Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

#21

Post by leif » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:12 AM UTC

jimmyjim wrote: post #16

andrewljohnson wrote: post #5

Type this into your terminal: emacs

On a more serious note, do please feel free to give any and all helpful advice on how to get started with emacs. I'm okay with vim, I've been using it more and less for about 2 years, but emacs has always seemed more esoteric and I never did quite get the hang of it.

Get a friend that uses it well and will be nearby (physically) for a few months. I didn't learn until I spent a summer with Slava (coffeemug) at my side willing to answer questions.

Find ways to do as much as you can of what you normally do with your computer in emacs. If you use IRC a lot, use erc. If you use email a lot, try out gnus or rmail. Don't try to replace your web browser with w3m, that's just stupid and you'll hate it.

Also, find a mode you really like. This will keep you using emacs whether you like it or not, until you really do like it. For me, it was gdb-mode. For most, it's one of the inferior repl modes (slime for lisp or clojure or whatever, ruby, python).

I've heard good things about http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit, but I've never tried it.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

#22

Post by whimsy » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:25 AM UTC

pmccool wrote: post #18

As a long time vim user, I have to ask: what's the appeal?I use it because I already knew vi, and I knew vi because it was the one editor I could be confident of finding on any UNIX box. I'm curious: what's the motivation for learning it from scratch?

As opposed to doing what? Using a GUI editor? Using emacs?

vim is just as likely to be on any linux/os x box today as vi was to be on any UNIX box when you were learning vi, and it's still very powerful today.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

#23

Post by nash » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:29 AM UTC

mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #3

Assuming you're on Mac you'll need to set up a decent .vimrc to enable syntax highlighting, indentation and some other bits. Vim is a different beast depending on how it's set up. The built in tutorial is a decent place to start. I think that's the only thing I did apart from editing code. It takes a while to get over the hump but it's worth it. I also suggest remapping your CAPS LOCK key to ESC. PCKeyboard Hack is f…

Not sure what features komodo has for completion, but between the built in omni-completion in vim 7, it's pretty powerful which will complete on symbols in all loaded files and in things like header files. That's activated by Control-X Control-O. Control-P or Control-N in insert mode.

There are various plugins available to make it smarter for C++ and other languages (so it only searches in appropriate namespaces and the like).

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

#24

Post by jimmyjim » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:34 AM UTC

leif wrote: post #21

jimmyjim wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a more serious note, do please feel free to give any and all helpful advice on how to get started with emacs. I'm okay with vim, I've been using it more and less for about 2 years, but emacs has always seemed more esoteric and I never did quite get the hang of it.

Get a friend that uses it well and will be nearby (physically) for a few months. I didn't learn until I spent a summer with Slava (coffeemug) at my side willing to answer questions. Find ways to do as much as you can of what you normally do with your computer in emacs. If you use IRC a lot, use erc. If you use email a lot, try out gnus or rmail. Don't try to replace your web browser with w3m, that's just stupid and y…

Thanks for the very helpful answer, it's just what I wanted. :)

I do use IRC a lot, and I'll start using erc per your suggestion. One question, is there any way to get spell-checking on it? I'm hoping the solution is as straight-forward as x-chat's (this screenshot demonstrates it fairly well: http://i42.tinypic.com/rw2ljr.jpg though, I don't require fancy multi-language spell-checking, just an English spell-checker will do for me)

I wish I had a friend who used emacs! On that note -- anyone in this HN crowd who uses emacs from Milwaukee? I'm willing to gift copious amounts of chocolate (or whatever else you prefer) in exchange for even short periods of guidance. :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

#25

Post by aiiie » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:45 AM UTC

jimmyjim wrote: post #16

andrewljohnson wrote: post #5

Type this into your terminal: emacs

On a more serious note, do please feel free to give any and all helpful advice on how to get started with emacs. I'm okay with vim, I've been using it more and less for about 2 years, but emacs has always seemed more esoteric and I never did quite get the hang of it.

Get like 2 or 3 different cheat sheets and keep them available whenever using Emacs. Steal someone else's ~/.emacs[1]. Make sure you use those Emacs key bindings in your shell. Bonus points if you're on OS X, which has Emacs bindings for all native text widgets.

[1] Here's mine: http://bitbucket.org/[redacted]/dotfiles/src/tip/.emacs :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

#26

Post by heresy » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:50 AM UTC

I learned Vim inside and out because it was the only Linux console editor at the time that did syntax highlighting, and it kind of stuck.

Also, working in 80x50 with only the editor open for a couple of months kind of gets you into the mode :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)

#27

Post by saurabh » Tue, Apr 27, 2010, 6:58 AM UTC

The way I learn to use my tools is I start customizing them, thereby understanding how they work, how others use them and how I can utilize them. Look for .vimrc's of other hackers. I learn't many things just from the dotfiles.