Hacker News Reader

Comment by danneu | Hacker News Reader

I see Vim on that list.

Best way to learn Vim is to get stuck without internet for 30 minutes. Once you explore every avenue of entertainment in your documents/downloads folders, you remember `$ vimtutor` and just have a go at it. Tried and true.

View on HN

I want to be good at Vim, but it isn't practical for me at the moment. At work, I've spent the last year and half in Visual Studio or Eclipse (both due to the nature of the projects) and it was really hard for me to switch my brain into "Vim mode" for my own personal stuff.

With something as fundamental to the job as a text editor, I have to do it 8 hours a day or it won't stick.

I actually learned most of my Vim foundations using ViEmu[1] for Visual Studio. While some things are missing, it does an impressive job of emulating Vim and not stepping all over VS and R# (aside from Ctrl-R key bindings).

I used the viemu cheat sheet lessons[2] for the learning process. As I became comfortable with the commands in each, I moved on to the next lesson.

[1]:http://www.viemu.com/ [2]:http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...

On the Eclipse side, I've been using viPlugin[1]. It is not free, but I've felt like it has been worth the cost since my forays into vim had all failed before getting this plugin. If you're working heavily with Eclipse/VS, it is definitely jarring to switch back and forth between one of those and vim, but using a plugin like this eases that pain.

[1] http://www.viplugin.com/viplugin/

It took me 5 days to stabilize my workflow in vim, and well worth it. Of course, those were 5 days without too much stress or deadlines, a few weeks ago. I still have a cheat-sheet print out, but am finding myself needing it less and less every day.

Although I've been working on fairly small web projects. For larger, corporate-style software development, the transition might be more difficult.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com