The best tip imho is to use `vimtutor`. It's installed on every machine that has vim (to the best of my knowledge) and provides an interactive tutorial that builds on itself to teach vim knowledge. It's really cool, if you haven't checked it out just fire up a terminal and give it a play.
Vimtutor is what finally got me into vim after trying it and quickly abandoning it a couple times. The interface finally "clicked" in my head and I was able to edit text quickly with a little practice. I've used vim a lot more since.
There's been a number of "anti-vim, use a real ide(TM)" posts coming into my feed lately and I don't get why. Do people really get buttmad about this? I switched from vscode to vim as I found it to be largely much faster in getting around when I started my new job, some people find the opposite. A ok. Why do people try to force us into these largely closed solutions? ( Mainly it's vscode, which has a real EEE threat)
Like most F/OSS, Vim doesn't have a marketing budget and VSCode does.
Not sure VS Code has a marketing budget either. I think the difference is the appeal, VS Code as a product is more appealing to many people.
I used to dislike vim because of its steep learning curve - my brain would say "I'll always forget it and it won't be worth it". After learning vim (only the very basics), it continues to put a smile on my face now and then. It's like someone has given me 8 to 10 lego pieces and what I can do can be imagined on the spot. Stack the lego pieces and voila, yet another smile on a rather dim morning. Vim is great, but I t…
I completely agree. Vim isn't lifechanging, but it's good. Once you're basically confident it's very nice, but you can still use other editors.
probably the single most useful thing in NeoVim is :set inccommand=nosplit This lets you see the results of commands (like complex regex for example) while you type them. For me this has made a huge difference to the enjoyment of refactoring code. It is both possible and fun to try a ridiculous regular expression with lots of capture groups or even one that works across newlines when I can watch the results as I type…
stick shift That is an unfair comparison on the edge of a strawman. In vim, you see your mode right at the cursor shape (bar in insert, block in normal, selection in visual). It’s like saying that DEs are bad because switching active windows is modal. Why not send input to the first window in the taskbar by holding ctrl and to the second by holding ctrl-shift then? Does that sound absurd? Even when you make a modal m…
Yes, visual feedback reduces the chance of errors with mode switching. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) it's one of the improvements vim has on old vi. Unlimited undo is another one vi certainly didn't have from the start. I did say the stakes are much lower. But shouldn't we make less critical interfaces with the same care we make more critical ones? And yes, many things we still have in UIs are arguably mode swi…
I see your point, but I think we’re held back not by UI, but by input methods, including physical ones. And I partially attribute that to vim’s [niche] success. It’s so annoying to hold ctrl-shift to select anything in windows-likes and personally I make much more mistakes while properly fingering the keyboard in these than while using vim modes. The path I see is to make better keyboards with separate keys for fundamental edit ops like selecting, language switching, word/structure navigation, etc, and then some more. We’re too stuck in these typewriter interfaces.
There's been a number of "anti-vim, use a real ide(TM)" posts coming into my feed lately and I don't get why. Do people really get buttmad about this? I switched from vscode to vim as I found it to be largely much faster in getting around when I started my new job, some people find the opposite. A ok. Why do people try to force us into these largely closed solutions? ( Mainly it's vscode, which has a real EEE threat)
It's the time wasted. Look at a guy merging 30 conflicts in text mode for an hour :D I think there can be clever specialized vim gurus, but god the ones I work with just struggle so much while idiot me click 3 buttons in an IDE and move on. We're not paid to be clever, we're paid to make money.
probably the single most useful thing in NeoVim is :set inccommand=nosplit This lets you see the results of commands (like complex regex for example) while you type them. For me this has made a huge difference to the enjoyment of refactoring code. It is both possible and fun to try a ridiculous regular expression with lots of capture groups or even one that works across newlines when I can watch the results as I type…
> But modal editing is just a bad idea. Citation please? I mean, from a personal point of view I'm mostly in agreement with you, but your post reads like a straw man argument with a non apology affixed. "Not trying to force you into anything" followed by "modal editing is just a bad idea" just reads like judgmental noise to me – can it can be backed up with actual research? Meanwhile vim (and variants) exists and are…
A lot of vim/vi plug-ins are buggy and support just enough to really drive you crazy
fwiw i've also thought that and moved to vscode with neovim as the backing editor for normal mode and it's generally fantastic. some rough edges but not that many... it's still neovim and vim in the background
Oh yeah well that’s a whole vim running in there.
Ended up settling on MacVim.app which has nice window support.
I’ve had good experiences with the visual studio vim plug-in that’s written in F#