I’ve finally decided to learn Vim, which is kind of like saying:
“I’ve decided to learn to fly. Watch closely as I dive from the edge of a high-rise building into a hungry bowl of sharks.”
Vim Sharks
The first obstacle is “How do I even open Vim?” Because, apparently, Vim is too good for double-clicking, which is fine, but then…why do you need an Icon?
Luckily my wild guess of
vim .
on the command line worked.
Voila! Into The Shark Pit!
Now that is a super-helpful start page.
Looking closely, I see this:
Quick Help: <F1>:help -:go up dir D:delete R:rename s:sort-by x:exec
Ah, that’s good. Press F1 for help.
Whamp!!! (that’s the Mac sound for “Wrong button, dumb-ass.”)
Okay….let’s try typing
:help
(Bracing self for Whamp sound…) Aha! No whamp!! Making progress.
Dear Lord, what am I looking at?
Move around: Use the cursor keys, or “h” to go left,
“j” to go down, “k” to go up, “l” to go right.
Okay, let’s try “j” to go down.
Whamp!!!
What the?! Oh, my fingers are in the wrong place. Why would the keys be “hjkl” instead of “jkl;”? This is not what Mavis Beacon taught me to do!
Scrolling down…
jjjjjjjjjjjj
Okay, let’s see…
|tutor| 30 minutes training course for beginners
Oh, great! A tutorial! Not sure why I had to know basic Vim commands to get to it, but at least I’m here. Typing:
|tutor| Whamp!!
:|tutor| Whamp!!
tutor Whamp!!!
:grep |tutor| (silence)
:cat |tutor| (silence)
:dog |tutor| (silence)
:ostrich |tutor| (silence)
:WTF?!!!!!! (silence…)
Whamp!!!
Really Vim? Really?
Okay…let me check that Vim book a friend recommended:
“This book will teach you everything you need to know about Vim…assuming you have already been through Vim Tutor.”
Holds computer above head, prepares to heave it through nearest window…
And then, salvation! I spot a tiny link at the bottom of the page, which takes me to a VimTutor help page. (Yes, there is a Help page for their Help page).
For OpenVMS, if Vim has been properly installed, you can start vimtutor from a VMS prompt with: @VIM:vimtutor
I see. I’m supposed to type “@VIM:vimtutor”.
Because, yes…that is so intuitive.
Thank you, Vim. I have officially been hazed.
Rails Mama 
Hey check out Vim adventures. You do have to pay to go further than the 3 levels provided but it’s a nice interactive way to learn vim. http://vim-adventures.com/.
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Thanks Jonathan! I’ll definitely check that out!
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Jonathan: Went through the first 3 levels and they were awesome! Would you recommend paying the $25 to go through all the levels, or just playing with Vim until I figure it out?
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Actually, I haven’t payed to go through all the levels. I have read a lot of good things about it though. It really depends on how quickly/how much you want to learn Vim. I’ve just played with Vim until I figured it out.
What I did was learn the basics which the first 3 adventures of Vim adventures covers quite well. Then when I think of something that I want to do, I just do a google search for the Vim command. If you think there is a faster way to do something then there probably is. You just need to do some digging.
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That sounds…fun. I downloaded the file a couple of months ago. Never installed it. I played some of the Vim Adventure game, though. I think I might try to memorize more Sublime/Atom shortcuts for now.
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Yeah, definitely stick with Atom or Sublime at first. Learning Vim is a time-drain at first. It doesn’t pay off until later. I still haven’t 100% decided if it’s worth the time investment for me now.
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