Learn Vim (2021)

The author also quickly introduces helpful concepts like :h, .vimrc without going into too much detail up front.

From the first chapters this seems to be well structured according to what you need to know when learning not according to some natural structure of the topic as perceived by someone who is an expert already.

Am I crazy? Isn't it conflicting? Maybe those two groups don't overlap at all? Then do great typists believe measuring lines of code to be a good idea?

And being proficient at using your code editor doesn't require or exclude being fast at typing. Between the two I personally would chose mastery of vim/emacs or some other IDE over having a typing speed faster than 80 WPM. Sure, both would be great, but if I have to choose one I know which I prefer.

Full disclosure: I type on a QWERTY layout at an average of 65 WPM.

One thing I'd add is that some stuff like Home Row Mods, Caps Lock as ESC and enhancements like that seem to me like a larger productivity booster than the jump from 70 WPM to 100 WPM. But even so I might be wrong on that because I personally haven't experienced writing faster than 70 something WPM at my best.

Anyway, rant over and I apologize if I come off as rough. It's just something that's been nagging at the back of my mind and I still don't know how to properly put it into words.

You seem aware that there's an alternative way of doing the things you want, and seems like you've tried doing things the alternative way, but it "doesn't stick" with you.

You don't really have to start using the most absolutely 100% optimal way of achieving something in the least amount of keystrokes (unless that's actually your goal). As long as your editor doesn't get in the way, I consider it a win already.

So I don't think you're "losing" anything. If the alternative way really was something that actually benefited you, you'd have probably picked it up by now if you actually considered it better than your current habits.

For example:

> 1. instead of doing 4j I might do jjjj

> 2. if I'm in the middle of a word and want to change it, I'll do bcw instead if ciw

> 3. if I want to copy 3 lines, I'll do Shift-V+jjj+ESC, instead of just 3yy

If you want to copy all the body of a 100+ line function, I bet you probably do something like `Vi{Y` (or similar), even if it slows you down a little, because you know the slight pause is still better compared to mashing the `j` key 100 times.

Yes, you can probably do it like `yi{`, but the difference doesn't matter (especially once one of them is in muscle memory), and it's just preference.

Even something like `V50j50jjjj` for 103 lines (with the "50" being picked arbitrarily) is already a win.

But by package set I literally mean it, e.g. mine is ale, nerdtree, snipmate, and the rest is cosmetic: scss syntax, tab guides and a couple of other syntaxes. Not some lunar/astro nvim-based heap of packages.

What I really miss in vscode and others, be it zeroconf or not, is editor programming features. E.g. I like to have sections in code that I can easily navigate. Something nmap ; /\/\/sec_$ does that. I also can create a popup with all of them + function names grepped from an unsaved source and navigate. Or highlight few more tokens. That is impossible in vscode unless you take a deep dive into its or its modules not very well documented internals. You can’t even write a module in .vscoderc, it must be formed into a package and [re]installed or get run in a special vscode mode. If the store doesn’t have what I want, I’m out of luck.

Things that failed (various degrees) for me: correct linewise indentation, readable sections on outline or minimap, non-syntactic folds, custom command mappings. Also the defaults are horrible, my last attempt was something like three pages of settings.json. Way too many afternoons, deleted my whole account to never try again. Tbf, my vimrc is also two pages long in the part that is related to settings. But at least the rest does what I want.

It just removes a lot of frustration, that's the thing for me. Working less on fiddling with text is focusing more on the conceptual level. Again, I'm not claiming the output is better, I'm just happier doing it.