The fundamental vim ideas:
• Commands come in sequences. Having a command mode allows commands with fewer keystrokes and fewer modifier keys to make you more efficient. Also, move away less from the touch typing homerow.
• Commands are mnemonic. For example, z for folding...
• Commands come in sequences. Having a command mode allows commands with fewer keystrokes and fewer modifier keys to make you more efficient. Also, move away less from the touch typing homerow.
• Commands are mnemonic. For example, z for folding...
...z looks like a sheet of paper when folded.
Why hjkl? Touch typing homerow. Of that, h is left, l is right. The shape j goes down, k goes up. I don't remember specifically what hjkl do, I just remember that the whole editor is mnemonic. That way I remember more with less.
Why hjkl? Touch typing homerow. Of that, h is left, l is right. The shape j goes down, k goes up. I don't remember specifically what hjkl do, I just remember that the whole editor is mnemonic. That way I remember more with less.
• Repetition. All normal commands can be combined with ranges and counts.
Do I still use plain vim? Yes, for those things which are too small to fire up an IDE or for those things where an IDE even like @intellijidea with IdeaVIM won't cut it. For example, vim -d can diff 4 (!) files.
Most of the time, though, I'm in an IDE like @intellijidea with IdeaVIM (for 15 years now). It's only a small subset of what Vim actually can do, but it's a good Pareto subset, and the IDE features (refactoring, code generation, fast feedback) are totally worth it.
BTW Vim to me is almost as significant to the growth of the open source community in its early days as Linux, BSD, GNU, Fred Fish, and Aminet. It is open source and social, look up its license and what happens with donations.
Vim is portable to platforms that the younger of us may have heard of only by our ancient stories, if at all, like Amiga OS or Atari TOS. It may seem insignificant to you, but culturally that's half of the Linux legacy - the market situations around these systems has fueled...
... the battle for alternatives to the establishment and freedom to use the system you like/want. And freedom is a cornerstone of open source. "We" are on Linux now because our alternative hardwares died and operating systems became zombies and we had to concentrate our efforts.
If you want to see how successful we were, look at which OS runs the cloud, the mainframes, and the phones of the planet.
To see the limits of the success, look at the desktops. The battle is still going on. It's not only about software technology.
To see the limits of the success, look at the desktops. The battle is still going on. It's not only about software technology.
It's also about freedom versus path dependency. Path dependency aka vendor lock-in is the reason for Windows dominance, not technical excellence. We can enjoy open source today because there were and are people fighting for it.
Next time you see an "old vim user", you may now not only see an editor with an unusual interface, but also see the battle scars of the operating system wars and fights for freedom.
