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Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

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Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#121

Post by aydoo »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #7

Two things that helped me more than anything with "learning" vim and or ever wanting to use it: 1. Remap your "capslock" key to "escape." Vi was written using an ADM-3A terminal and its keyboard, which you can see here: https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys has the escape-key in a sane place. On modern keyboards, if you can, remap "capslock" to "escape" when pressed alone, and "ctrl" when pressed with…

Regarding 2, I think using 'space' as leader will be the most easy one to get into. You don't lose any meaningful functionality and space is (ideally) operated with your thumb, which means you can bind any key combination without awkward hand movements.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#122

Post by zrkrlc »

glouwbug wrote: post #14

I recommend swapping your left CTRL and ALT keys when using vim, as well as CAPS and ESC to avoid RSI. Also, the dot operator is king.

Wow, I had no idea about the dot operator. And TIL about `gd` (moves to the word's definition) and `gf` (for file imports) as well.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#123

Post by Normille »

svnpenn wrote: post #86
askvictor wrote: post #28

I partially learnt Vim some 20 years ago, but at some point stopped taking in new commands (possibly for lack of repetitive use), and am stuck in a sort of 'good enough' zone, but still awkward for certain things; the ctrl-c/v thing always throws me as I use windows primarily, gvim makes it easy to cheat using the GUI, so I do. Macros are amazing, but I feel there are probably easier ways of achieving most of the thi…

You get over it if you use it enough. For me its now the opposite. For a while I keep accidentally trying to do Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, but now I find myself trying to go into Visual mode or Normal mode in programs that dont support that. I started off with a bunch of mappings, then you can remove them as you get comfortable. Now I only really have mapped "nmap H :nohlsearch " and "xmap S :sort ". Whats really tricky is using…

HJKL makes no sense for me at all. It reminds me of the annoyingly designed computer games I used to play on my Oric as a kid, where the various direction keys to control my 'character' often bore no relation to their relative positions on the keyboard.

H and L are just about OK for left and right, but up and down being another left/right positioned key combo, nestled in between, just doesn't work with the way my brain's wired, at all.

Conversely, on my MacBook Air keyboard, the arrow keys are nicely grouped together in an inverted T formation at bottom right corner of the keyboard, with some space around them. Piss-easy to find and piss-easy to feel which one points in which direction, without even looking at the keyboard.

Strange that almost every tutorial on Vim I've ever read begins with "Don't be tempted to use the arrow keys instead of HJKL.." which, in my opinion is just about the "worst advice evarrr!", especially given the rest of the learning curve which awaits you.

*YMMV --depending on your own particular keyboard layout.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#124

Post by Normille »

I'm not a Vim master, but I use it a fair bit --mostly for writing server admin, single doc coding, etc. I think I know enough to do the basics like moving chunks of text around, copying/pasting etc. so that I feel fairly productive in that I can do those things as fast [or faster] in Vim as I could in a GUI editor..

But, any time I'm working on something more than a single doc [eg. a website, or a coding project] I reach for something else. I've just never been able to find a way to use Vim comfortably in a multi-document project, without feeling like I'm being a lot less productive than I would be using a GUI, such as TextMate with its built-in project file browser and excellent project wide find/replace.

I'm learning Flutter at the moment and just got into using IntelliJ [in its Android Studio guise] and, at first I installed the IdeaVim plugin, thinking this would give me the best of both worlds; the speed of moving about within single documents of Vim, combined with the project management & code completion capabilities of a dedicated IDE. I ended up disabling it after a couple of days. The mental context switching caused by jumping back and forward between keyboard driven and menu driven operation was just slowing me down, rather than speeding me up.

As an aside: I don't really get why the "Vim saves you having to hunt for menu items" mantra is still so prevalent in this day and age anyway. Maybe in the past when people had to reach for their mouse to find a menu item, it was a valid point in Vim's favour. But a lot of us are working on laptops these days and, frankly, accessing a menu item by tapping on a trackpad right under your fingers is hardly more hassle than recalling some arcane keyboard incantation to do the same in Vim. Plus, most regularly used menu items have keyboard shortcuts which pretty soon become muscle memory anyway. I've not needed to use a menu to access an Open / Close / Save / Save As / Print / Copy / Cut / Paste / Find / Replace / Undo / Redo / Quit... etc. etc. command in decades.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#125

Post by 7786655 »

cecida wrote: post #55

I'm not trying to be contrarian here, but why would someone continue to use Vim and Emacs when all of its lovely features have been integrated into products like VCode? It just reminds me of serious men with beards working on mainframes and AIX power systems when I started my career.

With enough plugins, Vim can do everything VSCode can. But using a Vim-emulator in a different editor will always be an "uncanny valley" experience. Also on my system VSCodeVim is so slow it frequently lags behind me while typing.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#126

Post by in9 »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #7

Two things that helped me more than anything with "learning" vim and or ever wanting to use it: 1. Remap your "capslock" key to "escape." Vi was written using an ADM-3A terminal and its keyboard, which you can see here: https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys has the escape-key in a sane place. On modern keyboards, if you can, remap "capslock" to "escape" when pressed alone, and "ctrl" when pressed with…

I see the value of remaping the esc key to cpaslock, but my hands are quite big and I can reach esc on most keyboards quite effortlessly.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#127

Post by svnpenn »

Normille wrote: post #123
svnpenn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get over it if you use it enough. For me its now the opposite. For a while I keep accidentally trying to do Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, but now I find myself trying to go into Visual mode or Normal mode in programs that dont support that. I started off with a bunch of mappings, then you can remove them as you get comfortable. Now I only really have mapped "nmap H :nohlsearch " and "xmap S :sort ". Whats really tricky is using…

HJKL makes no sense for me at all. It reminds me of the annoyingly designed computer games I used to play on my Oric as a kid, where the various direction keys to control my 'character' often bore no relation to their relative positions on the keyboard. H and L are just about OK for left and right, but up and down being another left/right positioned key combo, nestled in between, just doesn't work with the way my bra…

I agree that HJKL is really uncomfortable for a new user. I still reverse J and K sometime, as my brain thinks "the first key should be Up".

I guess the thinking is, if you open up some existing document, youre already at the top, so the more important key is going down, which the "J" sits right under your index finger.

I totally agree that its awkward, but I also feel that if you can get good with it, youll be way faster than using the arrow keys. Think about it like this: with the arrow keys, you must move your hand. With HJKL, you dont have to move your hand from the home row.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#128

Post by alexjm »

rphln wrote: post #22
ectoplasmaboiii wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm personally a fan of remapping jk or jj to esc, there barely any instances in the english language where you would use those two letters together, and it means you can leave insert mode whilst barely moving your hands :D

I tried mapping both jk and kj to Esc for a while (so I could just mash them in any order), but the slight delay it added to the letters always threw me off my loop.

You can reduce the delay by setting ttimeoutlen, the time in milliseconds between an escape key being pressed (or jk etc. that are mapped to Esc) and exiting Insert mode. I have it set to 100.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#129

Post by Normille »

svnpenn wrote: post #127
Normille wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HJKL makes no sense for me at all. It reminds me of the annoyingly designed computer games I used to play on my Oric as a kid, where the various direction keys to control my 'character' often bore no relation to their relative positions on the keyboard. H and L are just about OK for left and right, but up and down being another left/right positioned key combo, nestled in between, just doesn't work with the way my bra…

I agree that HJKL is really uncomfortable for a new user. I still reverse J and K sometime, as my brain thinks "the first key should be Up". I guess the thinking is, if you open up some existing document, youre already at the top, so the more important key is going down, which the "J" sits right under your index finger. I totally agree that its awkward, but I also feel that if you can get good with it, youll be way f…

I think the "not moving your hands from the home row" is another relic of a bygone era. It dates back to when people were taught to touch type and that was the starting position. It also dates from a time when keys had to be pressed with some force. Resting your fingers on the keys with a modern laptop keyboard, you're in danger of accidentally typing characters you didn't want to.

I can type pretty fast, though I've never actually measured my WPM speed. But I'm not a touch typist --I still have to look at the keys-- and I don't type 'properly' using all my fingers. I seem to get by with the first three on each hand. So there's no real advantage for me in having my fingers resting on the home row. In pauses for thought [my equivalent of resting on the home row] I usually find I'm waiting with the heels of my hands on the empty space below the keyboard, either side of the trackpad and my fingers just kind of very lightly touching the keys, wherever they happen to fall.

From that position, it really is far more convenient for me to just curl in the fingers of my right hand , which puts the inverted T of the cursor keys right under my finger tips and which I can do without looking, than it is for me to look down at the keys to find HJKL.

Re: Learn Vim (the Smart Way): a book to learn the good parts of Vim

#130

Post by unmole »

colordrops wrote: post #9
Scarbutt wrote: post #5

FZF(and its vim plugins) really leveled up the game for Vim.

As well as neovim and LSP.

I've had neovim installed for a while but really haven't found anything that would make me want to switch. Sure, I get the meta Neovim competition driving improvements in vim but I'd like to know what I'm missing out on.
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