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These little tutorials and games are great. I played VIM Adventures. However, one thing I really struggle with is learning when I can be doing something more e

These little tutorials and games are great. I played VIM Adventures. However, one thing I really struggle with is learning when I can be doing something more efficiently. I rarely use markers, anything beyond default registers, commands, and so on. I'm giving Neovim a try for my systems course trying to get better but I do wish these sorts of games pushed me to get better at these more advanced usage tricks.

soperj 1y ago
Oh man, I use markers all the time. ma y'a mark a spot, then yank or delete everything to that line. Way easier to do it accurately rather than 13yy or however many lines you're yanking.
- zeke 1y ago
  You can use <shift>v then move to your start line and type y or d. This way you see the text marked before yanking or deleting. <control>v is similar. And gv will reselect the marked area.
  - dwater 1y ago
    And if you have line numbering on you can y123G. I learned enough Vim 25 years ago to be good enough and I'm happy I did. When I was writing code every day I picked up a little more but I've lost most of it, and what I'd want people to know who are considering it is you never need to be a Vim Master. You can learn enough Vim in 30 minutes to make it beneficial to you for the rest of your life.
    - Izkata 1y ago
      I turn on relative line numbering so that y123G might be y8j and vim will show me the 8.
- ramses0 1y ago
  ma, mb, mc => 'a, 'b, 'c => ...just being able to "tag" each of the three functions you're working with (comparing, copying, moving code, whatever) it's eventually worth it to get them into your muscle memory. And once you "get" marks, then you "get" registers "for free".
  - soperj 1y ago
    and this is why i always read vim articles... i've never used registers in my life.
    - ramses0 1y ago
      I'll use them in macros fairly frequently: vawy'f => function name, vi{y'b => body, vi(y'a => args ...or y'x to keep something kindof handy that I can drop in at the right place (sometimes with a macro...) qadi('xpq => @a => @@... (Record macro "a", delete inner parentheses, paste from the "x" register, stop recording => play macro "a" => play last macro...) If I keep "x" clean/protected then I can delete or edit the rest of the time all willy-nilly and not worry about clobbering what I'm trying to paste into the right spots.
- asimovDev 1y ago
  I feel so damn stupid for counting the lines with my eyes before yanking after reading this. As a staunch believer in markers, this is eye opening. I was using them just to jump between functions most of the time. This is very useful
codyb 1y ago
I created a ViM Message of the Day script that I added to my shell to give me a prompt every time I opened a new shell (Which I do constantly in ViM and Tmux since I've created leader key shortcuts in both) https://github.com/cboppert/motd https://github.com/cboppert/motd You might have to futz with it a bit, and I think I've added some other stuff in there since then (love the toggle-light-mode script which toggles several things either to Dark or Light mode at once so I can switch environments easily, however have never gotten it to fully automate, so I have to manually type goDark or goLight depending. Humbug!) Anyways, it's great cause it gives you one tip or command at a time, and so you can sort of slowly grow without really having to dedicate much time to it.
charlie-83 1y ago
Check out vim golf. They are fun puzzles but you also realise lots of little optimisations you can incorporate into regular use
j1mr10rd4n 1y ago
> learning when I can be doing something more efficiently hardtime.nvim[1] (or vim-hardtime[2] if you're old-school) do exactly this but within your editing session. There's an associated blog post[3] explaining the rationale behind some of the workflow choices and you can of course bring your own. [1]: https://github.com/m4xshen/hardtime.nvim https://github.com/m4xshen/hardtime.nvim [2]: https://github.com/takac/vim-hardtime https://github.com/takac/vim-hardtime [3]: https://m4xshen.dev/posts/vim-command-workflow https://m4xshen.dev/posts/vim-command-workflow
JackMorgan 1y ago
I wrote up some exercises to help build the muscle memory of advanced vim commands: https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim-exercises/blob/master/book_sample_history_registers.md https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim-exercises/blob...

soperj 1y ago

Oh man, I use markers all the time. ma y'a mark a spot, then yank or delete everything to that line. Way easier to do it accurately rather than 13yy or however many lines you're yanking.

zeke 1y ago
You can use <shift>v then move to your start line and type y or d. This way you see the text marked before yanking or deleting. <control>v is similar. And gv will reselect the marked area.
- dwater 1y ago
  And if you have line numbering on you can y123G. I learned enough Vim 25 years ago to be good enough and I'm happy I did. When I was writing code every day I picked up a little more but I've lost most of it, and what I'd want people to know who are considering it is you never need to be a Vim Master. You can learn enough Vim in 30 minutes to make it beneficial to you for the rest of your life.
  - Izkata 1y ago
    I turn on relative line numbering so that y123G might be y8j and vim will show me the 8.
ramses0 1y ago
ma, mb, mc => 'a, 'b, 'c => ...just being able to "tag" each of the three functions you're working with (comparing, copying, moving code, whatever) it's eventually worth it to get them into your muscle memory. And once you "get" marks, then you "get" registers "for free".
- soperj 1y ago
  and this is why i always read vim articles... i've never used registers in my life.
  - ramses0 1y ago
    I'll use them in macros fairly frequently: vawy'f => function name, vi{y'b => body, vi(y'a => args ...or y'x to keep something kindof handy that I can drop in at the right place (sometimes with a macro...) qadi('xpq => @a => @@... (Record macro "a", delete inner parentheses, paste from the "x" register, stop recording => play macro "a" => play last macro...) If I keep "x" clean/protected then I can delete or edit the rest of the time all willy-nilly and not worry about clobbering what I'm trying to paste into the right spots.
asimovDev 1y ago
I feel so damn stupid for counting the lines with my eyes before yanking after reading this. As a staunch believer in markers, this is eye opening. I was using them just to jump between functions most of the time. This is very useful

codyb 1y ago

I created a ViM Message of the Day script that I added to my shell to give me a prompt every time I opened a new shell (Which I do constantly in ViM and Tmux since I've created leader key shortcuts in both) https://github.com/cboppert/motd https://github.com/cboppert/motd You might have to futz with it a bit, and I think I've added some other stuff in there since then (love the toggle-light-mode script which toggles several things either to Dark or Light mode at once so I can switch environments easily, however have never gotten it to fully automate, so I have to manually type goDark or goLight depending. Humbug!) Anyways, it's great cause it gives you one tip or command at a time, and so you can sort of slowly grow without really having to dedicate much time to it.

charlie-83 1y ago

Check out vim golf. They are fun puzzles but you also realise lots of little optimisations you can incorporate into regular use

j1mr10rd4n 1y ago

> learning when I can be doing something more efficiently hardtime.nvim[1] (or vim-hardtime[2] if you're old-school) do exactly this but within your editing session. There's an associated blog post[3] explaining the rationale behind some of the workflow choices and you can of course bring your own. [1]: https://github.com/m4xshen/hardtime.nvim https://github.com/m4xshen/hardtime.nvim [2]: https://github.com/takac/vim-hardtime https://github.com/takac/vim-hardtime [3]: https://m4xshen.dev/posts/vim-command-workflow https://m4xshen.dev/posts/vim-command-workflow

JackMorgan 1y ago

I wrote up some exercises to help build the muscle memory of advanced vim commands: https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim-exercises/blob/master/book_sample_history_registers.md https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim-exercises/blob...