51 ms·

Vim for Humans

306 points by 0x54MUR41 10y ago

doh 10y ago
Seems to be down. Here is the source https://github.com/vjousse/vim-for-humans-book https://github.com/vjousse/vim-for-humans-book
gshakir 10y ago
The site seems down.
gbrown_ 10y ago
I've only skimmed this but there seems to be a focus on customizing and plugins from the get go. I think it's worth getting to know Vim "as is" before doing such things. Indeed there certainly some things that aren't the most useful or obvious but it's good to understand their original intent. Not to crap on the author of this but I'd recommend Drew Neil's Practical Vim over this (and pretty much every other Vim book). https://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim https://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim
- exDM69 10y ago
  I kind of agree but vim's defaults are awful. Tim Pope has put together a good set of non-opinionated defaults which don't change key bindings or customize it otherwise [0]. I have a very similar vanilla setup with no plugins apart from syntax highlighting for some languages not included by default. [0] https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible
  - allengeorge 10y ago
    That may be, but it's tough to use a customized vim on your local machine, and then switch to a stock install on a server somewhere, no?
    - exDM69 10y ago
      Copy over one file (.vimrc) and you're done. If you use plugins, then copy them over with git or whatever. And my setup is very conservative so it's mild annoyance at worst. The defaults are just bad, I recommend using vim-sensible or doing your own lean and mean vim config.
      - test1235 10y ago
        As someone who only uses Vim casually, what's an example of a bad default? For someone who is new to Vim, they wouldn't know if the controls are bad, or tough to learn e.g. using jkl; instead of arrow keys.
        JoshTriplett 10y ago
        > As someone who only uses Vim casually, what's an example of a bad default? By default, vim doesn't enable filetype detection or syntax highlighting, so even though it can easily recognize a source file's language, it doesn't.
        t4nkd 10y ago
        Anecdotally, this is exactly the sort of thing I have never needed while using vim on a server. Just let me modify content in the word hole...
        JoshTriplett 10y ago
        vim isn't the "on a server" editor for me, it's the "everything" editor. I like that it works the same way everywhere, but I primarily use it to edit files that do have recognized filetypes. (As an aside, for me the main value of syntax highlighting isn't the normal case, but rather the case where the syntax highlighting emphasizes a problem, such as an unterminated string or other typo.)
        Annatar 10y ago
  - justinmk 10y ago
    That's why Neovim carefully implemented[1] most of the defaults (and a few others) from sensible.vim. [1] https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/2676 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/2676
    - AceStar 10y ago
      Which would you recommend more out of Neovim, or vim with sensible.vim?
      - ufo 10y ago
        In my experience the only con of neovim is that it doesn't come installed by default like vim does. Other than that its very compatible.
  - Annatar 10y ago
    I kind of agree but vim's defaults are awful. I wonder whether that is because of vim compiled defaults or the way people who package vim think things should be, or both? I get so angry every time I log into my newly created Linux account and fire up vi, wanting to get some work done, only to find out that it's been aliased to vim, and there is that horrid syntax highlighting turned on. Unbelievably irritating, and frustrating to no end. Ironically, on AmigaOS where vim comes from, there are no customizations and no syntax highlighting - vim just works there as one would expect vi to work on UNIX.
- rubbsdecvik 10y ago
  I can't recommend this book enough. As a long-time Vim user, I still learned a few things after reading this book. Drew Neil is a pretty awesome person too.
- clifanatic 10y ago
  I always thought that if I were ever to write a book on vim, I'd start with a thorough introduction to ed, followed by a thorough introduction to ex, finally followed by a thorough tutorial on all the features of plain-old vanilla vi, only then to introduce the vim parts and macros and graphics and things.
  - jeremiahwv 10y ago
    I would read that.
  - joemi 10y ago
    I can't tell if your comment is sarcastic or not, but I, too, would love to read that.
    - clifanatic 10y ago
      No, not sarcastic at all - I just didn't think anybody besides me would be crazy enough to want to read such a detailed treatment of an old text editor. Guess I'd better get started writing ;)
    - shabbyrobe 10y ago
      This might be of interest! "Actually using ed": https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/actually-using-ed/ https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/actually-using-ed/
  - brians 10y ago
    I'd buy that. Hey, No Starch!
- baldfat 10y ago
  I agree and then I got a little mad. My version 1 is outdated and the updated ebook is a full price cost for me. Why are some ebook companies charging full price for revisions of books purchased?
- patrickdavey 10y ago
  Yip, practical vim is absolutely excellent, I'd highly recommend it. One other link I haven't seen mentioned here is the user-manual[0] or typing (:h user-manual), and of course typing `vimtutor` at the shell... [0] http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_toc.html http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_toc.html
  - joemi 10y ago
    Vimtutor was all it took to get me both hooked and proficient enough to not feel hopeless. That said, I get why it's not the same for everyone.
  - cholantesh 10y ago
    Drew Neill's vimcasts.org is also great.
- a3n 10y ago
  > I think it's worth getting to know Vim "as is" before [customizing]. For Vim and much else, I've found it worth reacquainting with "as is," after years and decades of customization.
- ases 10y ago
  To perhaps go against the grain a little here, I appreciate a focus on customisation from the start. I am beginning to use Vim more, mostly because I was introduced to the keybindings with Vim emulation from other apps, and I appreciate how it works. I had previously attempted to learn Vim through the normal ways, but it just was impossible; by default, Vim for me is barely readable and none of the included colour schemes ever made it any better. Plus, of course, some of the other things like size of tabs, line numbers, often even syntax highlighting. But finding out how to deal with plugins, themes, settings, etc. is difficult when you aren't already introduced to Vim, precisely because most people make the assumption that you've learned Vim "as is" already. I think some concession has to be made to modernity. Vim is very old and "as is" it often just doesn't function very well for everyday use. Grinding through that until you know it well enough to be given the knowledge of how to make it nicer to use isn't worth it to most people. It certainly wasn't to me.
- nicolashahn 10y ago
  I disagree. Vim is bare, cold, and strange when coming from a traditional editor, and I probably wouldn't have gotten involved if it were not for a friend who already have a useful .vim and .vimrc for me to use as a starting point. He got me up and running with a Vundle, syntax highlighting for all my languages, autocomplete, and various settings that should have been default with stock vim. Though vimtutor was also very useful for getting used to the standard controls. Edit: Forgot the most important thing, the setting that lets you use the mouse: set mouse=a. After I discovered this I knew I was never going back to Sublime.
  - AceStar 10y ago
    I avoided vim for years after being introduced to vi at university, not realising vim could be customised to be much more comfortable and modern feeling.
- antipasta 10y ago
  I started out trying to go plugin free since I wanted to avoid bloat, but eventually gave in once I found plugins that eased bottlenecks in my workflow with a barebones vim. Though I love the plugins I use now, I do agree that it makes sense to be fairly comfortable in a plugin-free vim before installing a ton of them. I wrote a blog about this topic a month or so back: http://blog.bugreplay.com/post/149712686514/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-vim http://blog.bugreplay.com/post/149712686514/how-i-learned-to...
- return0 10y ago
  The benefit of learning the 'default' vim becomes obvious when u have to log in to a foreign system.
- pacomerh 10y ago
  Nice, "practical VIM" is how I learned VIM. Very easy to understand given the examples.
- edoloughlin 10y ago
  > there seems to be a focus on customizing and plugins from the get go This is understandable. Coming from Emacs, I need an equivalent of projectile to stay productive while learning.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
2.1 For who? If the author is reading this, proper English would be "For whom?" The intro says he's not a native speaker, so it's a common mistake. Easily fixed.
- dsr_ 10y ago
  In my experience, most native English speakers are easily confused about who vs whom, and avoid whom by rephrasing: Who is this book for?
  - triangleman 10y ago
    Which would also be incorrect.
    - greenshackle2 10y ago
      You're downvoted but you're not wrong. 'Whom is this book for?' is correct. You can tell because the answer is 'her/him', not 'he/she'. See: http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhom.asp http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhom.asp
    - malnourish 10y ago
      Incorrect according to whom? If you can understand it, it's not incorrect. You might not like the style, but that doesn't make it wrong.
      - alphapapa 10y ago
        > If you can understand it, it's not incorrect. acn yuo stunderand htis? i no oyu cna so acocrding ot yuo its nto rwong. oaky.
        malnourish 10y ago
        That's clearly not what I meant. Grammatical prescriptivism is considered incorrect by pretty much any linguist.
pheo 10y ago
I think this site got slashdotted.
xutopia 10y ago
The SSL certificate for the site is marked as invalid in Google Chrome on the latest macOS.
- danielhlockard 10y ago
  Looks like the CA bundle isn't included
  - 0xmohit 10y ago
    That's correct. "The certificate chain is complete", says https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=vimebook.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=vimebook.com
gravypod 10y ago
I wish I could use vim or emacs. I don't know if I'm stupid or something but all of the key bindings, everything you have to remember, it just doesn't make sense to me. I wish there was something like nano + plugins. If I had that I could implement most of what I need (other then auto-completion for a crap load of languages).
- ifoundthetao 10y ago
  Vim is very easy, I think it's just simple to get overwhelmed with it. There are a couple of tools which gamify Vim. I personally haven't used them. But some say they're pretty good. For me, what worked was just jumping in and going whole hog. I tried disabling the arrow keys in Normal Mode, so I would have to use hjkl for navigation. But my keyboard puts the arrow keys in easy reach (Kinesis Advantage), so it turned out not to be much of a need. What you may like is turning on relative line numbers. That way you can visually see what line you're at, and how many lines away your target is that want to jump to. Then you can practice going 5k to go up five lines, or d2j, to from where you are to two lines down. This article was actually eye-opening for me: https://yanpritzker.com/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-nouns-and-modifiers-d7bfed1f6b2d#.n1xc3qjkg https://yanpritzker.com/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-nouns-and-m... Maybe it'll help you too. :wq
  - jon_richards 10y ago
    Why do people not like :x ?
    - travv0 10y ago
      :wq is a natural extension of :w, and half the time I haven't even decided to quit Vim until I've already typed the :w.
    - jedberg 10y ago
      It's an extra thing to remember. When I'm coding I usually just do :w, so when I'm editing config files I do :wq because it's the same thing (write the file) plus a new action (quit) in my head, instead of a totally different action (save and quit)
holmberd 10y ago
Good alternative: A byte of Vim - http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/vim/ http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/vim/ Sidenote: The navbar & images break on smaller screens.
libso 10y ago
Working link where I can download the book? Link in OP isn't doing it.
- mdrzn 10y ago
  https://vimebook.com/en/download/e0e346cb-9ce6-4070-b1fc-9dd2ddd09ed3/vim-for-humans.pdf https://vimebook.com/en/download/e0e346cb-9ce6-4070-b1fc-9dd...
ensiferum 10y ago
the only thing you need to know about vim, "kill -9 `pidof vim`" Seriously, why bother with this esoteric and cryptic software when something like Atom,SublimeText and VSCode exist...
- pweissbrod 10y ago
  I once thought the same thing. Then I started working with in the terminal environment on a regular basis. It forced me to learn vim as an IDE. I'm surprised to say that once I got in a groove with it I find regular text editors painfully slow in comparison. I employ vim bindings to intellij my Web browser and anywhere else possible. I challenge you to watch this video, spend a few days trying it out and report back to this comment https://youtu.be/5r6yzFEXajQ https://youtu.be/5r6yzFEXajQ
- sfrailsdev 10y ago
  Because for a variety of things, vim allows you to work smarter, not harder.
- echelon 10y ago
  "esoteric" and "cryptic"? Have you ever learned vim keybindings? They improve my productivity by a nontrivial percentage. Tens of thousands of other developers have the same opinion. Unlike Atom and Sublime, vim is far more performant and is available on every machine I SSH into. I'd drop into an IDE (with vim keybindings) for a large Java or C++ project, but vim wins every other time. You should give learning vim a try at some point if you haven't already. It's a steep learning curve, but it all pays off. Typing vim movements feels like playing a piano.
  - ensiferum 10y ago
    I used emacs (so I use the emacs key bindings), then I moved onto SublimeText and never looked back. I totally agree that vim/emacs like keybindings can improve productivity. But many editors can easily support this, so you don't have to succumb to these editors like vim/emacs where everything is then complicated when you really just want the keybindings. P.s here's some Elisp for all the emacks hackers. Very useful, feel free to use (; (((((((((((((((((((((((
anondon 10y ago
A little background. I am familiar with vi and use it only when I ssh into a server. But I never really felt it was more convenient or an improvement over a GUI based text editor or IDE on my development machine. Eg- gedit for simple text editing, Android Studio for android development, Atom for python coding. Everything works out of the box with minimal tweaking required. Genuine questions: -At what point on the learning curve do you feel using vim is an advantage for speed of development, if at all? -The common argument of only keyboard, no mouse when using vim... I don't get. Is using a mouse such a major factor that slows you down or affects you negatively?
- exDM69 10y ago
  > -At what point on the learning curve do you feel using vim is an advantage for speed of development, if at all? Text editing is not a bottleneck in my development workflow, so I'd say never. This said, I wouldn't change to a different editor, especially one that doesn't have Vi-like modal editing. > Is using a mouse such a major factor that slows you down or affects you negatively? Yes and it's also an ergonomics disaster. Vim isn't great when it comes to IDE-like features but it's a great text editor once you grok the paradigm. If you use it like a "normal" editor, it kinda sucks. Once you can keep your hands on the home row at all times, you don't want to go back. Vim's killer feature, not found in any other editor I know, is repeat (.) . I use vim in tmux with a curses debugger and it gets a lot of IDE benefits but is language agnostic. Changing to a different editor/IDE depending on language/target platform/project just sounds awful.
- xur17 10y ago
  I've been using it as a plugin for pycharm and sublime text. I still end up using my mouse for larger, more involved editing, but I find it really useful to stay on the keyboard when moving around a file.
- clifanatic 10y ago
  Well, it depends on what you're doing. For example, if I want to duplicate a line in vi, I can type 'yyp' and _bam_: duplicate line. With a keyboard and a mouse, I have to reach over, select the whole line (being careful not to over or under select), hit Ctrl+C, move the cursor down to the beginning of the next line, and hit Ctrl+V. If I want to change the contents of a quoted string, I can type 'f"lct"' and start typing. Again, with a mouse, I have to select what I want to change: if I select too much, I can back up the mouse, but if I accidentally started the selection on the second rather than the first character, I have to abort the whole selection and start over again. If I want to change each line from the current line to the next blank line to a continuous quoted string, I can type ':.,/^$/s/$.*$/"\1" +/'. With a mouse, I have to click the beginning of each line and cut+paste the quotes into place, probably undoing at least a couple of times because I clicked the wrong place, etc. etc. I know, I'm talking about milliseconds (or nanoseconds) here, but when I use vi, it's just, sort of "constant", like playing the piano. I never break my rhythm.
em500 10y ago
The thing that helped me most with vi(m) was this change of mindset: don't treat Insert as an alternative mode. Instead, threat the append and insert commands as any other command, just ones that happen to (often) take long arguments, and make it a habit to always terminate those arguments with <esc>.
rublev 10y ago
Wow this site doesn't work at all. I clicked on the "download the ebook" and nothing happened. Scrolled down, entered $0 and I get a blank page. Anything above $0, credit card form works fine.
- cyber_dude 10y ago
  Try disabling adblock/ghostery
  - rublev 10y ago
    That worked.
atemerev 10y ago
Just paid 3.5 euros and haven't got the book, site said page doesn't work :( My e-mail is sorhed at gmail
- atemerev 10y ago
  Still no response :(
- atemerev 10y ago
  OK, downloaded it for free, as I have already paid for it. :)
barcher 10y ago
Setting up vim as an IDE is cool, but it certainly not a "first step." Better to learn foundational vim concepts, and then make this decision. http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/ http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/
fasteo 10y ago
I am old enough to know vim pretty well and I guess I do not need the e-book, but I just wanted to congratulate you for the landing page: clear design and better content. I just love the pitch "How do I quit this @#!?"
jtth 10y ago
I'm assuming this page doesn't resolve because vim is not for humans.
no_protocol 10y ago
> 3.5 Our first plugin: the file explorer it would be cool to be able to open files without having to do File -> Open using the menu bar How about using the :edit command? > 3.5.1 Plugin manager: Pathogen > 3.5.2 The NERD Tree: a file explorer The NERD Tree is a plugin that will allow you to display your directory and file tree directly in Vim > 4.1 Learning how to move Most distributions of vim include the netrw plugin for remote and local directory browsing. Do we really need to learn how to install plugins before even learning how to navigate within a file? This book seems to focus on the basics of vim. Unfortunately, it falls into the common trap of piling on many layers of unnecessary extras before explaining the basic details. I would not recommend this resource to a beginner.
- cschmidt 10y ago
  Your opinion is quite common with old vim hands, but I would have to respectfully disagree. Someone learning vim is probably coming from Atom or Sublime. The defaults in vim are so egregiously awful, that I don't think you can expect these folks to stick with learning. Their productivity drops to zero - there isn't even syntax highlighting - so they give up and go back to what they were using. You have to get vim to a point where they can be sort of productive, if you want them to stick with it. I think some customization is necessary for beginners. An alternate idea would be to use neovim, which fixes many of the defaults.
  - tragic 10y ago
    Seconded. I switched to Vim as my primary editor about two months ago. I remembered how much easier Emacs Live[0] had made my life when I was giving Emacs a serious go a little whole ago, and found a sorta-equivalent for Vim[1] which smoothed over a lot of the rough edges and put in some of the modern convenience an ST die-hard like me would expect (autocompletion, package management and what have you). That left one remaining barrier, which is the weirdness of modal editing; which is the important barrier, because the only reason you'd use vim is to sign up to the pre-eminent modal editor. Maybe, two new laptops from now, or one lonely weekend, I'll take a hacksaw to spf13 and strip out the bits I don't need. But for a shallow onramp experience, it's been a godsend. [0] https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live [1] https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim
Rainymood 10y ago
The very first thing I do on any default Vim config is :imap kj <Esc> And then Vim kinda makes sense to me. Pressing <Esc> each time is such an anti-pattern imho.
- mikegerwitz 10y ago
  C-[ is equivalent to <Esc>, and is much more natural. I also bind caps lock to ctrl (setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps on a GNU/Linux system), which makes this all the more natural.
  - Rainymood 10y ago
    I never really liked C-[, kj is just a finger roll away and it's ingrained in my muscle memory now. I try to avoid shift as much as possible as I get a very cramped finger if I have to use shift too much. I have a lot of custom TeX bindings for this as well (i.e. <Leader>b => {} (braces), <Leader>p => () (paren)). I even rebound 44 to $$ because I don't type 44 that often anyway.
  - eikenberry 10y ago
    Why not just change caps-lock to esc. setxkbmap -option caps:escape
    - Lio 10y ago
      One reason would be so that you can use C-h as backspace, C-i as tab and C-m as return without moving your whole hand. Of course you could map caps lock to be both ctrl and escape at the same time but C-[ is almost as good.
    - mikegerwitz 10y ago
      Personally, because it offers me no benefit: [ is on the other hand, so it's the same speed as hitting a single key, and I use Ctrl for many other things; Esc is specialized. I'm also an Emacs (and vim) user (Evil mode, of course).
  - globuous 10y ago
Philipp__ 10y ago
It took me a while to realize what really vim is for. What led me to realization was switching to Emacs. I read this post, and second checkbox says "modern customizable IDE". And I stopped there. Why you may ask? Well, I used Vim for 3 years before trying Emacs this spring. And I loaded it with all the heavy plugins(YCM), but Emacs led me to realization that Vim is more of an editor than IDE. Even with plugins I think it just doesn't even come close to Emacs, which has really nice ecosystem and plugins that are spot-on IDE feeling (ENSIME, CIDER, Alchemist etc). When I configured Vim again few days ago I realized how I misused Vim. My init.vim had about 150 lines of code, with few plugins, and now it felt right. Just like it felt right to customize the living hell out of Emacs. Again, this might be just my perception of things, some other people like it the other way, different flavors for different people, but it is how it felt right for me personally, after trying to understand philosophies and surroundings in which these wonderful pieces of software were made.
- gepoch 10y ago
  I will add some of my own opinions: My feeling is that real value of Vim is its novel approach to modal text manipulation, and you shouldn't let the fact that it has a standalone lightweight reference implementation usefully installed on almost every machine that you use confuse you. Vim script is not a great plugin language, and the vim runtime itself is not fantastic at doing things beyond the text editing. I think the activity around NeoVim is good evidence for this. The community recognizes the constraints of Vim, and seeks better plugin and runtime tooling to meet their needs. My issue is: there are loads of great text editors that support the Vim interface. Emacs, Atom, Sublime, whatever, all have very good Vim interfaces and far superior languages and platforms for doing complex plugin work that you need to support IDE-ish environments. NeoVim seems like a bit of a waste to me, because I think it misses the point. Vim is not a platform. It's a unique modal editing paradigm. Why make yet another Vim-binding-having platform? I guess what I mean is that vim should be left as vim. There are superior platforms that implement the same interface, should you feel the need to expand your tools. Vim does best as a portable minimal editor that you can use everywhere. If you need something with more power, pick a better platform, and run the Vim editing paradigm as an interface.
hollander 10y ago
I can't download the PDF, and the EPUB neither.
BurningFrog 10y ago
I continue to be baffled that software written 40+ years ago, to deal with constraints and realities that are long long gone keep being used by people on the cutting edge of technology change.
- cbsmith 10y ago
  ...because it turns out that it is easier to just tweak existing software that has addressed the many, many problems that have remained constant? Try running vim on PDP-11. I dare ya.
- ancarda 10y ago
  I don't use Vim because I have to due to limitations, I use it because it's a joy to use. What would you suggest people use instead?
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    I've been very happy with the IntelliJ, RubyMine, WebStorm family of IDEs. They have similar UIs to all the other modern software I use, doesn't require a learning curve to start typing, and have tons of features the vi/emacs people don't miss because they don't know they exist. I understand that it's hard for old timer to learn a new tool. I do not understand why they're still taught to beginner programmers.
    - Lio 10y ago
      What features do you think we're missing from WebStorm? I've used WebStorm quite a bit in an old job where it's use was mandated by management. What I found was that lots the headline features didn't work for the hairy old JavaScript codebase and certainly didn't work as well as Tern + ctags. E.g. navigating to method definitions fell back to a simple search when dealing with react.js modules. As did refactorings such as rename (provided by Tern). Gulp/webpack/grunt do a better job at workflow tasks IMHO too. I guess there was the debugger but it's not a patch on Chrome's debugger so why use it?
    - htns 10y ago
Dowwie 10y ago
I not only use vim but I use vim mode in Atom and within tmux. Vim mode all the things.
danm07 10y ago
Hmm. Is anyone else getting NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID error?
Animats 10y ago
What Vim, and a lot of other programs, really need is a single plastic-covered card which tells you how to use the program. You can squeeze a summary of calculus on one such card. Is it too much to ask for software? (I really, really want that for Blender. The Blender hotkey document is 9 pages and years out of date.)
- syrrim 10y ago
  You could try this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vim+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheatsheet&iax=1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vim+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheatshee... There are similar pages for various programs, including blender it seems: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blender+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheatsheet&iax=1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blender+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheat...
- flukus 10y ago
  There are many: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vim+cheatsheet&safe=active&espv=2&biw=1527&bih=850&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR9LTBhePPAhVU12MKHSXqDSgQ_AUIBigB https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vim+cheatsheet&safe=activ...
- rudedogg 10y ago
  This was always my favorite vim cheatsheet when learning: http://vimcheatsheet.com/ http://vimcheatsheet.com/
Hydraulix989 10y ago
vim for humans is nano -- you shouldn't have to read a book to learn how to use a text editor.
wmichelin 10y ago
Your SSL is jacked up
coleifer 10y ago
Oh, "for humans"... It was cool when requests came out and it made sense to the audience (Python people familiar with the standard library). But it gets applied to so many things these days that it's just corny. I suppose most people using it intend to convey a folksy, whimsical, self-conscious style. It's supposed to make the content seem approachable. The folks behind the "Head First!" series seem to understand the appeal of making content approachable. So did the creators of the "For Dummies" series. Hell, Reagan used jelly beans. It feels dishonest, somehow. Just call it a vim book, or whatever.
wwho 10y ago
learn incredibly unintuitive fucked up shortcuts to perform basic tasks that a basic bullshit gui text editor can perform cool
- deathanatos 10y ago
  Your comment comes across as one who has their head stuck in the sand, frankly. Yes — the basics are a bit odd and initially off putting to novice users. I don't think many vim users are promoting vim for its learning curve, we're promoting it for its productivity in the more intricate editing. I still feel a little joy inside any time I use da' or ci( (delete around single quotes — i.e., remove this string, and cut inside parens, i.e., remove the arg list an start ending a replacement). Those commands in particular I find incredibly common, and the arcane shortcuts — while arcane — save me a lot of tedious Shift+Ctrl+arrow,arrow,arrow,arrow… in your more run of the mill editor. And for the truly complex edits, :normal makes a boring, monotonous task faster … and more fun. (MSVS has it's own issues: the last time I used Visual Studio, granted, it was ~7 years ago, it lacked ? in its regex syntax, and grouping was with {}, I think. Tell me that editing with a different regex syntax than what your .Net code uses is intuitive? The auto-complete was really good, though. (Though vim comes with out of the box heuristical completion that gets most of the way there.)
ryanbertrand 10y ago
Hmm getting a 404 here :(
anotheryou 10y ago
Anyone using vim-mode plugins for other IDEs? Most vim critic in the comments seems to be against it as an IDE, while the biggest benefit is obviously the keyboard control. So why not use the combination of both (I installed plugins for Visual Studio and Atom a few days ago and I'm quite happy so far, but it's my first steps in to vim, so maybe I'll find things that won't work later)?
creamy 10y ago
A wiseman once told me: "If you have to hold a key to reach your goal, there is probably a better (i.e. shorter) way to do it."

306 points by 0x54MUR41 10y ago

doh 10y ago

Seems to be down. Here is the source https://github.com/vjousse/vim-for-humans-book https://github.com/vjousse/vim-for-humans-book

gshakir 10y ago

The site seems down.

gbrown_ 10y ago

I've only skimmed this but there seems to be a focus on customizing and plugins from the get go. I think it's worth getting to know Vim "as is" before doing such things. Indeed there certainly some things that aren't the most useful or obvious but it's good to understand their original intent. Not to crap on the author of this but I'd recommend Drew Neil's Practical Vim over this (and pretty much every other Vim book). https://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim https://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim

exDM69 10y ago
I kind of agree but vim's defaults are awful. Tim Pope has put together a good set of non-opinionated defaults which don't change key bindings or customize it otherwise [0]. I have a very similar vanilla setup with no plugins apart from syntax highlighting for some languages not included by default. [0] https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible
- allengeorge 10y ago
  That may be, but it's tough to use a customized vim on your local machine, and then switch to a stock install on a server somewhere, no?
  - exDM69 10y ago
    Copy over one file (.vimrc) and you're done. If you use plugins, then copy them over with git or whatever. And my setup is very conservative so it's mild annoyance at worst. The defaults are just bad, I recommend using vim-sensible or doing your own lean and mean vim config.
    - test1235 10y ago
      As someone who only uses Vim casually, what's an example of a bad default? For someone who is new to Vim, they wouldn't know if the controls are bad, or tough to learn e.g. using jkl; instead of arrow keys.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        > As someone who only uses Vim casually, what's an example of a bad default? By default, vim doesn't enable filetype detection or syntax highlighting, so even though it can easily recognize a source file's language, it doesn't.
        t4nkd 10y ago
        Anecdotally, this is exactly the sort of thing I have never needed while using vim on a server. Just let me modify content in the word hole...
        JoshTriplett 10y ago
        vim isn't the "on a server" editor for me, it's the "everything" editor. I like that it works the same way everywhere, but I primarily use it to edit files that do have recognized filetypes. (As an aside, for me the main value of syntax highlighting isn't the normal case, but rather the case where the syntax highlighting emphasizes a problem, such as an unterminated string or other typo.)
        Annatar 10y ago
- justinmk 10y ago
  That's why Neovim carefully implemented[1] most of the defaults (and a few others) from sensible.vim. [1] https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/2676 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/2676
  - AceStar 10y ago
    Which would you recommend more out of Neovim, or vim with sensible.vim?
    - ufo 10y ago
      In my experience the only con of neovim is that it doesn't come installed by default like vim does. Other than that its very compatible.
- Annatar 10y ago
  I kind of agree but vim's defaults are awful. I wonder whether that is because of vim compiled defaults or the way people who package vim think things should be, or both? I get so angry every time I log into my newly created Linux account and fire up vi, wanting to get some work done, only to find out that it's been aliased to vim, and there is that horrid syntax highlighting turned on. Unbelievably irritating, and frustrating to no end. Ironically, on AmigaOS where vim comes from, there are no customizations and no syntax highlighting - vim just works there as one would expect vi to work on UNIX.
rubbsdecvik 10y ago
I can't recommend this book enough. As a long-time Vim user, I still learned a few things after reading this book. Drew Neil is a pretty awesome person too.
clifanatic 10y ago
I always thought that if I were ever to write a book on vim, I'd start with a thorough introduction to ed, followed by a thorough introduction to ex, finally followed by a thorough tutorial on all the features of plain-old vanilla vi, only then to introduce the vim parts and macros and graphics and things.
- jeremiahwv 10y ago
  I would read that.
- joemi 10y ago
  I can't tell if your comment is sarcastic or not, but I, too, would love to read that.
  - clifanatic 10y ago
    No, not sarcastic at all - I just didn't think anybody besides me would be crazy enough to want to read such a detailed treatment of an old text editor. Guess I'd better get started writing ;)
  - shabbyrobe 10y ago
    This might be of interest! "Actually using ed": https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/actually-using-ed/ https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/actually-using-ed/
- brians 10y ago
  I'd buy that. Hey, No Starch!
baldfat 10y ago
I agree and then I got a little mad. My version 1 is outdated and the updated ebook is a full price cost for me. Why are some ebook companies charging full price for revisions of books purchased?
patrickdavey 10y ago
Yip, practical vim is absolutely excellent, I'd highly recommend it. One other link I haven't seen mentioned here is the user-manual[0] or typing (:h user-manual), and of course typing `vimtutor` at the shell... [0] http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_toc.html http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_toc.html
- joemi 10y ago
  Vimtutor was all it took to get me both hooked and proficient enough to not feel hopeless. That said, I get why it's not the same for everyone.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  Drew Neill's vimcasts.org is also great.
a3n 10y ago
> I think it's worth getting to know Vim "as is" before [customizing]. For Vim and much else, I've found it worth reacquainting with "as is," after years and decades of customization.
ases 10y ago
To perhaps go against the grain a little here, I appreciate a focus on customisation from the start. I am beginning to use Vim more, mostly because I was introduced to the keybindings with Vim emulation from other apps, and I appreciate how it works. I had previously attempted to learn Vim through the normal ways, but it just was impossible; by default, Vim for me is barely readable and none of the included colour schemes ever made it any better. Plus, of course, some of the other things like size of tabs, line numbers, often even syntax highlighting. But finding out how to deal with plugins, themes, settings, etc. is difficult when you aren't already introduced to Vim, precisely because most people make the assumption that you've learned Vim "as is" already. I think some concession has to be made to modernity. Vim is very old and "as is" it often just doesn't function very well for everyday use. Grinding through that until you know it well enough to be given the knowledge of how to make it nicer to use isn't worth it to most people. It certainly wasn't to me.
nicolashahn 10y ago
I disagree. Vim is bare, cold, and strange when coming from a traditional editor, and I probably wouldn't have gotten involved if it were not for a friend who already have a useful .vim and .vimrc for me to use as a starting point. He got me up and running with a Vundle, syntax highlighting for all my languages, autocomplete, and various settings that should have been default with stock vim. Though vimtutor was also very useful for getting used to the standard controls. Edit: Forgot the most important thing, the setting that lets you use the mouse: set mouse=a. After I discovered this I knew I was never going back to Sublime.
- AceStar 10y ago
  I avoided vim for years after being introduced to vi at university, not realising vim could be customised to be much more comfortable and modern feeling.
antipasta 10y ago
I started out trying to go plugin free since I wanted to avoid bloat, but eventually gave in once I found plugins that eased bottlenecks in my workflow with a barebones vim. Though I love the plugins I use now, I do agree that it makes sense to be fairly comfortable in a plugin-free vim before installing a ton of them. I wrote a blog about this topic a month or so back: http://blog.bugreplay.com/post/149712686514/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-vim http://blog.bugreplay.com/post/149712686514/how-i-learned-to...
return0 10y ago
The benefit of learning the 'default' vim becomes obvious when u have to log in to a foreign system.
pacomerh 10y ago
Nice, "practical VIM" is how I learned VIM. Very easy to understand given the examples.
edoloughlin 10y ago
> there seems to be a focus on customizing and plugins from the get go This is understandable. Coming from Emacs, I need an equivalent of projectile to stay productive while learning.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

2.1 For who? If the author is reading this, proper English would be "For whom?" The intro says he's not a native speaker, so it's a common mistake. Easily fixed.

dsr_ 10y ago
In my experience, most native English speakers are easily confused about who vs whom, and avoid whom by rephrasing: Who is this book for?
- triangleman 10y ago
  Which would also be incorrect.
  - greenshackle2 10y ago
    You're downvoted but you're not wrong. 'Whom is this book for?' is correct. You can tell because the answer is 'her/him', not 'he/she'. See: http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhom.asp http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhom.asp
  - malnourish 10y ago
    Incorrect according to whom? If you can understand it, it's not incorrect. You might not like the style, but that doesn't make it wrong.
    - alphapapa 10y ago
      > If you can understand it, it's not incorrect. acn yuo stunderand htis? i no oyu cna so acocrding ot yuo its nto rwong. oaky.
      - malnourish 10y ago
        That's clearly not what I meant. Grammatical prescriptivism is considered incorrect by pretty much any linguist.

pheo 10y ago

I think this site got slashdotted.

xutopia 10y ago

The SSL certificate for the site is marked as invalid in Google Chrome on the latest macOS.

danielhlockard 10y ago
Looks like the CA bundle isn't included
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  That's correct. "The certificate chain is complete", says https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=vimebook.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=vimebook.com

gravypod 10y ago

I wish I could use vim or emacs. I don't know if I'm stupid or something but all of the key bindings, everything you have to remember, it just doesn't make sense to me. I wish there was something like nano + plugins. If I had that I could implement most of what I need (other then auto-completion for a crap load of languages).

ifoundthetao 10y ago
Vim is very easy, I think it's just simple to get overwhelmed with it. There are a couple of tools which gamify Vim. I personally haven't used them. But some say they're pretty good. For me, what worked was just jumping in and going whole hog. I tried disabling the arrow keys in Normal Mode, so I would have to use hjkl for navigation. But my keyboard puts the arrow keys in easy reach (Kinesis Advantage), so it turned out not to be much of a need. What you may like is turning on relative line numbers. That way you can visually see what line you're at, and how many lines away your target is that want to jump to. Then you can practice going 5k to go up five lines, or d2j, to from where you are to two lines down. This article was actually eye-opening for me: https://yanpritzker.com/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-nouns-and-modifiers-d7bfed1f6b2d#.n1xc3qjkg https://yanpritzker.com/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-nouns-and-m... Maybe it'll help you too. :wq
- jon_richards 10y ago
  Why do people not like :x ?
  - travv0 10y ago
    :wq is a natural extension of :w, and half the time I haven't even decided to quit Vim until I've already typed the :w.
  - jedberg 10y ago
    It's an extra thing to remember. When I'm coding I usually just do :w, so when I'm editing config files I do :wq because it's the same thing (write the file) plus a new action (quit) in my head, instead of a totally different action (save and quit)

holmberd 10y ago

Good alternative: A byte of Vim - http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/vim/ http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/vim/ Sidenote: The navbar & images break on smaller screens.

libso 10y ago

Working link where I can download the book? Link in OP isn't doing it.

mdrzn 10y ago
https://vimebook.com/en/download/e0e346cb-9ce6-4070-b1fc-9dd2ddd09ed3/vim-for-humans.pdf https://vimebook.com/en/download/e0e346cb-9ce6-4070-b1fc-9dd...

ensiferum 10y ago

the only thing you need to know about vim, "kill -9 `pidof vim`" Seriously, why bother with this esoteric and cryptic software when something like Atom,SublimeText and VSCode exist...

pweissbrod 10y ago
I once thought the same thing. Then I started working with in the terminal environment on a regular basis. It forced me to learn vim as an IDE. I'm surprised to say that once I got in a groove with it I find regular text editors painfully slow in comparison. I employ vim bindings to intellij my Web browser and anywhere else possible. I challenge you to watch this video, spend a few days trying it out and report back to this comment https://youtu.be/5r6yzFEXajQ https://youtu.be/5r6yzFEXajQ
sfrailsdev 10y ago
Because for a variety of things, vim allows you to work smarter, not harder.
echelon 10y ago
"esoteric" and "cryptic"? Have you ever learned vim keybindings? They improve my productivity by a nontrivial percentage. Tens of thousands of other developers have the same opinion. Unlike Atom and Sublime, vim is far more performant and is available on every machine I SSH into. I'd drop into an IDE (with vim keybindings) for a large Java or C++ project, but vim wins every other time. You should give learning vim a try at some point if you haven't already. It's a steep learning curve, but it all pays off. Typing vim movements feels like playing a piano.
- ensiferum 10y ago
  I used emacs (so I use the emacs key bindings), then I moved onto SublimeText and never looked back. I totally agree that vim/emacs like keybindings can improve productivity. But many editors can easily support this, so you don't have to succumb to these editors like vim/emacs where everything is then complicated when you really just want the keybindings. P.s here's some Elisp for all the emacks hackers. Very useful, feel free to use (; (((((((((((((((((((((((

anondon 10y ago

A little background. I am familiar with vi and use it only when I ssh into a server. But I never really felt it was more convenient or an improvement over a GUI based text editor or IDE on my development machine. Eg- gedit for simple text editing, Android Studio for android development, Atom for python coding. Everything works out of the box with minimal tweaking required. Genuine questions: -At what point on the learning curve do you feel using vim is an advantage for speed of development, if at all? -The common argument of only keyboard, no mouse when using vim... I don't get. Is using a mouse such a major factor that slows you down or affects you negatively?

exDM69 10y ago
> -At what point on the learning curve do you feel using vim is an advantage for speed of development, if at all? Text editing is not a bottleneck in my development workflow, so I'd say never. This said, I wouldn't change to a different editor, especially one that doesn't have Vi-like modal editing. > Is using a mouse such a major factor that slows you down or affects you negatively? Yes and it's also an ergonomics disaster. Vim isn't great when it comes to IDE-like features but it's a great text editor once you grok the paradigm. If you use it like a "normal" editor, it kinda sucks. Once you can keep your hands on the home row at all times, you don't want to go back. Vim's killer feature, not found in any other editor I know, is repeat (.) . I use vim in tmux with a curses debugger and it gets a lot of IDE benefits but is language agnostic. Changing to a different editor/IDE depending on language/target platform/project just sounds awful.
xur17 10y ago
I've been using it as a plugin for pycharm and sublime text. I still end up using my mouse for larger, more involved editing, but I find it really useful to stay on the keyboard when moving around a file.
clifanatic 10y ago
Well, it depends on what you're doing. For example, if I want to duplicate a line in vi, I can type 'yyp' and _bam_: duplicate line. With a keyboard and a mouse, I have to reach over, select the whole line (being careful not to over or under select), hit Ctrl+C, move the cursor down to the beginning of the next line, and hit Ctrl+V. If I want to change the contents of a quoted string, I can type 'f"lct"' and start typing. Again, with a mouse, I have to select what I want to change: if I select too much, I can back up the mouse, but if I accidentally started the selection on the second rather than the first character, I have to abort the whole selection and start over again. If I want to change each line from the current line to the next blank line to a continuous quoted string, I can type ':.,/^$/s/$.*$/"\1" +/'. With a mouse, I have to click the beginning of each line and cut+paste the quotes into place, probably undoing at least a couple of times because I clicked the wrong place, etc. etc. I know, I'm talking about milliseconds (or nanoseconds) here, but when I use vi, it's just, sort of "constant", like playing the piano. I never break my rhythm.

em500 10y ago

The thing that helped me most with vi(m) was this change of mindset: don't treat Insert as an alternative mode. Instead, threat the append and insert commands as any other command, just ones that happen to (often) take long arguments, and make it a habit to always terminate those arguments with <esc>.

rublev 10y ago

Wow this site doesn't work at all. I clicked on the "download the ebook" and nothing happened. Scrolled down, entered $0 and I get a blank page. Anything above $0, credit card form works fine.

cyber_dude 10y ago
Try disabling adblock/ghostery
- rublev 10y ago
  That worked.

atemerev 10y ago

Just paid 3.5 euros and haven't got the book, site said page doesn't work :( My e-mail is sorhed at gmail

atemerev 10y ago
Still no response :(
atemerev 10y ago
OK, downloaded it for free, as I have already paid for it. :)

barcher 10y ago

Setting up vim as an IDE is cool, but it certainly not a "first step." Better to learn foundational vim concepts, and then make this decision. http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/ http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/

fasteo 10y ago

I am old enough to know vim pretty well and I guess I do not need the e-book, but I just wanted to congratulate you for the landing page: clear design and better content. I just love the pitch "How do I quit this @#!?"

jtth 10y ago

I'm assuming this page doesn't resolve because vim is not for humans.

no_protocol 10y ago

> 3.5 Our first plugin: the file explorer it would be cool to be able to open files without having to do File -> Open using the menu bar How about using the :edit command? > 3.5.1 Plugin manager: Pathogen > 3.5.2 The NERD Tree: a file explorer The NERD Tree is a plugin that will allow you to display your directory and file tree directly in Vim > 4.1 Learning how to move Most distributions of vim include the netrw plugin for remote and local directory browsing. Do we really need to learn how to install plugins before even learning how to navigate within a file? This book seems to focus on the basics of vim. Unfortunately, it falls into the common trap of piling on many layers of unnecessary extras before explaining the basic details. I would not recommend this resource to a beginner.

cschmidt 10y ago
Your opinion is quite common with old vim hands, but I would have to respectfully disagree. Someone learning vim is probably coming from Atom or Sublime. The defaults in vim are so egregiously awful, that I don't think you can expect these folks to stick with learning. Their productivity drops to zero - there isn't even syntax highlighting - so they give up and go back to what they were using. You have to get vim to a point where they can be sort of productive, if you want them to stick with it. I think some customization is necessary for beginners. An alternate idea would be to use neovim, which fixes many of the defaults.
- tragic 10y ago
  Seconded. I switched to Vim as my primary editor about two months ago. I remembered how much easier Emacs Live[0] had made my life when I was giving Emacs a serious go a little whole ago, and found a sorta-equivalent for Vim[1] which smoothed over a lot of the rough edges and put in some of the modern convenience an ST die-hard like me would expect (autocompletion, package management and what have you). That left one remaining barrier, which is the weirdness of modal editing; which is the important barrier, because the only reason you'd use vim is to sign up to the pre-eminent modal editor. Maybe, two new laptops from now, or one lonely weekend, I'll take a hacksaw to spf13 and strip out the bits I don't need. But for a shallow onramp experience, it's been a godsend. [0] https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live [1] https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim

Rainymood 10y ago

The very first thing I do on any default Vim config is :imap kj <Esc> And then Vim kinda makes sense to me. Pressing <Esc> each time is such an anti-pattern imho.

mikegerwitz 10y ago
C-[ is equivalent to <Esc>, and is much more natural. I also bind caps lock to ctrl (setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps on a GNU/Linux system), which makes this all the more natural.
- Rainymood 10y ago
  I never really liked C-[, kj is just a finger roll away and it's ingrained in my muscle memory now. I try to avoid shift as much as possible as I get a very cramped finger if I have to use shift too much. I have a lot of custom TeX bindings for this as well (i.e. <Leader>b => {} (braces), <Leader>p => () (paren)). I even rebound 44 to $$ because I don't type 44 that often anyway.
- eikenberry 10y ago
  Why not just change caps-lock to esc. setxkbmap -option caps:escape
  - Lio 10y ago
    One reason would be so that you can use C-h as backspace, C-i as tab and C-m as return without moving your whole hand. Of course you could map caps lock to be both ctrl and escape at the same time but C-[ is almost as good.
  - mikegerwitz 10y ago
    Personally, because it offers me no benefit: [ is on the other hand, so it's the same speed as hitting a single key, and I use Ctrl for many other things; Esc is specialized. I'm also an Emacs (and vim) user (Evil mode, of course).
- globuous 10y ago

Philipp__ 10y ago

It took me a while to realize what really vim is for. What led me to realization was switching to Emacs. I read this post, and second checkbox says "modern customizable IDE". And I stopped there. Why you may ask? Well, I used Vim for 3 years before trying Emacs this spring. And I loaded it with all the heavy plugins(YCM), but Emacs led me to realization that Vim is more of an editor than IDE. Even with plugins I think it just doesn't even come close to Emacs, which has really nice ecosystem and plugins that are spot-on IDE feeling (ENSIME, CIDER, Alchemist etc). When I configured Vim again few days ago I realized how I misused Vim. My init.vim had about 150 lines of code, with few plugins, and now it felt right. Just like it felt right to customize the living hell out of Emacs. Again, this might be just my perception of things, some other people like it the other way, different flavors for different people, but it is how it felt right for me personally, after trying to understand philosophies and surroundings in which these wonderful pieces of software were made.

gepoch 10y ago
I will add some of my own opinions: My feeling is that real value of Vim is its novel approach to modal text manipulation, and you shouldn't let the fact that it has a standalone lightweight reference implementation usefully installed on almost every machine that you use confuse you. Vim script is not a great plugin language, and the vim runtime itself is not fantastic at doing things beyond the text editing. I think the activity around NeoVim is good evidence for this. The community recognizes the constraints of Vim, and seeks better plugin and runtime tooling to meet their needs. My issue is: there are loads of great text editors that support the Vim interface. Emacs, Atom, Sublime, whatever, all have very good Vim interfaces and far superior languages and platforms for doing complex plugin work that you need to support IDE-ish environments. NeoVim seems like a bit of a waste to me, because I think it misses the point. Vim is not a platform. It's a unique modal editing paradigm. Why make yet another Vim-binding-having platform? I guess what I mean is that vim should be left as vim. There are superior platforms that implement the same interface, should you feel the need to expand your tools. Vim does best as a portable minimal editor that you can use everywhere. If you need something with more power, pick a better platform, and run the Vim editing paradigm as an interface.

hollander 10y ago

I can't download the PDF, and the EPUB neither.

BurningFrog 10y ago

I continue to be baffled that software written 40+ years ago, to deal with constraints and realities that are long long gone keep being used by people on the cutting edge of technology change.

cbsmith 10y ago
...because it turns out that it is easier to just tweak existing software that has addressed the many, many problems that have remained constant? Try running vim on PDP-11. I dare ya.
ancarda 10y ago
I don't use Vim because I have to due to limitations, I use it because it's a joy to use. What would you suggest people use instead?
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  I've been very happy with the IntelliJ, RubyMine, WebStorm family of IDEs. They have similar UIs to all the other modern software I use, doesn't require a learning curve to start typing, and have tons of features the vi/emacs people don't miss because they don't know they exist. I understand that it's hard for old timer to learn a new tool. I do not understand why they're still taught to beginner programmers.
  - Lio 10y ago
    What features do you think we're missing from WebStorm? I've used WebStorm quite a bit in an old job where it's use was mandated by management. What I found was that lots the headline features didn't work for the hairy old JavaScript codebase and certainly didn't work as well as Tern + ctags. E.g. navigating to method definitions fell back to a simple search when dealing with react.js modules. As did refactorings such as rename (provided by Tern). Gulp/webpack/grunt do a better job at workflow tasks IMHO too. I guess there was the debugger but it's not a patch on Chrome's debugger so why use it?
  - htns 10y ago

Dowwie 10y ago

I not only use vim but I use vim mode in Atom and within tmux. Vim mode all the things.

danm07 10y ago

Hmm. Is anyone else getting NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID error?

Animats 10y ago

What Vim, and a lot of other programs, really need is a single plastic-covered card which tells you how to use the program. You can squeeze a summary of calculus on one such card. Is it too much to ask for software? (I really, really want that for Blender. The Blender hotkey document is 9 pages and years out of date.)

syrrim 10y ago
You could try this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vim+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheatsheet&iax=1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vim+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheatshee... There are similar pages for various programs, including blender it seems: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blender+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheatsheet&iax=1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blender+cheatsheet&t=ffab&ia=cheat...
flukus 10y ago
There are many: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vim+cheatsheet&safe=active&espv=2&biw=1527&bih=850&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR9LTBhePPAhVU12MKHSXqDSgQ_AUIBigB https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vim+cheatsheet&safe=activ...
rudedogg 10y ago
This was always my favorite vim cheatsheet when learning: http://vimcheatsheet.com/ http://vimcheatsheet.com/

Hydraulix989 10y ago

vim for humans is nano -- you shouldn't have to read a book to learn how to use a text editor.

wmichelin 10y ago

Your SSL is jacked up

coleifer 10y ago

Oh, "for humans"... It was cool when requests came out and it made sense to the audience (Python people familiar with the standard library). But it gets applied to so many things these days that it's just corny. I suppose most people using it intend to convey a folksy, whimsical, self-conscious style. It's supposed to make the content seem approachable. The folks behind the "Head First!" series seem to understand the appeal of making content approachable. So did the creators of the "For Dummies" series. Hell, Reagan used jelly beans. It feels dishonest, somehow. Just call it a vim book, or whatever.

wwho 10y ago

learn incredibly unintuitive fucked up shortcuts to perform basic tasks that a basic bullshit gui text editor can perform cool

deathanatos 10y ago
Your comment comes across as one who has their head stuck in the sand, frankly. Yes — the basics are a bit odd and initially off putting to novice users. I don't think many vim users are promoting vim for its learning curve, we're promoting it for its productivity in the more intricate editing. I still feel a little joy inside any time I use da' or ci( (delete around single quotes — i.e., remove this string, and cut inside parens, i.e., remove the arg list an start ending a replacement). Those commands in particular I find incredibly common, and the arcane shortcuts — while arcane — save me a lot of tedious Shift+Ctrl+arrow,arrow,arrow,arrow… in your more run of the mill editor. And for the truly complex edits, :normal makes a boring, monotonous task faster … and more fun. (MSVS has it's own issues: the last time I used Visual Studio, granted, it was ~7 years ago, it lacked ? in its regex syntax, and grouping was with {}, I think. Tell me that editing with a different regex syntax than what your .Net code uses is intuitive? The auto-complete was really good, though. (Though vim comes with out of the box heuristical completion that gets most of the way there.)

ryanbertrand 10y ago

Hmm getting a 404 here :(

anotheryou 10y ago

Anyone using vim-mode plugins for other IDEs? Most vim critic in the comments seems to be against it as an IDE, while the biggest benefit is obviously the keyboard control. So why not use the combination of both (I installed plugins for Visual Studio and Atom a few days ago and I'm quite happy so far, but it's my first steps in to vim, so maybe I'll find things that won't work later)?

creamy 10y ago

A wiseman once told me: "If you have to hold a key to reach your goal, there is probably a better (i.e. shorter) way to do it."