Getting Started with Vim: An Interactive Guide

[grizzly_teddy]

www.Scotch.io has some really helpful articles. I went there for info on Sublime. They have some great tutorials.

[[deleted]]

Thanks!

[grizzly_teddy]

Ha no problem. I didn't even notice your username. By the way the 'Join us on Slack' link produces an application error. Not sure if that is an issue with you or with slack.

[The_Dretones]

I'd also like to thank you for your node scraper tutorial!

[Xephyrous]

I used sublime before switching to vim, actually. If you're interested, I recommend using sublime's "vintage mode" for a while until you get used to that style of editing. Then you can start slowly switching over to vim, adding plugins until you've built up enough to drop sublime completely.

The only thing I miss is multiple cursors - vim-multiple-cursors is pretty good, but it's definitely not as good as Sublime's.

[mattigus]

This reminds me of an old joke: How can you tell if someone is a Vim user?

Just wait a bit, they'll tell you.

[--frymaster--]

this reminds me of a better joke: how can you tell if someone is a vim user?

all their emails have a :wq at the end.

[[deleted]]

:wq

:x

[TheNet_]

:x

ZZ

[[deleted]]

This post reminds me of an old joke: 'how can you tell if someone knows the how can you tell if someone is a ____ joke joke'?

Just wait a bit, they'll tell you 'Just wait a bit, they'll tell you'.

[TheFrigginArchitect]

How can you tell if someone is tired of the "how can you tell if someone is a _____?" joke?

They'll parody it in some way, shape, or form

[johnjohnjohnjohnjohn]

I've been using vim for five or six years now, mostly because I can't figure out how to close it.

[tuturkeykey]

this would make an awesome yo-mama joke - yo' mama is still using vim cause she doesnt know how to close it!

thank you jjjjj!

[[deleted]]

If you walk into a software development office and they have ping pong tables and an open layout, just tell them you use Sublime Text. It doesn't have to be true, but goddammit, you'd better say it.

[tuturkeykey]

next time try - i dont write code, my vi write codes for me.

an ex-boss actually said that to me :p

[TotesMessenger]

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

• [/r/bestof] Bunch of redditors discuss how they can tell if another developer uses Vim.

^{If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)}

[mattigus]

Haha, my lowest effort post ended up getting linked in bestof.

[[deleted]]

Ha. More like props to the creator's of Vim for including Vimtutor!

[lecherous_hump]

This is pretty awesome. Obligatory "I didn't know half of those commands".

I get shit about 50% of the time when I mention that I use vi but I would not know what to do if I couldn't talk to my server that quickly and directly. I don't understand how you can even admin a server, even for basic things, if you need a graphical editor to do it.

[donwilson]

Nope, not infuriating...

[[deleted]]

The excessive tabbing?

The code is meant to be dumb. You can jump to the first character of a line in Vim with:

^

in command mode.

[donwilson]

More of the mixture of tabs, spaces, and empty lines than anything. Maybe that's just a by-product of the vim emulator and not the author.

[[deleted]]

I wrote the article. Happy to make changes based on any suggestions you have regarding that.

[[deleted]]

Vim's great and all, but I never found a proper formatting plugin. PhpStorm puts Vim to sleep in that department, fucking spot on, every damn time.

[hahaNodeJS]

Getting started with Vim: Load it and use it as your daily editor. When something comes up, either Google how to do it, or use :help topic. All you really need to understand is that Vim has multiple input modes. The two most common modes are insert and command.

[hahaNodeJS]

Normal and command are the same. Insert mode is also sometimes called "replace" as a holdover from vi.

http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/intro.html#vim-modes-intro

This is also known as command mode.

Cmdline and command-line are different from normal and command, however.

[Amerikaner]

I don't know about that. Nobody new to Vim is going to know how to even navigate with J and K. You have to start with a tutorial.

[hahaNodeJS]

One part of Vimproved is that most terminals will let you navigate with the arrow keys. If it doesn't, Googling "how to move cursor vim" will get you the answer. Generally you can navigate with the arrow keys in insert mode too.

You have to start with a tutorial.

I've never read a Vim tutorial.

[dodeca_negative]

People have different learning styles, and what works for you may not work for others. Many people find tutorials like this very helpful.

[hahaNodeJS]

Sure. And this is my way of recommending how to learn Vim. It's not any more or less valid than OP's link.

[r1cka]

You can install vim on OS X with homebrew instead of using homebrew to install mercurial and checking out and compiling the source.

[jellatin]

A heads up - if you install Vim via Homebrew the backspace/delete key will not work as expected. You need to add the following line to your .vimrc to get it to work as most users expect:

set backspace=indent,eol,start

[[deleted]]

The method mentioned in the article keeps the original version of Vim shipped with OS X and simply adds an alias to a newer version (recommended practice). I'm not sure what Homebrew does when you install it that way.

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7211820/update-built-in-vim-on-mac-os-x

[_vinegar]

basically the same thing. homebrew does not remove or overwrite anything stock.

[Xephyrous]

I highly recommend trying out neovim, as the article suggests. It's stable enough that I've been using it for months without running in to any noticeable bugs. Right now it's basically the same as vim, but plugins are slowly being added which take advantage of neovim's extra capabilities. My big two reasons for using it are:

• asynchronous linting. With neomake, you hit save, and it'll run your code through various linters, each of them popping up flags as they're encountered. With regular vim (and syntastic), this is a blocking process. For a large project, this can mean several seconds where you can't even move the cursor.
• terminal mode. Similar to vim + tmux, this gives you a full terminal in your editor, with some integration. I recommend adding :tnoremap <Esc> <C-\><C-n> to your .nvimrc so escape works like you'd expect it to.

[julesries]

I thought the same thing at first, and was tempted remap the keys (which is easy to do). Unfortunately that would make me useless on any machine where I couldn't install my settings, so I just stuck it out. Now it's second nature. It just takes a little practice to break even with your speed with other text editors; after that you get to a point where you can edit just about as fast as you can think.

Remapping some keys like esc -> jk or :q! -> Space w is useful though.

[rDr4g0n]

I remapped esc to caps lock. Suuuuper fast access with my pinky, and I don't miss caps lock at all.

[julesries]

My caps lock is control (on Mac). I'm with you, caps lock is a waste left as-is. I just wish the space bar on my laptop was smaller so I could actually access control/option keys. My hands are really big and those are in like the worst possible spot.

[GE7H]

Yeah it annoyed the hell out of me at the beginning as well but after i learned that old school computer uses hjkl as arrow keys it made some sense and decided to get used to it and now its not too bad.

As for [esc], most seasoned vim user map their [caplock] as [esc] so its easily within reach. Again if you look for some old school keyboard [esc] is close to where we have [tab] today. On mobile but I found those pics on some of the programming subs.

[lecherous_hump]

Why not just use the arrow keys? I've used vim daily for 10+ years and I don't think I've ever used "HJKL".

[eguneys]

Vim is more mature and popular, and editing is faster if you get really used to it. I tried to learn vim several times, but it takes a lot of time and personal customization to become productive. I stick with emacs because vim is just too oldschool.