
Show HN: Piece by Piece introduction to Vim - anuragpeshne
https://anuragpeshne.github.io/essays/vim/1.html
======
Rainymood
Interesting piece and well-written but being brutally honest there is not too
much new information here. I appreciate the effort you put it but I really
think the focus for new people learning Vim shouldn't be studying the keymaps
it should be USING them, STRUGGLING with them and somebody pointing out "Hey
why are you using the arrow keys? Try pressing <fti>!" and then they go "Oh
wow!".

I once showed a friend Vim and he was really excited. When I saw him edit some
text he used -- to my horror -- the arrow keys! I kept watching and at a
certain point said "Ok now stop, try pressing <...>" and he listened to me and
he was like "Oh boy that is awesome!".

And maybe a suggestion is to put ":imap kj <Esc>" somewhere in the beginning I
honestly think that keymap is SO much better than escape.

Sorry for bashing you a little bit I do appreciate the effort but I feel like
the web is already quite saturated with these Vim tutorials!

~~~
anuragpeshne
Hello, thanks for the comment, as you can see, it is tough to get sincere
feedback.

I agree with you that there are tons of other Vim tutorials. None of them
really clicked with me, I wanted to write about Vim "my way". And I'm not
claiming my way is better than other's but there might be someone who might
like my version and start using Vim. I've written short piece which are
intended to be consumed in one sitting, and ideally one part every day. My aim
is to help user to gradually replace his editor with Vim without significant
loss of productivity. For this, I'm writing about stuff bottom up, each part
builds upon previous or if two parts are unrelated, the third part will sit on
top of those two. And lastly, I'm not trying to cover every command or trick,
just enough to get them started and proficient enough to help themselves.

I strongly agree with your other comment too: studying keymaps doesn't make
anyone learn Vim, it's the struggle, the agony which rewires the brain. But I
think that's the most anyone can do to teach. Amaze someone with power of Vim,
and leave him motivated enough to do the hard work. You cannot, especially
through a blog, force someone to do labor. But I liked your idea of making
reader do something and later point out that it could have been done in a more
efficient way. Maybe I'll add some exercises.

