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It's amazing how fast one can edit text with vi once you get all the keys down. There used to be a video game that taught how to use VI. Is it still around?

chakerb 7y ago
> There used to be a video game that taught how to use VI. Is it still around? You're probably referring to https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/.
fit2rule 7y ago
There are other great vi-inspired games, my favourite is Word War Vi ... http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net :wq!
umvi 7y ago
> It's amazing how fast one can edit text with vi once you get all the keys down People say this, but I feel the same about VSCode. Once you know a few shortcuts (esp. the multi-select and multi-cursor shortcuts), you can make incredibly powerful bulk changes to a file. I wish there were a subreddit called "TextEditorWars" or something where a challenge is given, and you can submit a screen capture of you accomplishing the challenge as fast as possible in your editor of choice.
- zanellato19 7y ago
  Checkout vim golf if you are curious about its possibilities.
skohan 7y ago
Some things seem unnecessarily unintuitive to me about the shortcuts. For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. Every video game ever came to the conclusion that the inverse-T layout is ideal for this task.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I mean, putting all they keys in the home row is admirable but the up/down placement seems so counter-intuitive! Almost everywhere I see arrow keys put in a line up comes first…
  - fsckboy 6y ago
    ^H in ASCII is backspace (move carriage to the left), and ^J is linefeed (move carriage down), so h-j were completely intuitive to people who already knew ASCII (i.e. everybody) and then it just makes sense to continue the row of other cursor movements. "intuitive" doesn't mean "I was born knowing it"
- lordfoom 7y ago
  > For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. It's actually awesome because your fingers are all on one row. It feels extremely intuitive after a while.
  - skohan 7y ago
    I don't know, I mean I believe you can learn anything and it will seem intuitive after a while, but I feel like more video-game speed runners and e-sport athletes would map their movement controls to the home row if this was really an advantage.
- lozf 7y ago
  vi was written long before any video game ever, and the arrow keys on the ADM-3A terminal that Bill Joy used in 1976 were actually on the hjkl keys, so it made sense at the time. https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
  - skohan 7y ago
    Interesting! I can imagine it would be quite a bit more intuitive with the arrows written there. It almost makes it seem like the touted benefit of having these keys on the home row is essentially ad-hoc reasoning, and maybe this 35-year-old design decision should be re-visited since even keyboard manufacturers realized this was not the best system decades ago.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Rogue! (Well, and Hack.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

chakerb 7y ago

> There used to be a video game that taught how to use VI. Is it still around? You're probably referring to https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/.

fit2rule 7y ago

There are other great vi-inspired games, my favourite is Word War Vi ... http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net :wq!

umvi 7y ago

> It's amazing how fast one can edit text with vi once you get all the keys down People say this, but I feel the same about VSCode. Once you know a few shortcuts (esp. the multi-select and multi-cursor shortcuts), you can make incredibly powerful bulk changes to a file. I wish there were a subreddit called "TextEditorWars" or something where a challenge is given, and you can submit a screen capture of you accomplishing the challenge as fast as possible in your editor of choice.

zanellato19 7y ago
Checkout vim golf if you are curious about its possibilities.

skohan 7y ago

Some things seem unnecessarily unintuitive to me about the shortcuts. For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. Every video game ever came to the conclusion that the inverse-T layout is ideal for this task.

saagarjha 7y ago
I mean, putting all they keys in the home row is admirable but the up/down placement seems so counter-intuitive! Almost everywhere I see arrow keys put in a line up comes first…
- fsckboy 6y ago
  ^H in ASCII is backspace (move carriage to the left), and ^J is linefeed (move carriage down), so h-j were completely intuitive to people who already knew ASCII (i.e. everybody) and then it just makes sense to continue the row of other cursor movements. "intuitive" doesn't mean "I was born knowing it"
lordfoom 7y ago
> For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. It's actually awesome because your fingers are all on one row. It feels extremely intuitive after a while.
- skohan 7y ago
  I don't know, I mean I believe you can learn anything and it will seem intuitive after a while, but I feel like more video-game speed runners and e-sport athletes would map their movement controls to the home row if this was really an advantage.
lozf 7y ago
vi was written long before any video game ever, and the arrow keys on the ADM-3A terminal that Bill Joy used in 1976 were actually on the hjkl keys, so it made sense at the time. https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
- skohan 7y ago
  Interesting! I can imagine it would be quite a bit more intuitive with the arrows written there. It almost makes it seem like the touted benefit of having these keys on the home row is essentially ad-hoc reasoning, and maybe this 35-year-old design decision should be re-visited since even keyboard manufacturers realized this was not the best system decades ago.

DonHopkins 7y ago

Rogue! (Well, and Hack.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike