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

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

#181

Post by baconsteakey »

rjvir wrote: post #161
varbhat wrote: post #31

Before trying these courses , Please try vimtutor that comes bundled with vim . After practicing with vimtutor , you can try these additional courses.

Looks like "vimtutor" is primarily text explaining the hotkeys. For me, the bottleneck to picking up vim has not been merely knowing the hotkeys, but more internalizing the commands and building muscle memory. The interactive game format of this website could possibly solve that, so it appeals to me.

It says this in the 3rd or 4th paragraph:

> It is important to remember that this tutor is set up to teach by use. That means that you need to execute the commands to learn them properly. If you only read the text, you will forget the commands!

And it's free, not 15 USD or whatever this site is charging.

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

#182

Post by mellavora »

fao_ wrote: post #136
Fellshard wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher precision in intent for many standard operations. These aren't perfectly Vim commands, but from the Vim-like 'evil mode' for emacs, I have some examples of common idioms I use frequently: - 'I want to change the name of this variable. (Change Word)' - 'I want to copy the contents of this braced block. (Yank Inside Matching-braces)' - 'I want to surround this word in parentheses. (Visual-mode (region selection)…

> - 'I want to surround this word in parentheses. (Visual-mode (region selection) Around Word Surround-with Matching-parens)' Holy shit, thank you. I've been looking for something like this for half a decade and never found it (I don't even know how I missed it!)

ysiwb yank-surround-in-word-brackets also does it. If you have https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround/ installed.

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

#184

Post by xalava »

I know that vim is particularly enjoyed. The site looks nice and I wish you the best luck with this.

But for beginners, I now recommend micro as a console text editor (https://github.com/zyedidia/micro). It's a one line install with all the shortcuts and display that have become a standard across editors.

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

#185

Post by vbrandl »

rossmohax wrote: post #169
gnubison wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In vim, most commands take the form "[count] operator [count] motion". When you learn a new operator, you can use it with any motion that you know and vice versa; and you can add a count to either. To give a few examples: - gqip to format (gq) a paragraph (ip). - g?g? to ROT13 a line (doubling the operator makes it operate on the current line — in this case, g?? also works). - y2w to copy (y) the next two words (2w)…

> but you could use y2aw if you were in the middle of a word. Wow, how does it work? Why y3aw doesn't fully work for 3 words (it captures space before the word I started with)?

y2iw should copy without enclosing spaces. My mnemonic is "inner word" vs. "a word".

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

#186

Post by windexh8er »

I think some (maybe vim experts) jumped a bit too quickly to vimtutor. In some regard, I agree. But I tried the initial exercise on my 8 year old and was impressed, so I purchased to have access to the rest. I'd say I'm a sub-par intermediate vim user - knowing enough to know that I don't know or use the true power of vim day to day, but have memorized a few "tricks" that seem to impress basic vim users. Hoping I can leverage this to break a few bad habits I've gotten into. Nice UI and I think the pricing is fair. Hopefully the content expands, but even if the service isn't around more than a few years I feel like the $15 will have been worth it. Nice work!

Edit: question for Kenneth - do you plan on expanding the content?

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

#187

Post by NovaDev »

pletnes wrote: post #110
irrational wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or save all frustration and just don’t use vim ;-)

If you think vim is frustrating for a beginner, you have no idea what it feels like to edit text in non-vim for a half-assed vim user. Really, I don’t master vim after >1decade, but that’s not necessary.

Pair programming is a real pain for me when most of my colleagues just don’t use Vim.

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

#188

Post by patrec »

xalava wrote: post #184

I know that vim is particularly enjoyed. The site looks nice and I wish you the best luck with this. But for beginners, I now recommend micro as a console text editor ( https://github.com/zyedidia/micro ). It's a one line install with all the shortcuts and display that have become a standard across editors.

Does anyone know who had the bright idea to replace vi with nano as the standard text editor and why this became some sort of standard?

I really don't get it. Vi is unintuitive and unfamiliar to unix newebies, but at some point every even half-competent person on unix could use it enough to at least do simple config file changes. Plus, if you took time to learn it properly, you actually knew a quite capable editor. And the beginner unfriendliness could presumably have been mostly fixed, without much cost to existing expert users. For example by defaulting to some helpful status message how look at help and insert text (and have cursor keys and Ctrl-S etc. work as "expected" in insert mode). Or maybe a message "press Ctrl-D to enter newbie mode" that experienced vimers could just ignore but would provide CUA style keybindings and modeless editing to everyone else.

Instead now everyone has to deal with a new (and for proficient users really quite worthless) editor with its own set of completely bizarre keybindings (not emacs, not readline, not vi, not CUA), but none of the upsides that come with emacs or vi's idiosyncracies. Ctrl-O to save? WTF? Literally the only advantage over vi is that it displays some instructions at the bottom, albeit not in a form any real newbie would understand at all.

Nano (and by extension this) feel like the worst of all possible worlds -- what am I missing?

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

#189

Post by Fellshard »

mellavora wrote: post #182
fao_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 'I want to surround this word in parentheses. (Visual-mode (region selection) Around Word Surround-with Matching-parens)' Holy shit, thank you. I've been looking for something like this for half a decade and never found it (I don't even know how I missed it!)

ysiwb yank-surround-in-word-brackets also does it. If you have https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround/ installed.

Thanks for the translation! I'll keep that around for future reference.

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

#190

Post by bdamm »

cptnapalm wrote: post #178
arendtio wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other side, it is probably the most unnecessary inflicted pain for beginners. Even after years of using vim on a daily basis, I can't get used to hjkl and still use the arrow keys. I tried a few times with different approaches, but it never lasted more than a few days. So pushing someone new to use hjkl for navigation is so unnecessary and just kills a lot of motivation for very little value. Starting with del…

Opposite problem: I get so used to hjkl, I screw up everywhere else for awhile.

Yup, I wish all text fields had a vi mode.
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