Nicely done. Though I have to say - I gave courses on vi in the 80's but then IDE's and GUI's came along and I moved on. I will never understand why anyone still uses vi in the 21st century, except for occasionally editing a config file on a *nix box.
Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
171–180 of 265 posts
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#172:set nu / whatever you want to find [return] i *edit stuff and use arrow keys for nav* :wq Or :q to quit without saving That’s all the vim most people need. The fact that less is installed on many more systems than nano is a testament to the bad assumptions too many devs make about who will be using these systems in the future. And yes, it’s not hard to "apt -y install nano" except at work where we have proxies and i…
My problem is I can't use the up/down arrows for nav while editing stuff, it just starts spewing control characters on new lines IIRC.
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#173My 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…
This may be a little elitist, but if you're not going to use vim the way it's really made to be used, why even bother? I get that `mouse=a` makes it more familiar, but if you're always going to reach for your mouse, you're never going to really get used to the motions.
Tbh, one of the biggest issues with vim for me is, that all my coworkers do not use it. When I have to explain something to them, they are completely oblivious as to how they navigate vim without the mouse. So enabling mouse is one of the most important things for me
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#174Nicely done. Though I have to say - I gave courses on vi in the 80's but then IDE's and GUI's came along and I moved on. I will never understand why anyone still uses vi in the 21st century, except for occasionally editing a config file on a *nix box.
Oh man, you are going to get a ton of replies on this.
Short version: vim is not vi.
Longer version: I use vim because I am way faster with it than any standard editor. I personally barely customize my vim at all, but there is a large community whose hobby is installing dozens of plugins to turn it into a full IDE and/or making it a highly personalized experience.
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>...more efficient way of doing things? Is that a fact, or you just parroted other people who made similar claim?
It is a fact. The grand parent is talking about slowly navigating around one character at a time. Vim has much more efficient ways to move the cursor to where you want to go.
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#176My 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…
This may be a little elitist, but if you're not going to use vim the way it's really made to be used, why even bother? I get that `mouse=a` makes it more familiar, but if you're always going to reach for your mouse, you're never going to really get used to the motions.
I use Vim as a secondary editor, when I need to quickly edit a file in my terminal or over an SSH session. I'm not interested in it replacing my primary IDE.
If you're going to disable the mouse and the arrow keys and really commit to the home row, more power to you. That is probably the best way to master Vim. But I think a significant number of people looking at Vim tutorials have never used the editor, and I think they deserve to know that there is an easy way to make the editor more comfortable and more familiar.
Someone down-thread used a metaphor to say 'the best way to learn a new language is by immersion' which is something I would agree with. But opening Vim for the first time feels like being dropped into a foreign country where no one speaks your language. Imagine how frustrated you would be to find that the people there actually do speak a language that you know, they're just refusing to understand you because you haven't issued the magic words, "set mouse=a"
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#177Nicely done. Though I have to say - I gave courses on vi in the 80's but then IDE's and GUI's came along and I moved on. I will never understand why anyone still uses vi in the 21st century, except for occasionally editing a config file on a *nix box.
Neovim is pushing the text editor space like nothing else.
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#178Anything like this for editing in Emacs?
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
for me it is a fact. I still use the mouse from time to time when editing text mind you. But for most actions, I would not think of moving my hand to the mouse, because it is slow. Even before vim, I made gratuitous use of end of line navigation via keyboard (home/end buttons; cmd+arrow keys). vim is just a more powerful version of those buttons. I make no claim that vim is the MOST efficient platform ever created, b…
I would like to leave this link to SO page on mouse vs keyboard... You may be faster with a keyboard, but may ONLY feel faster with the keyboard. https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/30682/are-there-any-r...
The link feels irrelevant, because it is not related to vim and text editing. Or does it?
Re: Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
#180:set nu / whatever you want to find [return] i *edit stuff and use arrow keys for nav* :wq Or :q to quit without saving That’s all the vim most people need. The fact that less is installed on many more systems than nano is a testament to the bad assumptions too many devs make about who will be using these systems in the future. And yes, it’s not hard to "apt -y install nano" except at work where we have proxies and i…
now I need to use vim to reconfigure apt sources just so I can use a more normal editor
Prepare and paste this into your terminal:
echo "another line" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list