to me was that after weeks of struggling to get used to hjkl for navigating in vim, I realized that I had already been using jk for navigating up and down on numerous sites (reddit, gmail, twitter) for YEARS.
When you consider the concept of home row keys and touch typing I find it very natural, actually. Its ergonomic and very fast if you get into the habit of resting your fingers on the home row.
Though you may have been alluding to more powerful movements!
Another great resource I gotta plug is https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/vim-be-good. Essentially the same but it's a native vim plugin. It's free, doesn't require a login, and did I mention it's a native vim plugin?
I purchased the course but was disappointed that it doesn't go much beyond the basics. For example, there is no tutorial on the dot (.) command, which is one of the main productivity hacks for vim users.
There's also no mention of the slash '/' command, moving to a particular line number with 'Shift-G', 'dw' for deleting words, or any number of things that are essential to know if you want to use vim effectively.
Repeats the same command previously run. So if you used 'ci"' for (change text in quotes) and entered a new string, you can jump to a new line and hit . to replay your last series of commands.
I only ever made it to running searches within vim with forward slash, but thanks this is useful to know. I love only using the keyboard but can never easily internalize all the useful macros that can be used.
Hello, I tried purchasing the lifetime access earlier with Google Pay and accidently bought it twice. I did not get any order confirmation email nor do I see the transaction within Google Pay. I was able to get in and do the lessons What should I do? I apologize for reaching out on a public website but there is zero contact information on vim.so.
I just see a gray screen (after enabling javascript).
EDIT: with another browser, it seems to work, and it looks very cool! But I wonder, what is the interest of learning vim outside of vim? What are the advantages with respect to the similar tutorial "vimtutor" that comes with vim itself?
I advocate organic learning for Vim and often other tools like it. Learn to do the bare minimum first, which for Vim is modes and how to exit. Then, after you find yourself doing something slowly a few times over, search how to speed it up (e.g. yank & paste, different buffers, macros). This is also a good counter argument for "the learning curve is too steep".
Can someone please explain to me why I should learn vim? I've made several attempts in my lifetime because I thought there would be some magical "ah-ha" moment, but it never came.
Separate modes for command & insert just feels inherently clumsy and slow to me. Is there some other killer feature that can't or hasn't been reproduced by modern editors?
In vim, most commands take the form "[count] operator [count] motion". When you learn a new operator, you can use it with any motion that you know and vice versa; and you can add a count to either. To give a few examples:
- gqip to format (gq) a paragraph (ip).
- g?g? to ROT13 a line (doubling the operator makes it operate on the current line — in this case, g?? also works).
- y2w to copy (y) the next two words (2w) — this requires you to be at the start of the word, but you could use y2aw if you were in the middle of a word.
- dj to delete (d) two lines (j); see ":h linewise".
- dt. to delete (d) until a period (t.), not including the period.
- y% to copy (y) until the matching parentheses (%). If you aren't already on one, vim searches until a "(", which means that you can use this to copy a C-like function call.
Additionally, a subset of these operators and motions are available in plain vi, which is available on any POSIX system (Linux, macOS, *BSD, ...)
It should be possible to do this with a "regular" type of editor, where you have a keyboard shortcut to, for instance, select to the matching parentheses; there just aren't any editors (that I know of) with the same range of motions and operators as vim.
Not moving to the arrow keys or using ctrl-, alt- far outweighs the cost of switching between insert and normal mode.
I appreciate the tutorial, but I probably do already "know" vim, but it's not part of my muscle-memory. Context switching to something like writing an email or filling out a web form really makes it not worth getting too comfortable with all these esoteric shortcuts. Do you write all of your emails in vim and browse the web on the command line as well?
From reading the rest of the replies, it sounds like the real answer is "because it's everywhere", which isn't really satisfying. I don't work on lots of machines that aren't my own (embedded/mobile space, which don't have vi installed!), so I don't actually encounter it everyday despite living on the command line.
Sorry — I never know when to assume a large amount of knowledge or a small amount of knowledge. The worst for me is "ctrl-w" to delete a word backward in Insert mode, and to delete a tab in the web browser :) Vim is in my muscle memory and it's faster for me, so that's why I use it. It might be faster for you and it might not be faster for you, and if you don't need the portability for POSIX machines it's probably not worth the time.
CTRL+W messes me up sometimes. when i'm in split screen mode with two panes i'll often tap CTRL+W twice to switch panes. very confusing when you forget to exit insert mode.
> Do you write all of your emails in vim and browse the web on the command line as well?
Yes! I use mutt + vim. Composing emails in a textarea is a terrible experience by comparison. (Respect to emacs mail mode users, that’s a great option too.)
I also use w3m for browsing technical stuff, and use tmux for copy & paste into vim.
Playing around with this, [count]iw seems to have some really strange behavior — I need to do 3iw to select two words, 5iw to select three words, etc.? I'm not sure if I'm missing something. (I normally don't use many text objects; bdw is in my muscle memory instead of daw, for example.)
Higher precision in intent for many standard operations. These aren't perfectly Vim commands, but from the Vim-like 'evil mode' for emacs, I have some examples of common idioms I use frequently:
- 'I want to change the name of this variable. <cw> (Change Word)'
- 'I want to copy the contents of this braced block. <yi{> (Yank Inside Matching-braces)'
- 'I want to surround this word in parentheses. <vaws(> (Visual-mode (region selection) Around Word Surround-with Matching-parens)'
You get used to the separate modes fairly quickly. Your existing editor already works that way when switching between 'region' and 'insert' modes; it's just the command mode that throws people off initially. It's not that rough, especially if you have a reasonably placed key to return to command mode.
I believe that this is just an arbitrary choice that doesn't collide with other keys and is fairly consistent with the other keybindings — cs for changing delimiters, ds for deleting delimiters, and ys for creating delimiters.
Do you know what plugin it is? I will try to search for an evil version (Or I could just write my own, but my task list is large and my energy very low these days)
Having worked both as a sysadmin and a developer, vim is more a benefit to the former by virtue of its ubiquity. Learn vim if you know you will be encountering vim.
> Separate modes for command & insert just feels inherently clumsy and slow to me.
Interesting, I have the opposite experience. In normal mode, I can do a lot using very few keystrokes. In editors without modes, there's always a lot of keyboard shortcuts which are difficult to remember and hard to execute.
Modern editors often implement a vi mode, so technically everything already has been reproduced in modern text editors.
Aside from just decades of experience in efficient editing of plain text files over slow connections plus all the modern stuff on top, I'd say text objects, which is one of the first things you learn about vim. And it's not a web browser.
For me, it's mostly the key bindings rather than the program itself. I use vim key bindings on whatever the latest $editor is rather than learning its keyboard navigation. I got introduced to vim very early on though.
The thesis of vim is that editing is more fundamental to the act of writing than inputting text. The default mode, normal mode, is entirely shortcuts to do editing tasks better and easier. Moving around the document, and moving or deleting text are the primary concern.
What's more, as several other commenters have alluded to, vim thinks of editing as a language. There are verbs like cut or copy or paste, and there are nouns like [this] sentence or [this] word or one word backwards or from here until the letter j. Once you start building sentences of editing commands (e.g. copy from here to the 3rd next instance of the a line starting with 'Hello' namely <y3/^Hello>) the flexibility it offers is unparalleled. This is all done from your default context without fingers leaving the keyboard. Once you achieve fluency (admittedly not a trivial task) there is no context switching for any editing task, it becomes reflexive and subconscious.
Other stuff, like macros and registers, or easy access to regexes and ex commands help extend this, but the core reason why vim is still used today is this strength.
Because the text motions, once learned, are extremely powerful and will cause your relationship to textual data to fundamentally change. All while avoiding wrist injury, because some critical keys (f, t, g, j, q) are so lettered due to the location on the keyboard. Think of your keyboard as more like a piano than an alphabet.
If you live and breath the command line it's a great skill to have because it's available everywhere and it's a very powerful editor. If you're not a heavy command line user, you are probably fine sticking with whatever you already know.
there is no reason you "should" other than in some environments you may encounter vi so it is worth knowing the basics.
There are many advantages, however, clumsy and slow is a common reaction. From what I've seen, some people get so put off by the different way of editing that they struggle, they find vim a very slow way to do what they were doing before vim - character based editing, moving around with arrow keys, highlighting, inserting, and deleting maybe with some block commands for things like selecting a word or more by using the shift key or ctrl key. Maybe with the help of the mouse to highlight things and edit. The thing with vi/m is there is a language that allows you to do similar editing but has many many combo effects, once you understand how things combo together, all kinds of things can be done really quickly.
There's no real killer feature though, there's lots of cool features, one that often doesn't get mentioned much is that you can filter text through external programs, this combos with all the motion commands and other things, so very quickly you could write a snippet of markdown and change it into html by running it through pandoc, or write your own command line tools that do custom things, like querying things from your own apis / databases etc. Its powerful, because it combos with the rest of the vi/m language so you can use it in really creative ways.
If you work a lot on the command line on UNIX and Linux systems, vi is the best choice for many because it is extremely widely available and it is also very powerful once you have mastered it.
Sorry, but this is the same non-answer I have heard my entire life.
I do primarily work on the command line and I can assign $EDITOR to anything I want. So what makes it so much more powerful than the plethora of other editors in the space?
Vim removes mental load while typing. It won’t make you significantly faster, or even really a better programmer in any measurable way. What it does is make the experience of writing text, and especially writing code, far more pleasant.
If I ever have to write something nowadays without vim, everything feels clumsy and imprecise. If I want to go back a couple of words and change something, I feel like I’m playing a timing minigame. I have to hold the left arrow key exactly the right amount of time. Most of the time I overshoot a couple of characters, and have to tap the right arrow key to get to the right spot. Now repeat the same timing minigame holding backspace. Ah crap I deleted too much better undo a couple of times. Now I can finally make my change.
All of this is just unnecessary friction between your brain and the computer that anyone who hasn’t learned vim accepts as a fact of life, but it becomes completely intolerable after spending the time to learn.
Because it is full-featured editor running fully in text mode (so you can run it on the remote server or over a serial line) and uses short commands for most text edit needs. In comparison nano provides only very basic feaures (like Notepad) and emacs (according to Stallman) is like an operating system with more complicated keyboard shortcuts. Of course you can run VisualStudio Code over VPN but that would waste too much network traffic and the input would lag more.
I equate it to touch-typing. Do you think about each keystroke or do you just type? It’s the same way with editing when you’ve learned it. I don’t know that it has to be vim but that’s what clicked with me.
Speed of editing files (especially code, but not just code) is unparalleled. Anytime I have to use something besides vim, it feels like trying to run in knee-deep water - so sluggish.
> Can someone please explain to me why I should learn vim? I've made several attempts in my lifetime because I thought there would be some magical "ah-ha" moment, but it never came.
It's faster. I've been using vim motions for almost 9 years at this point, 8 years in vim, vi, ex-vi, neovim, etc. Most recently I've moved to Doom Emacs (Which feels like an editor I'll be using in whatever forms it takes, for the next 20+ years). The experience of when you get used to it is essentially that you are so practiced with the motions that they become sub-concsious, muscle-memory. I don't have to think about where to place the cursor, figure out where the mouse cursor is, deal with a bunch of weird pasting tricks. To delete a line I just have to will myself to delete it (using 'dd'), just like I don't have to think about the complex action of getting up off the bed, I just do it (At least, on days when Mr Depresso isn't visiting). Eventually, it feels like the editor is part of you. And at this point I can't give up vim motions. Editing in anything else is uncomfortable and painful because the ease and speed with which vim allows me to do complex motions and actions is so convenient.
I can't speak for your experience, but for me I had to struggle through it a bit until I found the 'ah-ha' -- that might not come for you, or maybe you haven't found it yet, unfortunately.
I would look into using more motions, don't see it as a replacement for Gedit, or Atom, or any of the mouse+keyboard text editors -- it's not. Trying to use it like those will lead nowhere.
The trick that worked for me is to find motions that are convenient, and move ESCAPE to a more palatable key -- I swapped it with CAPS LOCK, since I pretty much never, ever have to use that key (I can always highlight 2 words with `v2w` and press `~`, which will swap the case of it, anyway). The 'finding of the motions' is important. I spend 90% of my time in a text editor moving, and cutting text, rather than typing. A motion like `}` allows me to move the cursor down a paragraph, `d}` will delete said paragraph, `v}y` will copy it, etc. Often I find myself deleting `t`o a place. So I can do `dt#` to delete to the comment at the end of a line. ^O will go to my previous cursor position, etc.
I would also recommend looking up Practical Vim -- it's probably the best Vim handbook out there (Easily accessible via genlib if you want to try before you buy), and there are still things in there I haven't learned and integrated into my workflow yet (For example, `vi)` to fast-edit bracket sequences, that I haven't bothered with much).
---
Regardless of all of that you need to decide if that effort is worth it for you. I know an extremely skilled programmer who writes and deals with extremely complex code just using Gedit (previously Geany).
I do like the idea, but it doesn't seem to support some expected features.
Like <esc>:5d doesn't delete line #5. I get "Not an editor command"
Edit: Looked into it, and it's using the Ace Editor[1] with vim key bindings. Which seems like an odd choice for a Vim tutor, since Ace doesn't really try to be a true Vim workalike.
Implementing a full vi clone seems like a nightmare — the POSIX specification makes me lose hope in humanity :) For instance, what does :delep parse to? I would never have guessed that it was the :delete command with the "p" flag (because :delete p deletes into "p).
I agree to a degree. Listing a bit more about Vim itself for someone that might be coming from a development background but does not specifically know about Vim and it's benefits could be good, and maybe what TYPE of exercises will be involved (What will I be be able to do at the end) - but keeping the exercises a little secretive is great to keep interest :)
Wow, this is incredibly scummy. Basically your logic is, "If they knew what I was selling, they wouldn't buy my course. But if they don't know then I might trick a few of them in to buying something they don't want".
edit: Note, I realize this isn't OP that I'm replying to. Not sure if what I wrote makes that clear.
I would also like to know this - as far as I could see, there was only one pretty meaningless lesson about alternate arrow keys - IMO, this doesn't sell Vim to a newbie, nor does it sell the $15 product
I know that vim is particularly enjoyed. The site looks nice and I wish you the best luck with this.
But for beginners, I now recommend micro as a console text editor (https://github.com/zyedidia/micro). It's a one line install with all the shortcuts and display that have become a standard across editors.
Does anyone know who had the bright idea to replace vi with nano as the standard text editor and why this became some sort of standard?
I really don't get it. Vi is unintuitive and unfamiliar to unix newebies, but at some point every even half-competent person on unix could use it enough to at least do simple config file changes. Plus, if you took time to learn it properly, you actually knew a quite capable editor. And the beginner unfriendliness could presumably have been mostly fixed, without much cost to existing expert users. For example by defaulting to some helpful status message how look at help and insert text (and have cursor keys and Ctrl-S etc. work as "expected" in insert mode). Or maybe a message "press Ctrl-D to enter newbie mode" that experienced vimers could just ignore but would provide CUA style keybindings and modeless editing to everyone else.
Instead now everyone has to deal with a new (and for proficient users really quite worthless) editor with its own set of completely bizarre keybindings (not emacs, not readline, not vi, not CUA), but none of the upsides that come with emacs or vi's idiosyncracies. Ctrl-O to save? WTF? Literally the only advantage over vi is that it displays some instructions at the bottom, albeit not in a form any real newbie would understand at all.
Nano (and by extension this) feel like the worst of all possible worlds -- what am I missing?
The logic I always thought was that if you are working at the console on a server and dealing with the default $EDITOR, you most likely are doing some kind of emergency maintenance. In this scenario, you want to throw the most gentle/easy-to-use editor at the user to ensure they don't accidentally overwrite a file or something else because they've been trying to bring prod back up all night and can't see straight.
If you use the box for more than 5 minutes a year, you'll probably change it to vim or whatever you prefer anyway.
I've just realized that nano was initially released in 1999! Apparently, they just copied pico key bindings, that was used as an extremely light editor.
For the rest, there is to me a cultural divide between a sysadmin/dev culture with abstract interfaces, specific key bindings and options, configuration files, ... and the thousands of people with various backgrounds that are learning tech today, including the console, just to do something using computers.
Micro is probably the best of both worlds. Try editing an admin file as a user and save.
I'm bothered by this because Vim is free, with only a hopeful plea for a donation to a charity for helping Uganda as the "payment."
It feels a tad unethical to be charging for a slightly more fancy, maybe kinda gamified, vimtutor. Like, just make a vim plugin that does this in vim and let that be your community donation.
I don’t agree with the viewpoint but the revenue here has helped me sponsor one of my favorite open source projects FastAPI at $250/mo.
There’s value in providing teaching on something that is free. I’ve bought learning tools/apps for many different programming related topics and loved the value they provided.
yeah, but again nothing stops you (or me, or anyone else reading this) to do it for free... except we will not, as we're busy earning money in other ways, so I don't think any of us can really claim a moral high ground here - and tutoring people for money is certainly much better than not tutoring them at all...
It's not "unethical" to charge money for a product that you made from scratch. People on this website really like that word, "unethical". Makes me wonder if they even know what it means. "Unethical: something you don't like."?
I'm not bothered by it. I've thought about making a SaaS where I basically just host pre-compiled FOSS packages for esoteric cpu architectures. So that way if you have a <insert random CPU> embedded linux system, you can quickly grab a precompiled `tshark` for example without figuring out how to build it yourself. Sure, it would be better as a free service, but I'm not super motivated to do that in my highly limited spare time. I would be super motivated if I were compensated for my effort with cash, however.
Making something paid vs. free can be the difference between it existing and not existing. I'd rather have this exist and be a paid app than not exist and be free.
I never buy things but this just hit on my exact pain point of trying to get good at VIM. The one thing that's holding me back is understanding how much content there is behind the 15 dollars. I really liked the demo exercise but are there only 10 more behind that?
0. Learn the basic movements and UI interactions. Do NOT use the arrow keys. Your future self will thank you tremendously.
1. Search DuckDuckGo for "vim cheatsheet" and find one that provides a good summary of commands thats organized to your liking.
2. Print it out and post it somewhere easily accessible to your working space.
3. Each-ish day, review the cheatsheet a bit and pick one one new kind of command that looks useful. Try to integrate that command into your workflow throughout the day. It'll be clumsy at first, but after you do it a few times you'll be surprised at how much faster this gets.
Focus on movement and editing first. Take note of sequences that seem to take a lot of work, as almost guaranteed there is a faster way you can integrate in later.
Once you've got a small core built up, do another review and research more specialized topics:
- .vimrc, colors, and customization
- plugins
- buffers, windows, etc for quick workspace organization
- macros ... and macros within macros!
- visual blocks
- various useful commands for advanced editing (e.g. regex based find in replace in an entire doc or visual block is epic)
Give yourself time and try not to be too loud when you have your first "A ha!" moment when you randomly try a completely new key combo that you think should work and it actually does exactly what you hoped.
This looks great! Do agree with others though, that you should expose the course sections. I don’t use vim as my main IDE but I still do use it for quick edits and commit messages, so I don’t know nothing about it. Would be great to see if the course is more/less/same as my current working knowledge. But also a one-time $15 isn’t bad at all, thank you for not trying to make this a subscription :)
Most IDEs have a vim extension that gives you the basic vim editing behavior. It’s great to get into it without having to dive into plugins, buffers, windows etc.
Nice trial exercise on the front page. While trying it out, I wanted to use the backspace key, which in Vim moves to the last character on the previous line (when used on the beginning of a line, that is), but that didn't work - backspace on the start of the line doesn't seem to move the cursor at all.
I was pleasantly surprised that cw and D are implemented correctly though, so props on that!
Actually, the 'backspace' setting only governs what the backspace key does in Insert mode. In Normal mode, which is what I was referring to in GP, has the behavior I describe regardless of how 'backspace' is configured.
Ah, my apologies; I had never considered using backspace as a navigation operation. I would guess vim does not offer customization over what the backspace key does for the same reason they don't allow changing how many spaces pressing Tab while in Normal mode moves the cursor forward, either
I was inspired by this newfound "using unexpected keys for navigation" discovery and found that (at least in my vim 8.2) holding down space in Normal mode similarly travels across the EOL boundary, just as backspace reverses that trend, so at least it's consistent
Does anybody have recommendations on how to go from "comfortable" to "expert"?
I've been using vim as my daily driver via the intellij plugin for a few years. I mostly just navigate and never do anything complicated, it gets the job done.
For example I mostly use w, d, o, hjkl, y, p, w, b, t and recently discovered the `c+i` combo which is awesome.
But I feel like there's still a side of vim I haven't conquered.
I've been using Vim for many years and felt like there was constantly stuff to learn. So a partner and I started an email newsletter that sends tips twice a week:
As an aside, I love the vim keybinds with IntelliJ combo, vim makes it so easy to navigate and perform operations, eg. the one I use most being dt<some char> to delete until a char.
Never can seem to get vim selections and deletions right though, because it deletes the character after the cursor as well so the mouse comes clutch there.
I use vim as my main driver at work. Some things that helped me out personally:
- Playing some vimgolf and seeing what neat tricks people used. This is where I learned about “.”
- Going into the deep-end of just using vim (or just vim in IntelliJ without the mouse) will make you notice all the issues that make you unproductive with only vim e.g getting around with only hjkl is really slow so you might investigate other ways to navigate or deleting a word always involves getting to the end of the word and using lots of backspace may make you wonder if there are more efficient ways to do the same thing
- if you decide not to go into the deep-end, just being more picky about how much you’re spamming certain keys may help you gradually incorporate new commands into your flow
I would recommend using vim in the console without the mouse because your editor will always give you a way out of learning.
Every time you get stuck or feel inefficient, do a web search and learn one thing.
Learn to use and love :help.
I think a few plugins can really improve the experience such as coc, ultisnips, vim-surround. Also set some settings like relative number and highlighted yank.
Some other stuff to investigate... zz and scrolling, folding, G, macros, registers, f, $ and ^ and 0, %, }, ctrl-o, ctrl-] and ctags, formatting gq = etc
Edit: also remembered enable set hidden and use buffers and splits (eg :sbp). Use markers. Also I like the fzf plugin for quickly opening files etc.
Read the user manual. I'm not trying to be snarky - the user manual is explicitly something that isn't the same as the reference and the user manual is called out as the next step after `vimtutor`.
> For example I mostly use w, d, o, hjkl, y, p, w, b, t and recently discovered the `c+i` combo which is awesome.
In addition to these, I've found (my personal experience, ymmv):
1) f/F to jump to next/previous occurrence of character to help navigating within a line very effectively, in conjunction with ; and , to jump around within these occurences.
2) use relative line numbers in conjunction with your hjkl.
E.g. jump up 5 lines and go to the start of a bracket is '5kf('. If it's a nested bracket you want, then '5kf(;'.
If you setup your dotfiles correctly, your vim environment should be accessible with a simple `git pull`.
The plugins are very worth it, there's no need to handicap yourself locally just so your environment matches some bare bones server config.
And regardless, the basic vim motions are always there - you don't lose much when just editing some config files on a server even if you have to use vanilla vim
My approach is to just use all the tools. I use clumsy IDEs when I really need powerful debugging. I use vim when I need powerful editing/macros. Sometimes I do code browsing with ctags. Sometimes I do code browsing with Eclipse. There's no need to be a purist.
Except vim. No plugins into vim. That is sacrilege.
I've used vim for many years now. It is true, learning vim makes it very frustrating when you find yourself having to use another editor. Luckily, vim is pretty much everywhere so those situations are rare.
I find that vim really shines in editing text on touch screens with on-screen keyboards. I can do complicated commands without doing too much typing out digging through menus or using ctrl alt whatever keys.
If you think vim is frustrating for a beginner, you have no idea what it feels like to edit text in non-vim for a half-assed vim user. Really, I don’t master vim after >1decade, but that’s not necessary.
It seems one of these vim tutorials comes up every 6 months or so, and the one thing they're all missing is a convincing explanation of why someone should learn all the esoteric incantations of a 30-year old text editor.
it's nice not having to constantly lift my hand to use the mouse when i'm just looking through files and making small changes. i can keep my hands on the keyboard for up to an hour and get stuff done, so long as the task at hand only requires a command line interface and a text editor.
Does it include practical use cases demonstrating how vim tricks can really come in handy in real life? This probably is the hardest part for me - I can't imagine a case where I would like to use any of them I've ever read about (yet I still feel interested).
Not a mega power vim user, but maybe this qualifies. I use vim as my git editor. When doing interactive rebase, if I want to squash/fix commits, for example, I go to the first commit I want to change the command for, ‘ciw’ to change the command, ‘esc’ to exit exit, then for the subsequent commits I want to squash/fix, just use ‘.’ to replay those same commands to the new line. Works very well! I love using vim as the git editor, it’s stupid fast, and doesn’t take you away from the command line
I'm considering learning more vim besides "esc /insert and :q :w" and this might be a great start.
As an emacs user it's frustrating having to install emacs to do some config editing whereas in my experience vim is included everywhere. e.g. my router.
A tangential question, why is .so the new cool TLD to use for tech startups/projects?
I know the lack of availability of .com/other common TLDs is a problem. I understand the reasoning behind using .io to represent software/saas startups (stands for inputs/outputs). I don't understand .so though. From what I remember, Notion was probably the first high profile startup using it, and it just kinda took off. Searching "why .so domain" comes up with nothing except a Reddit thread with the Notion founder saying it was mostly because it was just an available TLD for "notion" at the time.
Hunt is a text based 2d multiplayer labyrinth deathmatch game. It even has a unique feature: Labyrinth walls that you can shoot and that will eventually regrow (sometimes different than before).
I you want to learn vim movements quickly, start using a browser plugin with vim keybindings like VimFX it Vimium. Stop using the mouse to browse the internet. You'll get hours of practice doing something you'd do anyway. The muscle memory will be there when you open vim. Also, turn off arrow keys in vim. Vim is keyboard and home row centric, all else follows. Also doing dojo exercises like on commandlinefu.cim helps.
Show HN: I built an online interactive course that helps you learn vim* faster
*You have a small typo in your title: should be spelled "emacs" ;)
Kidding aside, the course is fun, nice work.
Per other comments in the thread, if you want to integrate vim muscle memory and browsers, check out the Vimium extension for Chrome (granted, I've overwritten the defaults with emacs, but the idea has still been helpful and minimized mouse use).
Awesome idea, gamifying learning vim seems the way to go.
Minor detail: I would recommend you set up the keyboard focus on the game as soon as the page loads. Saw a comment mentioning that the HJKL keys were not working and the same happened to me...right until I clicked on the command-line box in order to have my keyboard focus it.
If you're looking to practice the h,j,k,l keys in a fun way, simply play Nethack or other roguelikes that support these movement keys. In 2-3 hours you'll be flying around the map and you won't even know how you're doing it.
Thanks for posting this. I have been using vi(m) for at least 15 years and finally got the hang of yy only recently. I used to work at a Solaris shop a long time ago and had to learn vi to get anywhere. I wish I had this then!
Just last week we took a detour from our normal project that I am doing with my daughter and started teaching her vim. We used vimtutor and found it quite useful. I will definitely give this a fair trial.
There is no way I'd spend money on this. It looks like every tutorial on vim, but with a stopwatch. It would be more compelling if a TOC or summary of lessons were provided.
Enormous vim fan here. I’ve been toying with the idea of 1:1 “tutoring” of beginner vim and other Unix tools. If anyone might be interested in a free 1st lesson, send a DM!
Do macros -> delete % break it? I tried to race the first exercise by setting up a macro to speedrun the first example and i got something where multiple % showed up
I have Vimari (Vim keybindings for Safari) installed and so pressing Esc and trying to navigate inside that window just scroll my actual browser window :( The irony
Hate to be a negative Nancy, but on a bog standard Chrome on a bog standard Windows 10, in the first exercise the HJKL keys do nothing. The arrow keys do work...
