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

vimified.com

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

#1

Post by Silica6149 »

Hey show HN!

This course came about as a result of wanting a more targeted way of practicing using new vim commands I wanted to pick up, rather than just trying to use them in my regular code editing sessions. When I would try to use new commands during code editing, my productivity took a hit because I was trying to do two different things at once: thinking about code vs practicing my muscle memory.

So, I made a separate environment for practicing, one that had an interactive editor, progress tracking, and achievement goals to let me see which areas I should work on, like speed and efficiency (# of keystrokes). When I realized it would be useful for beginners too, I added lessons to go along with it and this course is the result!

Let me know what you guys think about it :)

Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
vimified.com

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

#3

Post by MatthiasPortzel »

My pet peeve is Vim tutorials that start with "use hjkl to move around" instead of "use `set mouse=a` to turn on the mouse." In my opinion you need to make sure that you are very clearly disclaiming that you are teaching a harder way of doing things in exchange for incredibly small productivity gains that will be realized years in the future, if ever.

(This is basically a copy-paste of previous comments I’ve made, I haven’t tried your tutorial beyond the first lesson.)

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

#4

Post by johncoltrane »

> Let me know what you guys think about it :)

Same as the last time you posted it: learning Vim has nothing to do with muscle memory and doing it outside of Vim is pointless. Plus, the "master Vim" claim is dubious given how basic the lessons seem to be.

:help user-manual is easy, built-in, and it goes way beyond this. And it's free.

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

#6

Post by Silica6149 »

johncoltrane wrote: post #4

> Let me know what you guys think about it :) Same as the last time you posted it: learning Vim has nothing to do with muscle memory and doing it outside of Vim is pointless. Plus, the "master Vim" claim is dubious given how basic the lessons seem to be. :help user-manual is easy, built-in, and it goes way beyond this. And it's free.

Hi, I understand where you're coming from. My introduction to vim was through vimtutor and it was free!

I agree with your point about muscle memory. Learning !== muscle memory. However it does make it more comfortable to edit code by not having to expend energy remembering the vim command to do something (since you can just focus on editing code). Practicing new vim commands in the interactive editor has helped me use them faster when coding. I feel that my muscle memory is built faster when practicing in a targeted way.

The interactive editor aims to bring the skills you develop while practicing in it, into your daily code editing, by making you practice on code snippets (for all the lessons after the first 2).

In addition, in my opinion, vimtutor and :help are slightly difficult for a complete beginner to parse because they overwhelm with a little too much information. I tried to fix this by making each lesson focused on a single topic, with short and simple explanations.

Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it!

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

#7

Post by Silica6149 »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #3

My pet peeve is Vim tutorials that start with "use hjkl to move around" instead of "use `set mouse=a` to turn on the mouse." In my opinion you need to make sure that you are very clearly disclaiming that you are teaching a harder way of doing things in exchange for incredibly small productivity gains that will be realized years in the future, if ever. (This is basically a copy-paste of previous comments I’ve made, I…

Ah, I see. I agree, more context would be better for the beginner to understand why the lessons are the way they are.

I tried to explain the benefits of vim in the "Why Vim?" section, but I should really go into why using and learning vim will be slower at first than using the editor you're already comfortable with, and how it might be worth it in the end.

Thanks for the feedback!

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

#8

Post by delusional »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #3

My pet peeve is Vim tutorials that start with "use hjkl to move around" instead of "use `set mouse=a` to turn on the mouse." In my opinion you need to make sure that you are very clearly disclaiming that you are teaching a harder way of doing things in exchange for incredibly small productivity gains that will be realized years in the future, if ever. (This is basically a copy-paste of previous comments I’ve made, I…

This may be a little elitist, but if you're not going to use vim the way it's really made to be used, why even bother? I get that `mouse=a` makes it more familiar, but if you're always going to reach for your mouse, you're never going to really get used to the motions.

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

#9

Post by Silica6149 »

delusional wrote: post #8
MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #3

My pet peeve is Vim tutorials that start with "use hjkl to move around" instead of "use `set mouse=a` to turn on the mouse." In my opinion you need to make sure that you are very clearly disclaiming that you are teaching a harder way of doing things in exchange for incredibly small productivity gains that will be realized years in the future, if ever. (This is basically a copy-paste of previous comments I’ve made, I…

This may be a little elitist, but if you're not going to use vim the way it's really made to be used, why even bother? I get that `mouse=a` makes it more familiar, but if you're always going to reach for your mouse, you're never going to really get used to the motions.

I think they were speaking from a total beginner's perspective, and how to get them up to speed as fast as possible.

I felt the same way when first learning vim, since it was completely different from the code editors I'd used in the past, it was strange not being able to use the mouse in the way I was used to.

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

#10

Post by manx »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #3

My pet peeve is Vim tutorials that start with "use hjkl to move around" instead of "use `set mouse=a` to turn on the mouse." In my opinion you need to make sure that you are very clearly disclaiming that you are teaching a harder way of doing things in exchange for incredibly small productivity gains that will be realized years in the future, if ever. (This is basically a copy-paste of previous comments I’ve made, I…

Agreed. Hjkl only makes sense when using a keyboard layout where these 4 keys are located in a row. This fact made most vim tutorials useless for me, as I'm using the neo2 keyboard layout, where arrow keys are located in the middle of the keyboard and hjkl are not in a row. Using vim works well for me, and I can use hjkl for other keybindings.
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