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The documentation is so good, you need a beautifully crafted website with english sentences, standard typography / web styles, and acommpanying visual diagrams.

The documentation is so good, you need a beautifully crafted website with english sentences, standard typography / web styles, and acommpanying visual diagrams...simply to learn how to use the "help" feature.

Watabou 12y ago
Well I wrote this partly for a friend who wants to give Vim a try. I noticed if I told him to read the help on a topic, he would just google the question himself (maybe he doesn't like the terminal interface to read the help doc). I've also noticed some people will manually go search a plugin on Github just to read the plugin's doc folder, when the same help doc is available right inside vim! So I thought I would help explain why Vim's help is so awesome that people should use it more and using it more means that you learn more things about vim. But I appreciate that you like my website, thanks! :)
- ufmace 12y ago
  The tricky thing about vim help, to me, is that it feels nearly impossible to navigate until you're already pretty comfortable with moving around in Vim. Making all of the most basic things so different from the WYSIWYG editors most people know generates a huge mental load at first, just trying to get the most basic things done. When I started using Vim, I found for a while that I couldn't stand writing code with it for more than an hour or so, because it was too difficult to think about what the code is doing and how to use the Vim commands to actually edit the text at the same time. I think it took me several months of poking around and training myself in basic movement commands to get to where I could actually work in it effectively.
- natural219 12y ago
  Your website is awesome and the article was fantastic! I was just picking on you for the "Vim has the best documentation ever" line.
leni536 12y ago
If there is a software that I use for the first time and it accepts commands my first command is usually "help". Last time I had to debug a bash script so I found bashdb "from apt-cache search debug bash" and just ran it. I had no problem using the internal help. Most of the time you don't have to look up things on the Internet and just RTFM.

Watabou 12y ago

Well I wrote this partly for a friend who wants to give Vim a try. I noticed if I told him to read the help on a topic, he would just google the question himself (maybe he doesn't like the terminal interface to read the help doc). I've also noticed some people will manually go search a plugin on Github just to read the plugin's doc folder, when the same help doc is available right inside vim! So I thought I would help explain why Vim's help is so awesome that people should use it more and using it more means that you learn more things about vim. But I appreciate that you like my website, thanks! :)

ufmace 12y ago
The tricky thing about vim help, to me, is that it feels nearly impossible to navigate until you're already pretty comfortable with moving around in Vim. Making all of the most basic things so different from the WYSIWYG editors most people know generates a huge mental load at first, just trying to get the most basic things done. When I started using Vim, I found for a while that I couldn't stand writing code with it for more than an hour or so, because it was too difficult to think about what the code is doing and how to use the Vim commands to actually edit the text at the same time. I think it took me several months of poking around and training myself in basic movement commands to get to where I could actually work in it effectively.
natural219 12y ago
Your website is awesome and the article was fantastic! I was just picking on you for the "Vim has the best documentation ever" line.

leni536 12y ago

If there is a software that I use for the first time and it accepts commands my first command is usually "help". Last time I had to debug a bash script so I found bashdb "from apt-cache search debug bash" and just ran it. I had no problem using the internal help. Most of the time you don't have to look up things on the Internet and just RTFM.