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I once did a lunch and learn at work where I tried to teach coworkers how to use vim efficiently. It turned out to be the absolute worst lunch and learn I ever
by drtz 3y ago
I once did a lunch and learn at work where I tried to teach coworkers how to use vim efficiently. It turned out to be the absolute worst lunch and learn I ever did.
It's just so unintuitive and trying to teach it in a "here are some good shortcuts that will save you time" way was a near-total waste.
vim is the closest any editor comes to interfacing directly with my brain. Once you learn to make your neurons fire in the right way to move the cursor to the right spot, it's easy and there's no better way to edit code. Describing the neuron firing order to someone else, though, is futile.
It's like learning to to use your fingers to pick something up for the first time as a kid: you just have to try enough times until it sticks.
- arcanemachiner 3y ago> vim is the closest any editor comes to interfacing directly with my brain. It's funny you mention that. Just today, I had this moment where I realized that if someone asked me which key letters are used to move up/down/left/right, I'd have to pause and think about it. I've been using Vim for years. Like, my index finger rests on the down key, so J is down. I think? And so on... My middle finger rests on the up key, so K goes up? Do I actually have to move my index finger to go left? What is my pinky doing most of the time? It's just funny how all this stuff is burned into my brain but I wouldn't even be able to tell someone the basics without a keyboard in front of me.
- tylerhou 3y agoj goes down because it looks like a down arrow.
- jolmg 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#Legacy > The use of the HJKL keys for moving the cursor in the vi editor and its descendants originated from the ADM-3A [...] The ←, ↓, ↑, → and Home labels printed on the H, J, K, L, and ~ ^ keys were a visual reference to the control characters Ctrl+H, Ctrl+J, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+L, and Ctrl+~ ^ that were required to move the cursor left, down, up, right, and to the top/left corner (or "Home" position) of the terminal, respectively [...] The Ctrl+H and Ctrl+J functions were the standard ASCII backspace and line feed respectively, but the interpretations of Ctrl+K, Ctrl+L, and Ctrl+~ ^ were new to the ADM-3A. Seems almost a happy accident. I personally like the placement because the most common movement in a document is down and it's placed right under the most dextrous finger, the index finger, by a coincidence between ASCII encoding and the QWERTY layout. Up being the second most common movement was put under the second most dextrous finger. Nice.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoIt really is funny how much vi's odd-looking key choices aren't odd at all once you see the keyboard it was developed on:)
- gjvc 3y agoThe value of being taught something by an expert.
- tylerhou 3y agoI didn't know about the history, thanks for sharing! (j = downarrow was a mnemonic I used while learning vim.)
- semi-extrinsic 3y agoHere is a direct link to the ADM-3A keyboard layout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#/media/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#/media/File:KB_Terminal...
- woleium 3y agoGreat, now I want a "here is" key
- arcanemachiner 3y agoI just looked down at my keyboard... The letter 'j' has been rubbed off.
- taneq 3y agoNone of the keys on my keyboard have markings on them. :D
- fuzztester 3y agoJust worn out from use, or do you have a Das keyboard, the kind with blank keycaps? I knew a developer who had one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Keyboard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Keyboard
- taneq 3y agoDas Keyboard, yep.
- quickthrower2 3y agoLet me guess: Dvorak
- gsich 3y agoeasy, the arrow keys.
- Izkata 3y ago> so J is down. I think? And so on... My middle finger rests on the up key, so K goes up? Nope, j is down. J combines the current line with the next line, reducing whitespace between to 1 space. Back when I first figured out what J was doing (having typo'd it regularly) I thought it was useless, then one day I just started reflexively using it when manipulating function arguments. Likewise, k is up, K looks up the word under the cursor in a man page.
- pxeger1 3y agoI think they were using uppercase to make the keys stand out, but they know they're not used with the shift key.
- d-lisp 3y agoFor their defence, keyboards are annotated with uppercase letters.
- fuzztester 3y ago>Nope, j is down. J combines the current line with the next line, reducing whitespace between to 1 space. And so J stands for Join (the next line to the current line), IIRC.
- byttemos 3y agoPretty novice Vim user here. I FOR SURE think about it, and it costs me quite a bit of brain power to navigate. I made my own way pf remembering: H = the leftmost key, so left L = the rightmost key, so right J = jeet (yeet), so down K = klimb (climb), so up I look forward to the day this is just burned into my subconscious, but until then, this works I suppose
- fuzztester 3y agoThat's exactly the reason the keys were assigned that way. Pat yourself on the back, kid ;-)
- fsckboy 3y agoexactly the reason starting with ^H is backspace (left) and ^J is linefeed (down)
- fuzztester 3y agoHa ha, good one. Does the analogy hold for ^M which is carriage return? Anyway, I remember that stuff. Had a lot of "fun" on Unixes back in the day using things like ^J, ^M, ^H, stty sane, stty -a, stty icrnl, stty onlcr (or is it the other way around), fiddling with termcap and terminfo, and much more ...
- Lio 3y agoIt's even weirder for me as I use the Colemak keyboard layout. When I first switched to Colemak, around 2010, I remapped the movement keys so that they were in the same physical location as hjkl on qwerty. Then I realised I'd lost compatibility with other readline based software. So I just learned to use the new, not particularly ergonomic, positions under Colemak. At this point it's almost always from muscle memory now and couldn't tell you what I press half the time. Vim is like the Great Glass Elevator, it has a button for moving in every direction and using it since the 90s has been like learning to play a musical instrument.
- fuzztester 3y ago>Vim is like the Great Glass Elevator, it has a button for moving in every direction Actually vim is more like the Great Glass Elevator cum Excavator, because it has buttons and levers (to extend your simile) for moving in every direction and performing operations of every kind, and most importantly, all sorts of combinations of the two: >https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37018215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37018215 So, if tomorrow, either more movements or more operations were added to vim, they would automatically play well with the older ones. This is orthogonality (1), and genius, IMO :) (1) As they mean in microprocessor ISA design (, I think, not being a hardware guy, but have just read about it a little here and there, while doing assembly language programming years ago).
- fsckboy 3y ago>Vim is like the Great Glass Elevator, it has a button for moving in every direction vim is like the Great Glass Elevator, if the Great Glass Elevator was modal
- fragmede 3y agoPasswords are the same way for me. I can type my password on a keyboard, but if I have to enter it on my phone, I have no idea what it actually is. Thankfully, a password manager deals with most of my passwords but there is a few that I don't use it for.
- arp242 3y agoA few weeks ago I was unsure of my PIN code because I got it wrong on the first try, the keypad somehow seemed different (I was getting cash, which I don't often do), and I just completely blanked. I got something from a store and paid by PIN there to make sure I got the right code, and then got my cash. I've had the same PIN code for over 20 years.
- linsomniac 3y agoI like to think of vim as bytecode for text manipulation. You train your brain to emit the bytecode via your fingers.
- vram22 3y agoHa ha. Vimcode, though. And "vim" is pretty close to "vm" for virtual machine that runs that vimcode, or bytecode :)
- Aperocky 3y agoI think all quick learning session of vim invariably turns into bootcamp style "learning to code". Jumps straight into what but not how and why. To know what modal editing is and understand that first is going to help - but then your learning session is over like that without teaching any "tricks".
- chongli 3y agoYeah, I think you'd have the same issue trying to teach people to play guitar over the lunch hour. It takes a lot of practice to learn vim but it's super rewarding once you do!
- hnlmorg 3y agoI know exactly what you mean. At work people constantly ask me what keys do what and the moment they do my mind goes completely blank. To the point that I even forgot how to use vim for a short while until the conscious part of my brain is preoccupied with something else and suddenly I can use vim again.
- ecf 3y agoThe issue with Vim for me is that it takes years for the keybinds to be picked up as muscle memory. Learning takes effort, people can’t learn everything. And there’s an endless amount of things I can learn other than Vim that will give me a more fulfilling life.
- fuzztester 3y agoI think it's more of a needed mental shift than years or effort that is the stumbling block. You don't need to pick up a lot of keybinds in order to be fairly productive at text editing in vim. The extra stuff will just make you more productive, maybe asymptomatically.
- fuzztester 3y ago>asymptomatically Heh, dang autocorrect or me, not sure. I meant asymptotically.
- TheGreatCabbage 3y agoIn my case, it only took a few months to be more effective with Vim than without it. Since I spend most of my time working, Vim is a great improvement to my quality of life. The benefits of Vim include not just productivity, but also comfort.
- FreshStart 3y agoIt helps to design the yourself in neovim?
- _the_inflator 3y agoAs a side note: "Lunch and learn" is work for me. I have a strikt rule, that whenever someone talks heavily about work at lunch, I consider it a meeting - just as "lunch and work". Therefore I will take a work break afterwards. Lunch is !work for me.
- wycy 3y agoAgreed completely. “Lunch and learns” and “brown bags”. I didn’t appreciate my old employer frequently co-opting my lunch breaks with more work.
- erfgh 3y agoIt's just different keyboard shortcuts than the other editors. That is pretty much it. You don't need to be so dramatic. Also, in the GUI version of vim you have scrollbars, toolbar, and the standard keyboard shortcuts work, too. So you can use it like any other editor.
- quickthrower2 3y agoYou can get vim simulators in most editors too. Even Emacs. The interesting question becomes whether you still prefer VIM as an editor. One advantage is you can use the same editor over SSH. If it is not there it is quick to install.
- gjvc 3y agoYou're a bad teacher. No shame in that.
- slim 3y agoOTOH watching someone else use vim when you already know the basics of vim is enlightening
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]