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As a sysadmin, not a programmer, what I found helpful for learning Vim was not to try something new each day, but to find one or two commands that were valuable
by Grimm665 7y ago
As a sysadmin, not a programmer, what I found helpful for learning Vim was not to try something new each day, but to find one or two commands that were valuable enough that I would at least open Vim somewhat regularly. The two that did it for me are delete line (dd), and change inner word (ciw), both extremely helpful for config file editing, especially when combined with repeat command (.)
After learning these first simple commands, it was enough to get me to open Vim at least a few times a day, which then motivated me to start learning more of the commands and it just snowballed along. I still only know probably 25% of Vim, but I feel incredibly comfortable in it now and rarely run into trouble when doing beginner to intermediate editing tasks.
- chupasaurus 7y agoAs a fellow sysadmin, I would advise to learn vi properly then switch to Vim because the former is pretty much everywhere, and for example you could mess the file with cursor keys in Insert mode instead of using hjkl in it.
- Grimm665 7y agoThat's good advice, but in all practical situations I have been able to use Vim directly or know enough vi to get by, though I am much less comfortable with it. I don't touch type, so hjkl, even though I understand the benefits, has never been my preference. Perhaps it's the gamer in me, I've never had trouble using the arrow keys :)
- kburman 7y agoAs far as I know, hjkl was first introduced in games and later used in vim because we don't have to move our hands far away from the keys. Feel free to correct me If I'm wrong.
- thegeekpirate 7y agohttps://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
- dllthomas 7y agoOne neat thing this misses is that in ASCII, H is left, CTRL-H is backspace (which goes left while doing a thing); J is down, CTRL-J is linefeed (which goes down while doing a thing, sorta). It ends there, unfortunately - I don't see a good connection between vertical tab and up or formfeed and right.
- kburman 7y agoThe idea behind trying something new every day is just that I know what are the thing that are possible not to learn it by heart. For example, Now I know if I need to go to the next instance of the word under the cursror. There's a command for it.