Interactive Vim Tutorial | Hacker News Reader

Interactive Vim Tutorial

openvim.com

179 pointspraveenscience25 comments

A bit off topic, but I find it amusing that the two top posts on the HN front page right now are "Open Vim" and "How to Exit Vim".

And this tutorial follows the convention of not mentioning how to quit vim in one of its early lessons.

Drug dealers never tell their clients how to wean off their vices. Is that a crime? :P

Today should be the Vim day!

Every day should be Vim day ;)

We just need the "how to install vim" as 3rd on the podium and we're done :)

side note: of course it's installed by default in pretty much every Linux distro, but alas...

Not as much as it used to be. I’ve been in a few distros lately (container distros mostly) that only had nano. I got all “get off my lawn” about it too.

First Rule of Vim Club: Don't talk about Vim Club.

That one is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21988968. This one was probably posted in response to it. That happens a lot. We tend to downweight such follow-up or copycat posts since they make the front page more samey. It's better to post links to related articles in the original thread.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The approach this interactive tutorial uses is how I my instructor taught me vi but I don't think it's the best way because just telling you which keys do what feels random. I learn much more effectively if I understand some of the "why". My previous comments about learning vi/vim being easier if one gets a little philosophical background:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21343686

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20605840

I find vimtutor to be the best source for beginners, at least it was for me.

I started learning vim from https://vim-adventures.com/ and it has been invaluable.

This game got me past the frustration of knowing the keys but being slow at inputting them.

I can recommend "Practical Vim" which is a great book.

Regarding vim-adventures, I just gave it a try for the first time and while it does seem quite fun it puts a massive amount of emphasis on h and l to move left and right (that's all you start with, and even though you unlock w, e and b soon enough you can't use them outside of text tiles).

I hardly ever use h and l. There's almost always a better and faster way to move around, be it w, e, b (and their uppercase variants) or f/t/F/T. I think the only time I ever use h and l is when I need to move inside a word (fairly rare), or when I want to do something like "remove the next 4 letters and insert something instead" in which case I'd do something like c4l. Also commands that operate on words or look for specific anchor characters compose much better for . or macros.

> I can recommend "Practical Vim" which is a great book.

I've read it only recently, after I was already familiar with Vim, and I cannot recommend it enough!

I had lots of "oh, I had no idea this was possible" moments and it took my Vim knowledge to the next level where I'm now (even) more productive than before.

Having said that, I'm not sure it is a good introductory resource for somebody making their first steps in Vim.

A great concept but frustratingly quick-paced. With each lesson I feel like I need at extra 5-10 minutes of practice before I move on but it forces me to after only a few seconds.

Had the same response but then spotted that there's a practise tab at the top!

I agree. I'd vastly prefer having a chance to continue experimenting with each new command until I choose to advance to the next step.

By just being a text document, vimtutor avoids this problem.

It took me a while, but I finally learned Vim by forcing myself to use it at work.

A year and a half later, it has taken over my life.

I made the decision to start learning Vim yesterday when I found Mastering Vim and a full Vim course on packtpub.com for $5 each. I've been using Emacs for years, but it's always helpful to learn a new way to approach problems. Given how much I do in text editors, the investment is worth it.

Of course the bigger investment by far is the time. It's nonetheless nice to have access to cheap yet comprehensive learning materials so that it takes less time to learn.

A thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15400037

2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5235817

2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3190380

A vi editor quick-start tutorial:

https://gumroad.com/l/vi_quick .

I am the author (user vram22 on HN), posting from another phone, with a throwaway user name.

I first wrote this tutorial for two Windows sysadmin friends who had to handle some Unix servers. They told me it helped them to learn vi basics and so use Unix more easily.

These interactive tutorials are the only relatively painless way to learn the basics of vim.

I thought I was just kidding when I noticed Vim related articles coming up over and over, and here's another one.

This is a nice way to learn Vim.

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