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Vim Adventures

vim-adventures.com

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Re: Vim Adventures

#31

Post by klibertp »

Is there anything similar for Emacs?

Disclaimer: Now, stop, please. I know of Emacs manual, tutorial and all the other built-in docs. Stop telling me to use them, because I won't, thank you.

I'm recently learning Emacs - I reached high proficiency in Vim and I thought about learning it's competitor, just to feel comfortable with them both. I like Lisps, so that's another motivation.

I had a hard time in the beginning. I was missing tabs (elscreen) and many other features and familiar keybindings, so I installed Evil and made my own mappings. Now I can live with Emacs, but I realized that while I learned a bit about how Emacs works and how to script it, I completely neglected the idea of feeling comfortable in raw Emacs! I probably could M-x and M-: my way on Emacsen other than mine, but that's hardly the point :)

So, is there something interactive one could use to learn Emacs editing basics?

Re: Vim Adventures

#32

Post by shabble »

johncoltrane wrote: post #27
jfabre wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever you say, I actually learned vim with this game and also had moderate fun for only 10$ or so. It's clearly a win for me. The big payoff with this game is that it forced me to practice. Within two hours of game play I had the 'hjkl' fixed for good. I'll take a look at vimtutor to see if it can complement what I already learned.

hjkl are almost worthless compared to other means of navigation and you wasted 2 hours and 10$ to fix them for good. Vimtutor teaches you most of what you learned but for free, within Vim itself and in the context of actual text editing. If you want to learn Vim, use it.

If you want to beat yourself out of using them (or /gasp/, arrow keys) instead of more appropriate commands, (and can afford the productivity hit and fits of rage when starting off), try using medium-mode[1] (or, if you're really silly, hard-mode[2])

[1] https://github.com/kbarrette/mediummode

[2] https://github.com/wikitopian/hardmode

Re: Vim Adventures

#33

Post by andyl »

Is there any way for a Vim session to span multiple monitors? Multiple terminals? That is what I would like more than anything.

Re: Vim Adventures

#34

Post by gnosis »

klibertp wrote: post #30
johncoltrane wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hjkl are almost worthless compared to other means of navigation and you wasted 2 hours and 10$ to fix them for good. Vimtutor teaches you most of what you learned but for free, within Vim itself and in the context of actual text editing. If you want to learn Vim, use it.

Whoever downvoted this guy was wrong. hjkl are useless. I gained vim proficiency through a few years of using it. Funny thing is that I never, ever used these keys for navigation: at the beginning I mapped arrows to them and later I just stopped using them altogether, outside of a few rare cases like block selection. Commands for moving around are listed here: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Moving_around . Note the profou…

Wait. You don't use hjkl and you also don't use the arrow keys anymore. So how would you, say, move left one character?

Most experienced vim users consider movement using the hjkl keys to be essential to the efficient use of vim. Some even go so far as to recommend unmapping the arrow keys altogether.

As someone who's used vim for about 20 years, I have to agree with them. If you don't use the hjkl keys for movement, you're almost certainly making your editing experience less efficient and more painful than it would be if you just buckled down and learned them.

There's a very good reason for keeping the most-used movement keys on the home row: you don't have to move your fingers off the home row to use them. Arrow keys and virtually all other motion keys are less efficient for this reason.

The more you have to move your hands and fingers, the less efficient your movement will be. Moving your hand back and forth to the arrow keys might not seem so much, but over time it adds up.

The truth is that becoming comfortable with the hjkl keys is no more difficult or unpleasant than playing nethack for a little while. You'll find yourself becoming an hjkl master in no time.

Re: Vim Adventures

#35

Post by johncoltrane »

gnosis wrote: post #34
klibertp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever downvoted this guy was wrong. hjkl are useless. I gained vim proficiency through a few years of using it. Funny thing is that I never, ever used these keys for navigation: at the beginning I mapped arrows to them and later I just stopped using them altogether, outside of a few rare cases like block selection. Commands for moving around are listed here: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Moving_around . Note the profou…

Wait. You don't use hjkl and you also don't use the arrow keys anymore. So how would you, say, move left one character? Most experienced vim users consider movement using the hjkl keys to be essential to the efficient use of vim. Some even go so far as to recommend unmapping the arrow keys altogether. As someone who's used vim for about 20 years, I have to agree with them. If you don't use the hjkl keys for movement,…

It sounds like you completely missed the parent's and my point.

hjkl are only marginally better than the arrows: kkkk is just as silly as and their only benefit is in not moving the right hand to the arrow keys at the beginning and end of the sequence. Other than that hitting k 4 times to move the cursor 4 lines above doesn't offer much that the arrows don't.

4k is obviously better but yeah, it also works with the arrows so even there, the benefit is not that great.

what is better than both the arrows and hjkl, though, is all the other motions provided by Vim: wWbBeE/?{}fFtT and so on.

hjkl are really the tree that hides the forest and focusing one's effort on learning them is almost pointless.

Re: Vim Adventures

#36

Post by keithpeter »

jacobparker wrote: post #20
rhizome31 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long time Vim user, I also found the book Practical Vim very instructive. Not really suitable for beginners though.

I'd like to second this. There is a lot to Vim and Practical Vim is an excellent read. This book covers a lot of ground and the way it internally references itself is excellent (great for jumping around). Links for the lazy (non-affiliate) http://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Vim-Thought-Pragmatic-Progra... The better you get at Vim the easier it is to learn more Vim.

For those outside the US who would like the paper version, use your local Amazon if possible. Postage is as much as the book from Pragmatic Programmer's site.

Re: Vim Adventures

#37

Post by gnosis »

johncoltrane wrote: post #35
gnosis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. You don't use hjkl and you also don't use the arrow keys anymore. So how would you, say, move left one character? Most experienced vim users consider movement using the hjkl keys to be essential to the efficient use of vim. Some even go so far as to recommend unmapping the arrow keys altogether. As someone who's used vim for about 20 years, I have to agree with them. If you don't use the hjkl keys for movement,…

It sounds like you completely missed the parent's and my point. hjkl are only marginally better than the arrows: kkkk is just as silly as and their only benefit is in not moving the right hand to the arrow keys at the beginning and end of the sequence. Other than that hitting k 4 times to move the cursor 4 lines above doesn't offer much that the arrows don't. 4k is obviously better but yeah, it also works with the ar…

The other movement commands you mention aren't "better" than the hjkl keys. They are very useful, but accomplish different things.

For example, the h key moves one character left. Those other movement keys aren't going to do that for you except in special circumstances.

That said, no one is suggesting that in vim the only movement keys one should use are hjkl. Those other movement keys you mention are also very important, and you definitely should learn them after mastering hjkl.

As for the arrow keys, the sooner you break free of that crutch, the better. You will find your editing efficiency improves immensely when you are able to keep your fingers mostly on the home row.

It's like the difference between touch typing vs hunt and peck typing. Some people are actually quite fast hunt and peck typers. But a touch typist will feel nothing but pity for all the energy they waste hunting and pecking when they could be comfortably and leisurely typing by touch.

There are some limited uses cases for the arrow keys in vim, however; such as occasional one-handed browsing with the arrow keys and page-up/page-down keys, which are conveniently close together on many US keyboards. (Don't mistake this use case for movement while editing, which is very different from simply browsing through a document.)

I've also known of people who use their arrow keys for accomplishing tasks such as resizing windows, which is a reasonable use case because it's generally done infrequently enough for the extra hand motion not to matter.

Re: Vim Adventures

#38

Post by tarr11 »

johncoltrane wrote: post #35
gnosis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. You don't use hjkl and you also don't use the arrow keys anymore. So how would you, say, move left one character? Most experienced vim users consider movement using the hjkl keys to be essential to the efficient use of vim. Some even go so far as to recommend unmapping the arrow keys altogether. As someone who's used vim for about 20 years, I have to agree with them. If you don't use the hjkl keys for movement,…

It sounds like you completely missed the parent's and my point. hjkl are only marginally better than the arrows: kkkk is just as silly as and their only benefit is in not moving the right hand to the arrow keys at the beginning and end of the sequence. Other than that hitting k 4 times to move the cursor 4 lines above doesn't offer much that the arrows don't. 4k is obviously better but yeah, it also works with the ar…

I don't think that they are just marginally better.

You are taking for granted that most people are coming from a mouse-oriented workflow.

Switching to a keyboard oriented workflow is a very big step.

hjkl accomplishes the task of training you to keep your hands on the keyboard. Once you've learned that, you can move to more advanced motions.

Re: Vim Adventures

#39

Post by gelisam »

jre wrote: post #5

Really impressive. Very creative and quite polished.

You're kidding, right?

I want to like this game; I love vim, and I agree that the premise of the game is very creative. But the execution is vastly below average. They are using free graphics [1], annoying sounds, and they force the user through a strict tutorial instead of encouraging them to explore [2]. They ask for more (25$) than the vast majority of indie games on Steam [3], all of which are a lot more polished than this. And even then your license is only valid for six months, something I thought was only done by MMORPGs!

[1] http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/05/dancs-miraculously-flexibl...

[2] http://www.lostgarden.com/2010/01/ribbon-hero-turns-learning...

[3] http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/

Re: Vim Adventures

#40

Post by jcrites »

klibertp wrote: post #31

Is there anything similar for Emacs? Disclaimer: Now, stop, please. I know of Emacs manual, tutorial and all the other built-in docs. Stop telling me to use them, because I won't, thank you. I'm recently learning Emacs - I reached high proficiency in Vim and I thought about learning it's competitor, just to feel comfortable with them both. I like Lisps, so that's another motivation. I had a hard time in the beginning…

> Now, stop, please. I know of Emacs manual, tutorial and all the other built-in docs. Stop telling me to use them, because I won't, thank you.

Why not? If there are problems like they're hard to read, understand, you've tried them and they don't match your learning style, etc., then it would be better to say that instead. As written, this isn't very constructive since you don't explain why you find fault with the documentation.

I would not know how to fix the problem in that documentation, if I wanted to, or point you to documentation that doesn't have the problem, since I don't know what the problem is.

(Note: I'm not an Emacs expert and have no knowledge of the documentation you're referring to, or any other documentation. I'm responding primarily to your rhetoric.)

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