Mastering the Vim Language

In video form, the best introduction I have seen is Chris Toomey’s ‘Mastering the Vim Language’: this video But here is something I wrote while I was learning how to migrate to Vim.. link

Disclaimer: My vim knowledge has many gaps. Understanding vim's model, what Chris Toomey of Thoughtbot calls "the Vim Language", helps incredibly: this video I've picked up numerous tips watching this and other of Thoughtbot's excellent video series. More importantly, though, is that I've learned why specific vim idioms and motifs exist. They've lead me to rethink my own usage patterns, sometimes changing them, sometimes holding them just a bit more tightly. (Say, my practice of doing global regex pattern-replacement edits rather than repeated vim edits or macros, generally.) But for a tool I use for coding, data cleaning, systems administration, email, writing, document preparation, and more, it pays to be on the lookout for more effective, faster, reliable, and/or repeatable methods. And no, vim's not the only editor I have, or do, use. It's not even the first Unix editor I'd used. There's been DOS EDIT, EDLIN, MacWrite, WP51, WordStar (me and GRR!), EDT, EVE, the ISPF editor, emacs, pico, ae, MS Word, ... you get the idea. But back in the 1980s, I first encountered (and balked noisily at, for a few weeks), BSD vi. And the basic muscle memory acquired, after a brief period of pain, has almost certainly been my best technical investment after learning to touch-type itself. Most importantly becaue both have been remarkably durable skills. No, vim is not vi, but it builds on its core . And over 30 years later, I find it useful both to see what new capabilities have been added, an

My first experience, on a BSD machine at about the same time, was similarly traumatic. I've since learnt the tool. Its ubiquity (particularly over pretty much all of the other ones I'd listed, at least on the machines I had ready access to) cemented that. I did like EVE when I'd used it, but have had little access to VAXen since. And was proficient for a time on Emacs (until a subsequent gig's director insisted that if it didn't come installed software wouldn't be added to our Unix server). My WP-fu fell with the end of DOS, though I did hang on for quite some time, up to the late 1990s / early aughts. CUA has its benefits, but it is only one of multiple competing keyboard standards. Everything is convention. Oddly: I'm vi/vim in the editor, but readline on the shell. No, I don't set vimkeys bindings in Bash. But I do drop to bash as my shell editor. Also: for those stumbling across this thread later, "Mastering the Vim Language" is an excellent video I'd come across in my third decade of using the editor, and learned much from. It's now 11 years old itself: < this video > Vim may have a long learning curve, but it also has a steep payoff function.