3 ms·

My apologies. Can you tell me what tripped you up and what you would have liked to have seen?

oinksoft 13y ago
I'm not your audience at all, but a few ideas from that section: * You refer to ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim with no prior introduction. Even assuming knowledge of "~" expansion is risky, and ignores Windows users. * You mention a "self-managed Vim install" and Janus in passing. Who cares? It's confusing. * Why am I remapping stuff I haven't used yet (<Leader>)? * Why am I remapping <Esc> to `jk` (why would you suggest such a radical change for somebody just starting out?) * Why do I care about CAPSLOCK? * Pathogen? Github? What's going on? I thought I was learning an editor. This is kind of a scatter-shot ... there's a lot of stuff that makes no sense unless you're already familiar with Vim, and with configurable Unix text editors' mode of operation in general.
- seanccox 13y ago
  What oinksoft said. I think it's a common mistake of people who want to teach anything, but I see it frequently in coding (probably because that is what I am trying to learn these days). That problem is usually articulate with this phrase: "Before you get started..." Essentially, when I look for a beginner's guide, I want to start at the beginning. There is nothing before the beginning. If I need to plug something in, turn something on, or install something, I'd like to know how to do that. I exaggerate only slightly. For example, when I was learning to play the piano as a child, I started centered on the first note I played, which was a G, and arranged myself accordingly to accommodate my chosen midpoint, since no one had taught me about Middle C. Oinksoft's points are all crucial. You're clearly knowledgeable, but those details are beyond the scope of my understanding for a Level 0 beginner, so if they are essential, they need to be broken down. If they aren't, then you can leave them out. As a general rule for teaching anything, you should explain, demonstrate, and then solicit a student response or reproduction of the concept. I think the material you have here can be arranged such that it accomplishes these components, and rearranging it thus would make it easier for someone ignorant of the subject, like myself, to follow along. I hope this is helpful criticism. I really like what you're doing and I'm excited by your attitude – 'basics to ninja' – because this is useful for preventing learners from stagnating. With some work on the beginner level information, I think you'll have a solid guide.
  - seanccox 13y ago
    Here's a decent example of the ideal approach to laying out the material: https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide It could be better if I didn't have to follow links to other parts of the site in order to complete the initial tasks. Creates a lot of back-and-forth in the browser, and there will already be a great deal of that as I attempt to switch window to install, open a text editor, etc. However, the outline captures the suggestions I was trying to make above.
shocks 13y ago
You make some pretty drastic changes that most people would never make until they get pretty acquainted with vim. I get the idea behind the changes because I had made some of them myself, but I learnt vim first. You need to teach prospective vimmers about the native power of vim. The concepts of motions and nouns wayyy before you start finely tuning vim. A beginner following your guide would be completely lost in a vanilla instance of vim…

I'm not your audience at all, but a few ideas from that section: * You refer to ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim with no prior introduction. Even assuming knowledge of "~" expansion is risky, and ignores Windows users. * You mention a "self-managed Vim install" and Janus in passing. Who cares? It's confusing. * Why am I remapping stuff I haven't used yet (<Leader>)? * Why am I remapping <Esc> to `jk` (why would you suggest such a radical change for somebody just starting out?) * Why do I care about CAPSLOCK? * Pathogen? Github? What's going on? I thought I was learning an editor. This is kind of a scatter-shot ... there's a lot of stuff that makes no sense unless you're already familiar with Vim, and with configurable Unix text editors' mode of operation in general.

seanccox 13y ago
What oinksoft said. I think it's a common mistake of people who want to teach anything, but I see it frequently in coding (probably because that is what I am trying to learn these days). That problem is usually articulate with this phrase: "Before you get started..." Essentially, when I look for a beginner's guide, I want to start at the beginning. There is nothing before the beginning. If I need to plug something in, turn something on, or install something, I'd like to know how to do that. I exaggerate only slightly. For example, when I was learning to play the piano as a child, I started centered on the first note I played, which was a G, and arranged myself accordingly to accommodate my chosen midpoint, since no one had taught me about Middle C. Oinksoft's points are all crucial. You're clearly knowledgeable, but those details are beyond the scope of my understanding for a Level 0 beginner, so if they are essential, they need to be broken down. If they aren't, then you can leave them out. As a general rule for teaching anything, you should explain, demonstrate, and then solicit a student response or reproduction of the concept. I think the material you have here can be arranged such that it accomplishes these components, and rearranging it thus would make it easier for someone ignorant of the subject, like myself, to follow along. I hope this is helpful criticism. I really like what you're doing and I'm excited by your attitude – 'basics to ninja' – because this is useful for preventing learners from stagnating. With some work on the beginner level information, I think you'll have a solid guide.
- seanccox 13y ago
  Here's a decent example of the ideal approach to laying out the material: https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide It could be better if I didn't have to follow links to other parts of the site in order to complete the initial tasks. Creates a lot of back-and-forth in the browser, and there will already be a great deal of that as I attempt to switch window to install, open a text editor, etc. However, the outline captures the suggestions I was trying to make above.

shocks 13y ago

You make some pretty drastic changes that most people would never make until they get pretty acquainted with vim. I get the idea behind the changes because I had made some of them myself, but I learnt vim first. You need to teach prospective vimmers about the native power of vim. The concepts of motions and nouns wayyy before you start finely tuning vim. A beginner following your guide would be completely lost in a vanilla instance of vim…