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> This is the very same narrative that vim users proclaim: "It's totally not complex if you took some years to learn your tools" Something interesting I see mo

by dwc 9y ago

> This is the very same narrative that vim users proclaim: "It's totally not complex if you took some years to learn your tools" Something interesting I see more often than not when someone I know decides to try out vim: They know I'm a vim user so they ask me for good tutorials and I tell them there are lots out there but they should start by running vimtutor (included with vim). Takes around 15-20 minutes to work through the interactive lessons and gives you all the basics of movement and editing. A day or so later I ask how it's going and the answer is usually that they're struggling with vim, so I ask if they ran vimtutor. Usually nope, or they started it but quit after a minute or two. Why would one switch to a tool with a different paradigm, ask for and get a tutorial recommendation, and then ignore the advice of spending less than 1/2 hour on a tutorial that ships with the tool? sigh

WillReplyfFood 9y ago
Because in the windows world- every ui-interface holds its contract, everything explains itself and does what it supossed to do. There is no disk-icon that doesent save. There is no set of shortkeys ignoring controll s. Design is meeting the users expectations without additional instructions with functionality. VIM is not designed very well.
- alexeiz 9y ago
  Just because Vim was not designed for the mouse clicking UI environment does not mean that it's not designed well. If it weren't designed well, Vim would not be in widespread use 40 years after its inception.
- Spivak 9y ago
  Sure, but if you're trying to carry over Windows expectations over to Linux you're sure to be disappointed. In Vim there are modes that describe sets of keybindings and there are commands that are bound to them. The commands themselves are are straightforward for anyone who's fluent in Linux vocabulary. 'Saving' is a Windows word. We :write to files or :w for short.
wolfgke 9y ago
> They know I'm a vim user so they ask me for good tutorials and I tell them there are lots out there but they should start by running vimtutor (included with vim). Takes around 15-20 minutes to work through the interactive lessons and gives you all the basics of movement and editing. I think that I am rather good at memorizing lots of obscure raw data - but in my experience it takes a lot longer to remember all the "obscure" commands of vim. In this sense I would not say it takes 15-20 minutes, but at least a day if at the end you really want to have the commands in your brain. In this sense the mistake in your argumentation is the timescale that you are talking about.
- dwc 9y ago
  I never meant to imply that 15-20 minutes in vimtutor would make you a vim wizard, or that you'd remember everything that vimtutor went through. There's no quick and easy answer to switching to something that does things in a fundamentally different way. Also, I hold some fairly controversial opinions: you don't need dozens of vim plugins; you don't need to compete with vim golf champions; you don't need an extensive configuration. What you do need is to fully grok the idea of normal mode as an editing language with verbs, objects, and modifiers. Once you "get it" then you have a working knowledge of how to construct "sentences", and learning a new text object allows you to apply pretty much all verbs to it. Same for learning a new verb; you can apply it to lots of things. Over the years I've learned a lot of interesting vim things and I've forgotten most of them. Because I don't need them every day or even every week. That's ok. The things I remember are things I use often, because they're useful in everyday editing.

by dwc 9y ago

WillReplyfFood 9y ago

Because in the windows world- every ui-interface holds its contract, everything explains itself and does what it supossed to do. There is no disk-icon that doesent save. There is no set of shortkeys ignoring controll s. Design is meeting the users expectations without additional instructions with functionality. VIM is not designed very well.

alexeiz 9y ago
Just because Vim was not designed for the mouse clicking UI environment does not mean that it's not designed well. If it weren't designed well, Vim would not be in widespread use 40 years after its inception.
Spivak 9y ago
Sure, but if you're trying to carry over Windows expectations over to Linux you're sure to be disappointed. In Vim there are modes that describe sets of keybindings and there are commands that are bound to them. The commands themselves are are straightforward for anyone who's fluent in Linux vocabulary. 'Saving' is a Windows word. We :write to files or :w for short.

wolfgke 9y ago

> They know I'm a vim user so they ask me for good tutorials and I tell them there are lots out there but they should start by running vimtutor (included with vim). Takes around 15-20 minutes to work through the interactive lessons and gives you all the basics of movement and editing. I think that I am rather good at memorizing lots of obscure raw data - but in my experience it takes a lot longer to remember all the "obscure" commands of vim. In this sense I would not say it takes 15-20 minutes, but at least a day if at the end you really want to have the commands in your brain. In this sense the mistake in your argumentation is the timescale that you are talking about.

dwc 9y ago
I never meant to imply that 15-20 minutes in vimtutor would make you a vim wizard, or that you'd remember everything that vimtutor went through. There's no quick and easy answer to switching to something that does things in a fundamentally different way. Also, I hold some fairly controversial opinions: you don't need dozens of vim plugins; you don't need to compete with vim golf champions; you don't need an extensive configuration. What you do need is to fully grok the idea of normal mode as an editing language with verbs, objects, and modifiers. Once you "get it" then you have a working knowledge of how to construct "sentences", and learning a new text object allows you to apply pretty much all verbs to it. Same for learning a new verb; you can apply it to lots of things. Over the years I've learned a lot of interesting vim things and I've forgotten most of them. Because I don't need them every day or even every week. That's ok. The things I remember are things I use often, because they're useful in everyday editing.