Month: September 2022

Recently I have been learning Vim and this how I’ve been doing it.

Vimtutor

Vimtutor is just what it sounds like, an interactive tutorial that teaches Vim. In about 30 minutes you can complete the tutorial and have a basic understanding of how Vim works. You will be nowhere near an expert after the tutorial but you will be able to function if you have to use Vim. If you already have Vim installed, all you need to do is enter “vimtutor” in the shell prompt and follow the instructions on the screen. I did this daily for about a week until I was comfortable with everything there.

$ vimtutor

Learning the Vi and Vim Editors – Arnold Robbins and Elbert Hannah

I get it. Learning from books isn’t cool anymore. There are blogs, videos, online classes, and so many ways to find the information you need. Why read a book? Here’s why. A lot of blogs and videos will only give the basics. A book is more robust. You will be exposed to things never covered in a 5 minute video. Even if the information exists online, would you even know what to google to find that extra information?

Videos

I know I just spoke poorly of videos but hear me out. I don’t actively watch videos. I have them on in the background and listen as I’m working on other things. Every now and then I hear something that peaks my interest and then I may look further into the topic. That’s how I learned about the relative numbers setting.

Games

It’s not my thing but if learning by playing games is you style, the link bellow has a few options for you.

Vim Games – Games You Can Play with the Vim Editor

But is it worth it?

I want to preface this post by mentioning that I am not a developer. I’m just an enthusiast who enjoys learning new skills so keep that in mind while reading.

I have recently started learning Vim. I have access to other text editors but I want to learn this one. Every post on the internet mentions that you will not be taken seriously in the Linux community if you don’t use it. Like bro, do you even Vim? I hope to one day be part of the Linux elite.

Since I started this journey I’ve made some observations, good and bad, about Vim. Enjoy.

Vim is unnecessary for my needs.

One of the selling points of Vim is that it’s available on many systems and sometimes it’s the only thing available. I don’t go out to various job sites and I’m not in an office where I’m limited to the tools provided to me. I have sudo privileges on all my machines and can install whatever I want.

They claim it’s efficient.

This may be true but I’m not there yet. I’m getting better but there is a steep learning curve. I’m not sure if I am disciplined enough to see this to end.

It’s open source.

This makes me happy.

Vim is customizable.

Once I learned a bit about customizing my editor using the .vimrc file I began liking Vim a lot more. Just having relative number lines makes navigation so much easier. Mine is very simple. I haven’t scratched the surface of what can be done. I plan on doing a post focusing on .vimrc in the near future.

It’s kind of fun.

As frustrating as Vim can be I am having fun learning it. Vim is a lot different than anything else I used before. It’s challenging but not impossible.

So that’s where I’m at right now. These are just some of my early opinions and I’m sure they will change as I continue learning. To answer my original question, is it worth it? I don’t know yet but I’m going to continue the journey and I will keep you date.