Normal: for moving around a file and making edits.For this reason, Vim has multiple operating modes. Reading, navigating, and making small edits, as opposed to writing long streams Vim’s design is based on the idea that a lot of programmer time is spent The end result is an editor that can match the speed at which you think. Vim avoids the use of the mouse, because it’s too slow Vim evenĪvoids using the arrow keys because it requires too much movement. Keystrokes (with mnemonic names) are commands, and these commands areĬomposable. Languages like Python), and Vim’s interface itself is a programming language: Vim is programmable (with Vimscript and also other This reason, Vim is a modal editor: it has different modes for inserting text When programming, you spend most of your time reading/editing, not writing. Showing you some of the more advanced functionality, and giving you the
Going to focus on explaining the philosophy of Vim, teaching you the basics, It’s not possible to teach all of Vim’s functionality in 50 minutes, so we’re Vim is probably worth learning even if you finally end up switching to some Have installed Vim emulation for VS code). Lots of tools support a Vim emulation mode (for example, 1.4 million people Vim has some really neat ideas behind it, and for this reason, History it originated from the Vi editor (1976), and it’s still beingĭeveloped today. VimĪll the instructors of this class use Vim as their editor. Vim is the most popular command-line-based editor. (there may be some bias because Stack Overflow users may not be representative Which editors are popular today? See this Stack Overflow Modern text editors are fancyĪnd powerful tools, so the learning never stops: you’ll get even faster as you Memory that using the new editor saves you time. You’re 20 hours in, you should be as fast as you were with your old editor.Īfter that, the benefits start: you will have enough knowledge and muscle Such as opening and editing files, save/quit, and navigating buffers. In an hour or two, you’ll learn basic editor functions If you follow the above method, fully committing to using the new program forĪll text editing purposes, the timeline for learning a sophisticated textĮditor looks like this. Look things up as you go: if it seems like there should be a better way to do.Stick with using the editor for all your text editing needs (even if it slows.
this lecture, plus resources that we point out) Time mastering an editor that fits your needs. Microsoft Word versus Visual Studio Code).Īs programmers, we spend most of our time editing code, so it’s worth investing
It makes sense that there areĭifferent types of programs for writing English words versus code (e.g. Programming, you spend more time switching files, reading, navigating, andĮditing code compared to writing a long stream. Writing English words and writing code are very different activities.