
Learning Vim while playing a game - erbdex
http://vim-adventures.com/
======
oneweekwonder
> \- 6 months access to VIM Adventures

> \- 13 fun and engaging levels

> \- More than 60 commands and motions

> \- Covers most of the keyboard

> \- Now for only $25

I personally think it is a wonderful idea and love how it is implemented(got
very excited the first time I saw it). But I can not justify $ 25 for a game I
can only use for 6 months, but I will pay $ 25 once off.

Then again one need to take hosting costs, and the time it took the creator to
make the game in to account; and lastly it is his product so he can set the
price point to whatever.

It will just not bring the joy of vim to African kids in Uganda.

~~~
EpicDavi
Only 6 months access is a big turn off for me. Even if I use it for less than
6 months, I like the feeling that I could go back to the site and practice, if
I wanted to. I'm guessing over 90% of users would not use it for the whole
time, so server costs would seem like a non-issue.

EDIT: I spent so long typing this that organsnyder had the same response.

In addition, I feel that the price point is off a little here. I think that
dropping the price (or at least adding unlimited access) would increase the
amount of people buying the game at a higher percent.

~~~
darkerside
I wonder if the license actually deactivates after 6 months, or if the creator
simply added this term to limit his liability. Per jtreminio, he purchased two
years ago and continues to have access. I bring this up because you could flip
this and rather appreciate his transparency, letting his customers know that
they'll have at least 6 months access if and when he decides to shut the game
down.

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raldu
there is also vimgolf[1] for a free and more challenging alternative, in which
you solve various text editing problems with least number of keystrokes. it
has a nice cli[2] that retrieves problems to the real vim editor, and submits
scores. it is interesting to see how other players in the leaderboard solve
the same problems differently, and you learn a few useful tricks along the
way.

1: [http://vimgolf.com/](http://vimgolf.com/)

2:
[https://github.com/igrigorik/vimgolf](https://github.com/igrigorik/vimgolf)

------
thinkbohemian
I bought this game a few years ago. I learned quite a few things about vim.
Unfortunately the puzzles in the later levels aren't very clear. I spent hours
trying to figure out what on earth they wanted me to do. To me this was
counter productive and got less and less fun. I ended up leaving the last few
levels unfinished as I felt I got very minimal returns for time invested.

If you're interested in picking up vim, I love it for the first 5 or so
levels. After that, not so much. (I currently still use sublime text but do
occasionally use vim on servers)

------
gamache
I got good at the Vi movement keys by playing Nethack. Nothing like a few
50,000 turn games to put hjkl into muscle memory.

~~~
qdog
I've played a massive amount of Crawl. I already knew vim, but you get a lot
of repetition with those keys for sure.

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lfottaviano
About vim: There is one thing that always has bothered me a lot, and it is
that I am lefty, and I tend to think that at the left I have the "arrow up".
Naturally I always expect the "arrow up" at the left, but it is hjkl.

~~~
marrs
you can always remap the keys

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dotdi
Loved it, but as a student 25$ is kinda steep. Also, 6 months is weird.

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farresito
A good way to learn the vim hjkl keys is to play tetris. Most tetris allow
remapping the keys. That's how I got used to those keys.

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jfabre
I just want to say thank you for making this game. That's how I first learned
Vim and I have been using it ever since.

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MollyR
I'd pay $25 for permanent access and/or an offline version. However I dislike
the 6 month access a lot, and it burns a little of the good will I have.

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therealdrag0
I've been using ShortcutFoo. It's pretty good to force myself to learn the
basics.

[0]
[https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app/dojos/vim](https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app/dojos/vim)

------
Nr7
I highly recommend this to anyone interested in vim. Vim-adventures is how I
got into using vim as my main editor.

Also for the people complaining about the 6 month access, I get your point but
I think this is meant to be just an easy introduction to vim, not a tool for
mastering it. I played this for only like a month or two and after I knew
enough to start using vim as my main editor I hardly ever touched it again. I
haven't even finished the game.

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adamc
Reminded me how much I hate vim and how it is biased towards right-handers.

~~~
KhalPanda
Really? I'm right-handed, but don't have any trouble making any kind of key
combinations at any speed with my left hand. Aren't most people (in tech, at
least) ambidextrous when it comes to typing?

~~~
verroq
Check your privilege.

~~~
thesteamboat
This is unhelpful because it's unclear what your intent is, other than a
general rebuke.

More helpful would be something like "This is not correct. Anecdotally I've
found ..." or "It is unfair to expect that everyone can ..."

~~~
verroq
/sarcasm

------
dang
Two and three years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689971)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3877880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3877880)

------
mcx
If you are interested in learning vim, there is also the handy vimtutor
command.

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stygiansonic
The Vimium extension for Chrome is a decent way to get used to the 'hjkl'
movement key bindings. I also love being able to yank/put URLs as well as
navigate through tabs using VIM-esque key bindings.

~~~
MichaelGG
The huge gain with vim browser plugins is the navigation. Hitting f or F then
getting numbered shortcuts for every link? Fantastic.

~~~
stygiansonic
Yep, can't believe I forgot to mention that feature! Mouse-less navigation is
the best.

------
baby
I played through all the free levels. It's slow, you don't learn a lot, and
you end up having to pay to keep going.

If you are learning I'd advise you to check stuff like this:
[http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...](http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html)

They show you a few shortcuts on a keyboard layout and they keep on adding
shortcuts to the pictures so you can learn at a nice pace.

------
codecurve
I teach a first year Intro to Unix module (CS and ICT) at a University in the
UK.

We ran this for our students as an exercise and it went down really well.
We've got people using Vim on a daily basis who probably would have never
heard of it otherwise.

It's a great way to beat the learning curve that vimtutor represents, for
people who prefer more visual challenges.

------
porter
Well that killed my morning routine.

~~~
organsnyder
Don't worry. The efficiency improvements you'll glean will pay back the time
eventually.

~~~
MichaelGG
Not only that, but the reduction in frustration when transforming a bunch of
text (say, using macros) will compensate even more than the actual time spent.
There's a joy to be had when doing menial tasks with vim, a joy from wizardry.

------
grymoire1
FWIW, I learned the vi cursor keystrokes playing rogue in 1982. I also learned
C studying the source, while staring at lines like while ( _j++=_ i++); which
was a pretty strange construct to a Pascal programmer.

------
w0rm
It's broken for me as I have "start searching as soon as you start typing"
feature on in my browser. It's searching instead of moving. Latest Firefox on
GNU/Linux.

------
song
I'd love to be able to reassign some keys. I use colemak and for example
h,j,k,l need to be reassigned to actually be usable (otherwise, the layout
hardly makes sense).

------
fsiefken
pacvim is also a nice game for learning vim keys:
[https://github.com/jmoon018/PacVim](https://github.com/jmoon018/PacVim)

------
plug
Bit off-topic but that pleasing musical sound when you hit the space bar is
really like the first note in Aphex Twin's "PAPAT4 (Pineal Mix)" :)

------
nicholaides
This is how I finally learned to get comfortable with HJKL in Vim. It's a
great game.

~~~
Gracana
I eventually tried using the arrow keys and it pops up a message saying that
hjkl is the vim way, but vim lets you use the arrow keys, so they'll let you
make the decision yourself. I'm glad they did that, because I'm comfortable
with the arrow keys and the other aspects of the game are a lot more fun and
interesting without having to re-train muscle memory.

------
j2kun
Some of my more engaged intro programming students thoroughly enjoyed this
game.

------
methodover
Learning Vim if you don't know it already is a waste of time for new
programmers. If you want a text editor, use Sublime. If you happen to be in a
terminal without a GUI, and need to edit something real quick, just use Nano.

Don't spend your valuable time learning Vim. It's not worth it.

~~~
mwfunk
Opinions on development tools without explanations are pretty meaningless
without context. Great for polls, not so much for discussion. It's like
telling someone what kind of car to buy based on whatever you happen to own
rather than what they might use it for.

~~~
methodover
That is actually 100% fair.

My issue with Vim is that it takes quite a bit of effort to learn, as this
very thread illustrates. And for what gain?

I don't know how to use Vim, but I've given learning a shot a few times before
having this visceral reaction like, "Why the hell am I doing this?" And then I
move on to other things.

I've watched other programmers use Vim, and they do not appear to be any
faster or more efficient than me with Sublime and/or an IDE like PyCharm or
Eclipse. And for some tasks they seem to be quite a bit slower.

I dunno. To each their own. I wouldn't fault someone for learning Vim. But to
me it seems like a waste of time. Modern text editors are much easier to learn
and use. If you want to spend time learning something, learn something useful.

Just my opinion though.

------
cdnsteve
Good concept, sound doesn't seem to be working for me on OSX Chrome.

~~~
nallerooth
It works for me, same setup. =P

------
bkurtz13
This has been posted about a hundred times already. Perhaps check the history
before posting something old?

~~~
teach
Reposts are frowned upon in some Internet forums, most notably Reddit, but
that's not part of the culture of Hacker News.

Reposts are fine here as long as enough time has passed since the last
posting.

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tek-cyb-org
This is awesome. Thank you!

------
mellavora
3rd vote for nethack.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
Just play nethack.

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everyone
I dont do that much text editing. I use notepad++ . Is vim super amazing or
something? ps. I usually work on a windows machine but vim is available for
windows.

EDIT: Also emacs is available for windows, isnt emacs meant to be the ultimate
text editor type thing? I dont really have any need to these, I'm just curious
really. When Ive had to do perform some weird operation on a load of text or
source code for example I've just written a script to do it.

~~~
allemagne
I don't really have experience with notepad++ at all, but I did try sublime
text 2 for a while. It really wasn't my cup of tea. Vim is really useful to me
because it's easy to use in terminals and it has a lot of powerful, time-
saving keystrokes once you get past the learning curve. Need to comment out
lines 52-58? ":52,58s/^/#/", which comes naturally after a little practice.
I've used emacs and it's very comparable, but I just happened to like vim
more. It can be just a matter of taste, but I really recommend checking out
both vim and emacs to see if it can save you time typing out small, repetitive
stuff that isn't worth writing a script to do.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
52GqqI#<Esc><Enter>q6@q is how I'd usually do that (go to line 52, record how
to comment out a line and move to the next line, then do that 6 more times).
The macro is about the same number of keystrokes to write, is more generally
powerful, and leans more on standard editing skills.

