Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I built a web app for learning Vim from the browser as a 17-year-old

vimninja.com

41–50 of 53 posts

Re: Show HN: I built a web app for learning Vim from the browser as a 17-year-old

#41
post #10
post #8

The site looks great and I always love to see some Svelte love. But the "Sign in with Google" is a deal breaker for me. Also seems strange to charge $15 for this when so many free Vim resources exist.

One could argue that it seems strange to charge X for anything when free alternatives exist. Ultimately, it is up to anyone to decide whether the "package looks pretty" and the proposed value seems worth it, or whether they want to keep on searching and/or try to build some GitHub repo.

>> One could argue that it seems strange to charge X for anything when free alternatives exist.

Never was. You can make your own food and coffee and clothes, why don’t you?

Re: Show HN: I built a web app for learning Vim from the browser as a 17-year-old

#45

And here is the traditional reminder that Vim comes with an extensive manual that is very easy to follow and pretty much guaranteed to take you further than any of those silly online tools: :help user-manual

I wouldn't call it exactly "easy to follow". If you run this, you just get a long list of lessons named usr_01.txt, usr_02.txt, ... The lessons look "clickable" but if you put the cursor on them and press enter, nothing happens. How on earth do you jump to the actual lesson? You need to type CTRL-]. Not something someone just starting out with Vim is going to know. They'll just open :h user-manual and remain stuck there!

Re: Show HN: I built a web app for learning Vim from the browser as a 17-year-old

#46
post #45

And here is the traditional reminder that Vim comes with an extensive manual that is very easy to follow and pretty much guaranteed to take you further than any of those silly online tools: :help user-manual

I wouldn't call it exactly "easy to follow". If you run this, you just get a long list of lessons named usr_01.txt, usr_02.txt, ... The lessons look "clickable" but if you put the cursor on them and press enter, nothing happens. How on earth do you jump to the actual lesson? You need to type CTRL-]. Not something someone just starting out with Vim is going to know. They'll just open :h user-manual and remain stuck th…

Well, if you assume absolute zero previous knowledge, then your "someone just starting out with Vim" won't even know that they have to press Enter after :h user-manual, right.

The user manual is the next step after vimtutor, which teaches you how to navigate the help.

No need to rush.

Re: Show HN: I built a web app for learning Vim from the browser as a 17-year-old

#49
post #13

Do these vim tutor web apps provide any advantage over learning with the real Vim with the vimtutor command? Do learners not worry that the web apps might not emulate Vim accurately and the inaccuracies might make you pick up bad habits at best or learn outright wrong keybindings at worst? I mean if you are going to use Vim, you will probably run `vim` sometime. You might well run `vimtutor`. It's a simple command. I…

There’s a market segment of people that do coding tutorials with their iPads at bedtime. You’re not going to sit in actual vim since really, the target audience wants micro lessons

Re: Show HN: I built a web app for learning Vim from the browser as a 17-year-old

#50
post #4

vimtutor is free. This is $15. Really?

vimtutor is free because vim is free There are tons of books and other resources for learning vim that are not free. I'm not sure why you would find that surprising.

I own said books. Used NeoVim for years.

Said books are genuinely useful, mostly.

Drew Neil's explanation and POV on how to approach Vim, gradually assembling all Vim commands into repeatable period commands. Followed by bundling those commands into recordings with q.

Highly endorse Drew Neil. Is incredibly useful.

This website offers little more than vimtutor with fancy graphics.

Post reply on HN