the only thing you need to know about vim, "kill -9 `pidof vim`"
Seriously, why bother with this esoteric and cryptic software when something like Atom,SublimeText and VSCode exist...
Vim for Humans
21–30 of 251 posts
Re: Vim for Humans
#22A little background. I am familiar with vi and use it only when I ssh into a server.
But I never really felt it was more convenient or an improvement over a GUI based text editor or IDE on my development machine. Eg- gedit for simple text editing, Android Studio for android development, Atom for python coding. Everything works out of the box with minimal tweaking required.
Genuine questions:
-At what point on the learning curve do you feel using vim is an advantage for speed of development, if at all?
-The common argument of only keyboard, no mouse when using vim... I don't get. Is using a mouse such a major factor that slows you down or affects you negatively?
Re: Vim for Humans
#23I've only skimmed this but there seems to be a focus on customizing and plugins from the get go. I think it's worth getting to know Vim "as is" before doing such things. Indeed there certainly some things that aren't the most useful or obvious but it's good to understand their original intent. Not to crap on the author of this but I'd recommend Drew Neil's Practical Vim over this (and pretty much every other Vim book…
I always thought that if I were ever to write a book on vim, I'd start with a thorough introduction to ed, followed by a thorough introduction to ex, finally followed by a thorough tutorial on all the features of plain-old vanilla vi, only then to introduce the vim parts and macros and graphics and things.
Re: Vim for Humans
#24I wish I could use vim or emacs. I don't know if I'm stupid or something but all of the key bindings, everything you have to remember, it just doesn't make sense to me. I wish there was something like nano + plugins. If I had that I could implement most of what I need (other then auto-completion for a crap load of languages).
> it just doesn't make sense to me.
Here's how to think of Vim that will make sense.
Suppose you have two identical codebases that each need to have the same 200 lines changed. Functions need to be added, comments to be removed, templates need modifying, and so forth. In one of the two codebases, you use Nano to apply those changes. In the second codebase, you use Vim. Assuming the Vim user was proficient at Vim, you can be sure that he/she used 1/3 -> 1/2 as much hand and wrist effort than the nano user to make the same changes. It could be that the effective Vim user ended up using less than 1/2 the hand effort than the nano user.
If you extrapolate this over these two coder's careers, you realize that the Vim user is going to be glad he spent the time learning Vim.
Learning how to use Vim has been so rewarding for me. I love coding in Vim and I love learning new ways of doing things.
Re: Vim for Humans
#25A little background. I am familiar with vi and use it only when I ssh into a server. But I never really felt it was more convenient or an improvement over a GUI based text editor or IDE on my development machine. Eg- gedit for simple text editing, Android Studio for android development, Atom for python coding. Everything works out of the box with minimal tweaking required. Genuine questions: -At what point on the lea…
> -At what point on the learning curve do you feel using vim is an advantage for speed of development, if at all?
Text editing is not a bottleneck in my development workflow, so I'd say never. This said, I wouldn't change to a different editor, especially one that doesn't have Vi-like modal editing.
> Is using a mouse such a major factor that slows you down or affects you negatively?
Yes and it's also an ergonomics disaster.
Vim isn't great when it comes to IDE-like features but it's a great text editor once you grok the paradigm. If you use it like a "normal" editor, it kinda sucks. Once you can keep your hands on the home row at all times, you don't want to go back.
Vim's killer feature, not found in any other editor I know, is repeat (.) .
I use vim in tmux with a curses debugger and it gets a lot of IDE benefits but is language agnostic. Changing to a different editor/IDE depending on language/target platform/project just sounds awful.
Re: Vim for Humans
#26The thing that helped me most with vi(m) was this change of mindset: don't treat Insert as an alternative mode. Instead, threat the append and insert commands as any other command, just ones that happen to (often) take long arguments, and make it a habit to always terminate those arguments with .
Re: Vim for Humans
#27A little background. I am familiar with vi and use it only when I ssh into a server. But I never really felt it was more convenient or an improvement over a GUI based text editor or IDE on my development machine. Eg- gedit for simple text editing, Android Studio for android development, Atom for python coding. Everything works out of the box with minimal tweaking required. Genuine questions: -At what point on the lea…
I've been using it as a plugin for pycharm and sublime text. I still end up using my mouse for larger, more involved editing, but I find it really useful to stay on the keyboard when moving around a file.
Re: Vim for Humans
#28I wish I could use vim or emacs. I don't know if I'm stupid or something but all of the key bindings, everything you have to remember, it just doesn't make sense to me. I wish there was something like nano + plugins. If I had that I could implement most of what I need (other then auto-completion for a crap load of languages).
As others have said, start with the basics and learn to use the help system. I found it enormously helpful to watch videos like Derek Wyatt's[1] that show a Vim master at work and explain the basics. It's not that I learned the key mappings from watching videos, but I did learn the potential of Vim.
Then, with a basic understanding of how to use Vim as a beginner and a comprehension of the possibilities, I paid attention to how I worked and looked for areas for improvement. When I spotted something that I could do more efficiently, usually reducing repetition, I used the Vim help and Google to find out how to do it.
A trivial example would be using the hjkl movements to go further than a couple of characters. First, I learned to move in words (w and b), then I learned to use the f and t searches and incremental searches. Then using counts to move specific numbers in whichever direction. After a month I stopped reaching for the mouse or doing llllllllllllllll to move through text.
I learned slowly: maybe adding one cool key mapping or feature to my workflow every couple of weeks. After a few months, it adds up. Soon you don't even think about it. You see what you need to do and your fingers do it for you.
Vim is a complex beast: an accretion of decades of features, most of which you'll never need. The best way to learn is by the same process of accretion. You'll start off using Vim like a non-modal editor, but if you stick with it, your patience will pay off.
Re: Vim for Humans
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, most native English speakers are easily confused about who vs whom, and avoid whom by rephrasing: Who is this book for?
Which would also be incorrect.
You're downvoted but you're not wrong. 'Whom is this book for?' is correct.
You can tell because the answer is 'her/him', not 'he/she'.
Re: Vim for Humans
#30Wow this site doesn't work at all. I clicked on the "download the ebook" and nothing happened. Scrolled down, entered $0 and I get a blank page. Anything above $0, credit card form works fine.