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I remember reading the web page I linked to below some time late last year, and remembered thinking at the time I wished someone told me this when I first start

by jklp 15y ago

I remember reading the web page I linked to below some time late last year, and remembered thinking at the time I wished someone told me this when I first started learning vim some 18 years ago. To those who would say “that’s obvious; of course you learn vim incrementally”, I would simply say that having spoken to a number of vim users in the past, I never got that advice. Instead, I got a lot of advice about turning off my arrow keys, disallowing the use of the mouse, and learning the (MORE EFFICIENT!!!) vim ways to do everything, all at once. People just couldn’t stomach the idea of me continuing to use an outmoded practice (like apple-f) when vim had much better tools available just a (huge volume of) memorization away." Source: http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/ http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi...

tikhonj 15y ago
The reason so many experienced people suggest learning the basics of Vim (or, in my case, Emacs) in one go is because it works quickly and efficiently--certainly more quickly and more efficiently than an incremental approach. Additionally, just giving up on arrow keys and the like does not necessarily entail a "huge volume" of memorization. I am an inherently lazy person; I cannot just sit down and memorize stuff (one of the reasons I'm in CS). Yet I definitely support giving up the mouse and arrow keys immediately. When I originally picked up Emacs, I went through the tutorial and promptly forgot exactly which keys did what. However, I decided to follow the tutorial's advice and learn how to navigate properly. To do this, all I did was not use the mouse or arrow keys for editing some text. For the first couple of days, I had to keep looking the keys up each time I did anything; later--relatively abruptly--I started using them without realizing. There is no way I would have learned nearly as much as quickly if I had not got through a couple days of not knowing what I was doing. Once the standard moving commands became second nature, I started using some of the more specialized ones (like moving around by line or paragraph or expression). Without having given up on the arrow keys and mouse, I would probably never have learned the more advanced movements which are now exceptionally useful. Basically, to follow your suggestion would be to avoid a couple days of bumbling around in favor of being less effective for a very long time. On the other hand, with my approach, I did spend a couple days being incompetent but then the bindings became natural. Ultimately, to me, being lazy involves not just minimizing work immediately, but increasing efficiency in the long run as well. As a contrast, I know many classmates who have tried to learn Emacs your way. Most of them can use it, but not much more efficiently than notepad; I regularly see them spending minutes doing menial tasks that would have taken seconds had they known Emacs better. In the context of a 90 minute lab, that is not trivial at all; even in the context of working full time, the amount of time they can save should not be ignored. Ultimately, all it takes to learn Emacs (and, I imagine, the same can be said of Vim) is a little bit of patience and willingness to embrace change. By jumping into the deep end immediately, you can learn really quickly, and reap the benefits almost immediately.
- jklp 15y ago
  The thing about vi vs emacs is that at the very beginning the learning curve for vi is already very steep. Simple things like keyboard navigation and even editing are non-trivial tasks. This puts off a lot of people, especially if they're working full time as a couple of days fumbling with a text editor equates to real dollars lost in productivity. (In my experience though, it'll take at least a few weeks to be even mildly proficient). If you're a student (I was 13 when I first picked up vi) this is no problem, as I had infinite time on my hands, but when you're working full time, the amount of time you have to experiment drastically reduces.
  - tikhonj 15y ago
    I don't think the initial difficulty of Vi is that much greater than that of Emacs. The real difficulty is in the fact that everything is completely different from what you are used to; perhaps this is more true in Vi, but the difference between Emacs and Vi in this regard pales in comparison to the difference between using a mouse and arrow keys and either of the text editors. Also, while my approach will certainly cause a small amount of difficulty at the very beginning, I think you will actually win out in the long run. That is, let's say you normally code at 1 productivity unit (whatever that may be). My way, you may spend a some time at 0.1, then a bit of time at 0.5, but, in a couple weeks at most, you will start working at 1.5 or 2 or more. On the other hand, while still using arrow keys, you may first be at 0.8 for a bit, then back at 1 then maybe at 1.2. But you will not see any drastic improvement for a while, and so will actually be less efficient in the long run.
    - einhverfr 15y ago
      I use VIM and sometimes use the arrow keys. These come in really handy when you have a lot of small edits to make that can't be readily automated (not really that frequent). However the huge shift in mentality has to go from the idea that you are working with a "text editor" (which VIM and EMACS are not IMHO) and a text processor which I would argue these are. When you start thinking about processing rather than editing text, the productivity goes way up. There is nothing like these tools in the text editor world for editing large, complex codebases. IDE's can't compare.
Aga 15y ago
I guess all of those actual vim users had a reason to encourage you to take the "extreme route" instead of the incremental one. Maybe they have never seen anyone actually succeed in getting fluent in vim by incremental learning? I know I have yet to witness such. But I'm glad to learn from your link that it's possible. I'll show it to aspiring vim users as an alternative take to learning vim.

by jklp 15y ago

tikhonj 15y ago

The reason so many experienced people suggest learning the basics of Vim (or, in my case, Emacs) in one go is because it works quickly and efficiently--certainly more quickly and more efficiently than an incremental approach. Additionally, just giving up on arrow keys and the like does not necessarily entail a "huge volume" of memorization. I am an inherently lazy person; I cannot just sit down and memorize stuff (one of the reasons I'm in CS). Yet I definitely support giving up the mouse and arrow keys immediately. When I originally picked up Emacs, I went through the tutorial and promptly forgot exactly which keys did what. However, I decided to follow the tutorial's advice and learn how to navigate properly. To do this, all I did was not use the mouse or arrow keys for editing some text. For the first couple of days, I had to keep looking the keys up each time I did anything; later--relatively abruptly--I started using them without realizing. There is no way I would have learned nearly as much as quickly if I had not got through a couple days of not knowing what I was doing. Once the standard moving commands became second nature, I started using some of the more specialized ones (like moving around by line or paragraph or expression). Without having given up on the arrow keys and mouse, I would probably never have learned the more advanced movements which are now exceptionally useful. Basically, to follow your suggestion would be to avoid a couple days of bumbling around in favor of being less effective for a very long time. On the other hand, with my approach, I did spend a couple days being incompetent but then the bindings became natural. Ultimately, to me, being lazy involves not just minimizing work immediately, but increasing efficiency in the long run as well. As a contrast, I know many classmates who have tried to learn Emacs your way. Most of them can use it, but not much more efficiently than notepad; I regularly see them spending minutes doing menial tasks that would have taken seconds had they known Emacs better. In the context of a 90 minute lab, that is not trivial at all; even in the context of working full time, the amount of time they can save should not be ignored. Ultimately, all it takes to learn Emacs (and, I imagine, the same can be said of Vim) is a little bit of patience and willingness to embrace change. By jumping into the deep end immediately, you can learn really quickly, and reap the benefits almost immediately.

jklp 15y ago
The thing about vi vs emacs is that at the very beginning the learning curve for vi is already very steep. Simple things like keyboard navigation and even editing are non-trivial tasks. This puts off a lot of people, especially if they're working full time as a couple of days fumbling with a text editor equates to real dollars lost in productivity. (In my experience though, it'll take at least a few weeks to be even mildly proficient). If you're a student (I was 13 when I first picked up vi) this is no problem, as I had infinite time on my hands, but when you're working full time, the amount of time you have to experiment drastically reduces.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  I don't think the initial difficulty of Vi is that much greater than that of Emacs. The real difficulty is in the fact that everything is completely different from what you are used to; perhaps this is more true in Vi, but the difference between Emacs and Vi in this regard pales in comparison to the difference between using a mouse and arrow keys and either of the text editors. Also, while my approach will certainly cause a small amount of difficulty at the very beginning, I think you will actually win out in the long run. That is, let's say you normally code at 1 productivity unit (whatever that may be). My way, you may spend a some time at 0.1, then a bit of time at 0.5, but, in a couple weeks at most, you will start working at 1.5 or 2 or more. On the other hand, while still using arrow keys, you may first be at 0.8 for a bit, then back at 1 then maybe at 1.2. But you will not see any drastic improvement for a while, and so will actually be less efficient in the long run.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    I use VIM and sometimes use the arrow keys. These come in really handy when you have a lot of small edits to make that can't be readily automated (not really that frequent). However the huge shift in mentality has to go from the idea that you are working with a "text editor" (which VIM and EMACS are not IMHO) and a text processor which I would argue these are. When you start thinking about processing rather than editing text, the productivity goes way up. There is nothing like these tools in the text editor world for editing large, complex codebases. IDE's can't compare.

Aga 15y ago

I guess all of those actual vim users had a reason to encourage you to take the "extreme route" instead of the incremental one. Maybe they have never seen anyone actually succeed in getting fluent in vim by incremental learning? I know I have yet to witness such. But I'm glad to learn from your link that it's possible. I'll show it to aspiring vim users as an alternative take to learning vim.