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Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

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Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#121

Post by protonbob »

johncoltrane wrote: post #108
mtlynch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's constructive feedback in that it doesn't give anything for OP to do except just give up. johncoltrane gave the same feedback last time, so I don't see how this is supposed to be helpful to OP. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31832423

OP is pretending falsely to help people "master Vim" via repetition. I'm using the same strategy to steer people toward better ways to learn Vim, without the lies. OP doesn't need help, it's the potential victims of that scam that do.

I think "lies" is a bit of an exaggeration.

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#122

Post by faizshah »

Arisaka1 wrote: post #95

I once tried to migrate from VS Code to Neovim. I use TypeScript at work, and use many languages for my side projects. But the worst part was making Vim provide with things that you'd expect programming editors to have. So many options, what's best is up to opinion, integrating language servers, getting intellisense to work as you would expect, searching the project folder for file names. Then I realized that all I'm…

I got further with spacemacs, it has a lot of stuff that’s sorta batteries included but you can still use vim bindings. I still just use ideavim in pycharm and webstorm but I have been slowly exploring some things like magit and org in spacemacs.

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#123

Post by yetanotherjosh »

dash2 wrote: post #15

I really want to like vim and I love some things about it, like the ability to move chunks about with only the keyboard. But so many things about it kill me. Like, why can't I hit right at the end of a line, and move to the next line? Who thinks that is a good idea? Also, why do I have to have a special mode to insert things? Having to change modes just seems so complex and unintuitive. And why does the help system n…

Are you interested in learning a potentially new and more efficient way of doing things? Then you have to stop being annoyed that your habitual way of doing things is unavailable to you, and stop assuming your habits are the obvious and correct way.

The modal nature of Vim is one of it's key features and makes a lot of sense. If you consider the keyboard the primary, if not singular, means of interaction, then there will be times you want to use the keyboard to type text and times you want to use the keyboard to control the editor behavior. In a "normal" editor, you have to use modifier keys to enter commands. In Vim, you do it by changing modes. It's actually quite powerful but you can't get past your own assumptions about efficiency.

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#124

Post by user3939382 »

Arisaka1 wrote: post #95

I once tried to migrate from VS Code to Neovim. I use TypeScript at work, and use many languages for my side projects. But the worst part was making Vim provide with things that you'd expect programming editors to have. So many options, what's best is up to opinion, integrating language servers, getting intellisense to work as you would expect, searching the project folder for file names. Then I realized that all I'm…

I tried hard to convert from my IDE to vim. I write PHP and rely heavily on for example EA inspections, there is no way to get these in vim. You can do some analysis with either psalm or phpstan, I forget, but in any case that was a show stopper for me.

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#125

Post by the_gipsy »

stevebmark wrote: post #104
Arisaka1 wrote: post #95

I once tried to migrate from VS Code to Neovim. I use TypeScript at work, and use many languages for my side projects. But the worst part was making Vim provide with things that you'd expect programming editors to have. So many options, what's best is up to opinion, integrating language servers, getting intellisense to work as you would expect, searching the project folder for file names. Then I realized that all I'm…

Vim is a text editor, not a code editor. IDEs are much more efficient for code edit.

Vim is a code editor, IDEs are mouse-navigators.

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#126

Post by lovehashbrowns »

mpalmer wrote: post #46
dash2 wrote: post #15

I really want to like vim and I love some things about it, like the ability to move chunks about with only the keyboard. But so many things about it kill me. Like, why can't I hit right at the end of a line, and move to the next line? Who thinks that is a good idea? Also, why do I have to have a special mode to insert things? Having to change modes just seems so complex and unintuitive. And why does the help system n…

> an ordinary visual text editor Funnily enough, Vim is short for "Vi IMproved", and its predecessor vi is short for "visual"! --- Taking the time to learn Vim yields significant rewards if you're willing to meet it on its own terms. I certainly grant you that it's not for everyone. It's the agony and the ecstasy of deep tools. No pain, no gain. > The frustration is that probably there are fixes for all these things,…

These sorta combinations and things like visual block mode are why I can’t let go of vim. You can also do:

set -o vi

And get vim in your bash shell. Then you wonder what the default mode is, and it turns out it’s emacs and you can do wild things like ctrl-A to go to the beginning of the line.

And now I cringe when ever I see someone painstakingly left-arrow for 30 seconds to edit something at the beginning of their bash prompt.

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#127

Post by bckr »

stevebmark wrote: post #119
bckr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really understand whether you recommend Vim itself or not, because of these sentences: > Vim forces you to glue together lots of inefficient commands to manipulate text > Vim’s nasty bells and whistles you need to actually be efficient at manipulating text

I’m a power Vim user. I do not recommend it for code editing. Learn it as a curiosity if you want. It’s also handy for quickly editing over SSH. IDEs with multiple cursors are so much nicer than Vim.

cool, that's a really useful opinion!

Perhaps I'll stick with VS Code over SSH, then

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#128

Post by mypalmike »

eckesicle wrote: post #115
Arisaka1 wrote: post #95

I once tried to migrate from VS Code to Neovim. I use TypeScript at work, and use many languages for my side projects. But the worst part was making Vim provide with things that you'd expect programming editors to have. So many options, what's best is up to opinion, integrating language servers, getting intellisense to work as you would expect, searching the project folder for file names. Then I realized that all I'm…

Okay, but you spend 2000 hours per year at work. So 10 hours on a config is only .5%, which is the productivity gain you need to realise to get that time back in one year (assuming you also spend 0 hours on fighting vscode). Unless you're retiring within the year, that calculus doesn't make sense. The productivity boost you get with from Emacs/vim is huge once you learn it well. I strongly believe that learning one o…

I've been coding for nearly 40 years and I just don't see any correlation between editor usage and developer productivity. Being able to design and work with complex software systems is what makes a senior dev productive, not which keys they hit to copy and paste.

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#129

Post by snet0 »

dash2 wrote: post #87
snet0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why can't I hit right at the end of a line, and move to the next line? I know this is probably something that sounds like someone too far down the rabbit-hole to see where they came from, but I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. The horizontal movement is probably adjacent to the vertical movement on your keyboard. Just use the appropriate movement to get where you want to go? > Also, why do I have to have a spe…

My answer to all these things is that 90% of the time, I am not using a text editor. I will be writing in Word, or in LyX, or in RStudio, or in a text box. My muscle memory is used to that. You're absolutely right. You do sound far down the rabbit hole! I am used to being able to hold down the right key and traverse my entire document, as far as I like. Why would I want to stop at the end of a line? Any time I'm edit…

> I am used to being able to hold down the right key and traverse my entire document, as far as I like.

I mean chances are, if you're holding down a key in vim, you're doing an inefficient movement. That's kinda the point: it's a keyboard language that turns complex actions into compound, simple actions. If you're still using the simple movement and complaining about it not doing what you want, you're just not using vim correctly.

I'm not sure why people get this defensive, though. People like vim, people like editors-that-aren't-vim. Is that not okay? If you don't want to learn to use vim, this link isn't for you.

> but what if there were some kind of special key that could be pressed to issue controls?

This works for a limited number of shortcuts, and when you only want to issue a few. The point is that you can now issue a large number of "command" inputs, very quickly, without holding down a key.

> Again, you're right, I don't want to do anything new. Why would I? I want to get on with my job.

Then uh... don't use vim? Do you post on every "I wrote xyz course for abc language/tool/technology" expressing that you don't want to use it?

Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster

#130

Post by renewiltord »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #3

My pet peeve is Vim tutorials that start with "use hjkl to move around" instead of "use `set mouse=a` to turn on the mouse." In my opinion you need to make sure that you are very clearly disclaiming that you are teaching a harder way of doing things in exchange for incredibly small productivity gains that will be realized years in the future, if ever. (This is basically a copy-paste of previous comments I’ve made, I…

Interesting, I always move down by page. I find the mouse to keyboard switching disorienting. But I know lots of great engineers who use the mouse extensively. I wonder if I just trained myself into this efficiency (and out of that efficiency) when I was young.

I bet I could untrain with sufficient work but it's no longer worth it.

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