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> 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 v
by 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 agoI 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.