Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

vim.so

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 283 posts

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

#51

Post by jchook »

fokinsean wrote: post #35

Does anybody have recommendations on how to go from "comfortable" to "expert"? I've been using vim as my daily driver via the intellij plugin for a few years. I mostly just navigate and never do anything complicated, it gets the job done. For example I mostly use w, d, o, hjkl, y, p, w, b, t and recently discovered the `c+i` combo which is awesome. But I feel like there's still a side of vim I haven't conquered. Any…

Maybe try vim golf for fun.

I would recommend using vim in the console without the mouse because your editor will always give you a way out of learning.

Every time you get stuck or feel inefficient, do a web search and learn one thing.

Learn to use and love :help.

I think a few plugins can really improve the experience such as coc, ultisnips, vim-surround. Also set some settings like relative number and highlighted yank.

Some other stuff to investigate... zz and scrolling, folding, G, macros, registers, f, $ and ^ and 0, %, }, ctrl-o, ctrl-] and ctags, formatting gq = etc

Edit: also remembered enable set hidden and use buffers and splits (eg :sbp). Use markers. Also I like the fzf plugin for quickly opening files etc.

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

#52

Post by nsomaru »

westoque wrote: post #47
fokinsean wrote: post #35

Does anybody have recommendations on how to go from "comfortable" to "expert"? I've been using vim as my daily driver via the intellij plugin for a few years. I mostly just navigate and never do anything complicated, it gets the job done. For example I mostly use w, d, o, hjkl, y, p, w, b, t and recently discovered the `c+i` combo which is awesome. But I feel like there's still a side of vim I haven't conquered. Any…

yes! my path to "expert" was more in the lines of questioning my commonly used editing functions: 1. how to delete text inside a double quote and go to insert mode? - c+i+" 2. how to move to the end of line? - $ 3. how to delete everything before "x" character and go insert mode" - c+t+x ... EDIT: updated mistakes.

> 1. how to edit words inside a double quote? - "ciw"

ciw will change inner word, ci" will change inside quotes

> 2. how to move to the end of line? - "g_"

$ is generally used as the noun object to represent "end of the current line"

> 3. how to delete everything before "x" character" - "ctx"

dtx would delete everything before the next x. ctx would delete and then put you in insert mode :)

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

#53

Post by ilaksh »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #45
ilaksh wrote: post #24

I know I felt a constant social pressure to learn vim or emacs over the years in order to fit in with those religions. I gave in to that social pressure early on. But even 30 years ago in the early 90s when I started learning vim (and Linux), vim and emacs were very dated programs. Over the course of thirty years I have managed to finally learn how to set up syntax highlighting, terminal colors, and spaces vs tabs an…

I don't think calling the subject matter the OP is trying to teach "a religion" or predicting downvotes on your comment is productive. The 2nd is definitely against the site guidelines. To address your other comments, I can share a personal anecdote. When I started programming, I basically just learned the bare minimum VI commands to get around. I didn't see it as "a religion" or a relic from the past, but I saw a fa…

Okay, if someone shares the same specific type of disability due to repetitive stress injury, then yes, that is a good use case for vim.

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

#54

Post by qwerty456127 »

Does it include practical use cases demonstrating how vim tricks can really come in handy in real life? This probably is the hardest part for me - I can't imagine a case where I would like to use any of them I've ever read about (yet I still feel interested).

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

#55

Post by ilaksh »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #30
ilaksh wrote: post #24

I know I felt a constant social pressure to learn vim or emacs over the years in order to fit in with those religions. I gave in to that social pressure early on. But even 30 years ago in the early 90s when I started learning vim (and Linux), vim and emacs were very dated programs. Over the course of thirty years I have managed to finally learn how to set up syntax highlighting, terminal colors, and spaces vs tabs an…

That's fine!!! I don't think vim (esp. neovim) is janky at all, but part of it is how your brain works. If you want to use nano or vscode or whatever, there shouldn't be any social pressure. I think it comes down to how people like to use their tools and how they like to shape their working environment. I've gotten my vim/linux machines into a place where editing code is comfortable, and I'd love to share it with peo…

It's not something about "how my brain works". That's a sneaky way of accusing me of being too dumb to use those editors. But the user interfaces from 35-40 years ago are bad. Objectively. Unless you are using them on the terminals from the 70s or 80s.

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

#56

Post by corytheboyd »

This looks great! Do agree with others though, that you should expose the course sections. I don’t use vim as my main IDE but I still do use it for quick edits and commit messages, so I don’t know nothing about it. Would be great to see if the course is more/less/same as my current working knowledge. But also a one-time $15 isn’t bad at all, thank you for not trying to make this a subscription :)

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

#57

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

i_am_andy wrote: post #29

I have to recommend this too: https://vim-adventures.com/ I used it to get to grips with vim

I love vim-adventures. It was the only way I was able to stay motivated to learn vim well enough for it to "stick". I just hate that you can only buy 6 month access to it. I'd happily pay 2-3x the price for lifetime access, but the fact that I can only buy 6 more months makes me pretty sure that they won't be getting any more money from me. I think I would still hop on for a few minutes every few months to practice up on some stuff that I forgot.

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

#58

Post by westoque »

nsomaru wrote: post #52
westoque wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes! my path to "expert" was more in the lines of questioning my commonly used editing functions: 1. how to delete text inside a double quote and go to insert mode? - c+i+" 2. how to move to the end of line? - $ 3. how to delete everything before "x" character and go insert mode" - c+t+x ... EDIT: updated mistakes.

> 1. how to edit words inside a double quote? - "ciw" ciw will change inner word, ci" will change inside quotes > 2. how to move to the end of line? - "g_" $ is generally used as the noun object to represent "end of the current line" > 3. how to delete everything before "x" character" - "ctx" dtx would delete everything before the next x. ctx would delete and then put you in insert mode :)

thanks for correcting my mistakes :)

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

#60

Post by brianvli »

fokinsean wrote: post #35

Does anybody have recommendations on how to go from "comfortable" to "expert"? I've been using vim as my daily driver via the intellij plugin for a few years. I mostly just navigate and never do anything complicated, it gets the job done. For example I mostly use w, d, o, hjkl, y, p, w, b, t and recently discovered the `c+i` combo which is awesome. But I feel like there's still a side of vim I haven't conquered. Any…

I use vim as my main driver at work. Some things that helped me out personally:

- Playing some vimgolf and seeing what neat tricks people used. This is where I learned about “.”

- Going into the deep-end of just using vim (or just vim in IntelliJ without the mouse) will make you notice all the issues that make you unproductive with only vim e.g getting around with only hjkl is really slow so you might investigate other ways to navigate or deleting a word always involves getting to the end of the word and using lots of backspace may make you wonder if there are more efficient ways to do the same thing

- if you decide not to go into the deep-end, just being more picky about how much you’re spamming certain keys may help you gradually incorporate new commands into your flow

Post reply on HN