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Comment by mcav | Hacker News Reader

Lots of success stories from TextMate to Vim/Emacs lately. That's on my list too; I just need to force myself to make the jump (and allow for the short-term productivity hit).

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It's worth it.

I did it last year, and it took almost two weeks before i felt like i was even somewhat productive again. However, now, i feel exactly the same way when trying to use an editor without a VIM mode. What? I have to use the arrow keys to move the cursor? But, i'll have to move my hands! sigh

Amen. Once you get the hang of it, you won't know how you lived without it :)

In fact, it'll start taking over in how you interact with your whole coputer. I find that I type "<ESC>:wq" in chat windows, comment boxes, etc..

Tip: Instead of :wq you can just type ZZ

I learned ZZ first. That turned out to be a mistake, because thinking of it as :wq crams more knowledge into one mnemonic. Because you can take it apart: you can just do :w, or you can just do :q, or you can do useful variations like :q!

And you can probably do all kinds of other powerful stuff that I don't understand, because I'm an emacs user who only uses vim on occasion. ;)

Yes, when learning it it is useful to know that :wq can be decomposed in to :w and :q and combined in to :wq! and :w! and :q!

But once you know that I think it's simpler to just type ZZ

When you start, be sure to first go through the vimtutor (just type "vimtutor" in your shell).

Then, if you have questions, come to #vim on freenode. There are lots of very, very experienced and knowledgeable people there that will be happy to help you learn.

Then, if you still need more, there's:

Vim tips wiki: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

The best collection of vim scripts: http://www.vim.org

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