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vim is the "VIsual editor iMproved", which is an upgrade to the "VIsual editor". It works by having a text entry "mode" and a separate text manipulation mode. T

vim is the "VIsual editor iMproved", which is an upgrade to the "VIsual editor". It works by having a text entry "mode" and a separate text manipulation mode. This is very powerful, but does take some getting used to. For example, let's say you want to delete 5 lines: In visual studio code, you'd either select all the text and hit backspace, or maybe hold ctrl+backspace to delete whole words at a time. In vim, you'd hit escape to exit "insert" mode, then position your cursor at the beginning of the 5 lines to be deleted, and type "5dd" which means "delete a whole line, 5 times". In the hands of an experienced vim user, it can make amazing edits to text in fractions of a second. It's really cool! It also works in a terminal, so it's available to you when you SSH to a remote server, for instance. Org-mode is kind of like Markdown, in that it's a way for plain text to have structure. Something like this: * Birthday Party Plan ** INPROGRESS [#A] Buy cake Ask Jen about her baker friend's availability ** TODO [#B] Buy beverages Talk to Mike about his party and what people drank ** INPROGRESS [#A] Send invitations <DEADLINE 2021-08-10> *** DONE Design invites *** TODO Get Addresses *** TODO Mail merge *** TODO Print invites Lots of stuff going on there! I'm tracking the state of each made up todo item. I've got a priority on the main todo items, and a deadline for one of them. Org is note taking, scheduling, structured text, even running programs and scripts inside your notes and saving the results in the note itself. From orgmode.org: "Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, authoring documents, computational notebooks, literate programming and more — in a fast and effective plain text system." So, all of that is being supported by NeoVIM now :) I hope that helped, let me know if there's anything you want clarified or expanded.

crubier 5y ago
To remove 5 lines in VSCode I would just type cmd-backspace 5 times. Don’t even have to count the number of lines beforehand. Just delete lines until it looks as you wanted. Much simpler than the complex process you describe, that involves counting lines and moving the cursor to the exact correct position. As always, I am unimpressed by “vim tricks” that vim people always boast about. And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d)
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  > And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d) I feel like I’m far from a vim “power user”, but people regularly comment on how quickly I edit text and code when I’m doing a screenshare. It becomes second nature in short order, so I’m never thinking about some multi-step process to before an edit; I just “do it”. As for the “5dd” example… there are multiple ways to do things. For me, that would likely be: * navigate to the first or last line of the block * <shift+V> to start a selection of whole lines. * navigate to the other extreme * <D>
- paraknight 5y ago
  There are many ways to skin a cat. Personally, in vim, I would do "dj" or "dk" twice, (deletes two lines up or down respectively) and then dd for the 5th one. Where vim shines is where you can just naturally start stringing together "sentences" of vim vocabulary and you can do what you mean. The macro system allows you to store these commands on the fly and replay them too.
- iimblack 5y ago
  In vim you would actually just do 5dk to delete 5 previous lines. Or just do dk to delete one line, then . to repeat until satisfied. So you get an easy way to repeat actions. You can make this into a macro easily if needed. Then, most importantly in my opinion, you keep your hands in the normal typing position. The command key is awkward for me to reach and hurts my hands.
- semi-extrinsic 5y ago
  Delete until next matching parenthesis 3000-ish lines further down is a neat one. Or hex-edit a 5 GB binary. Or doing columnar editing with visual block mode.
  - crubier 5y ago
    These do indeed sound cool. Too bad that most vim users I know face these use cases rarely enough that it takes longer to remember how to do these tricks rather than just do it in a normal IDE.
CA0DA 5y ago
thnks!

crubier 5y ago

To remove 5 lines in VSCode I would just type cmd-backspace 5 times. Don’t even have to count the number of lines beforehand. Just delete lines until it looks as you wanted. Much simpler than the complex process you describe, that involves counting lines and moving the cursor to the exact correct position. As always, I am unimpressed by “vim tricks” that vim people always boast about. And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d)

Ancapistani 5y ago
> And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d) I feel like I’m far from a vim “power user”, but people regularly comment on how quickly I edit text and code when I’m doing a screenshare. It becomes second nature in short order, so I’m never thinking about some multi-step process to before an edit; I just “do it”. As for the “5dd” example… there are multiple ways to do things. For me, that would likely be: * navigate to the first or last line of the block * <shift+V> to start a selection of whole lines. * navigate to the other extreme * <D>
paraknight 5y ago
There are many ways to skin a cat. Personally, in vim, I would do "dj" or "dk" twice, (deletes two lines up or down respectively) and then dd for the 5th one. Where vim shines is where you can just naturally start stringing together "sentences" of vim vocabulary and you can do what you mean. The macro system allows you to store these commands on the fly and replay them too.
iimblack 5y ago
In vim you would actually just do 5dk to delete 5 previous lines. Or just do dk to delete one line, then . to repeat until satisfied. So you get an easy way to repeat actions. You can make this into a macro easily if needed. Then, most importantly in my opinion, you keep your hands in the normal typing position. The command key is awkward for me to reach and hurts my hands.
semi-extrinsic 5y ago
Delete until next matching parenthesis 3000-ish lines further down is a neat one. Or hex-edit a 5 GB binary. Or doing columnar editing with visual block mode.
- crubier 5y ago
  These do indeed sound cool. Too bad that most vim users I know face these use cases rarely enough that it takes longer to remember how to do these tricks rather than just do it in a normal IDE.

CA0DA 5y ago

thnks!